Transitions from school to apprenticeship represent a critical stage in vocational education and training (VET), yet little is known about how vocational teachers prepare students for this shift.
Drawing on focus groups and individual interviews with 37 teachers across three vocational programmes in Norwegian upper secondary VET, this study examines pedagogical approaches to apprenticeship preparation and how they are shaped by expectations of working life, vocational field characteristics and school context.
We identified four recurrent approaches: classroom simulations of workplace settings, experience-based storytelling, mock interviews and biographical self-work, and facilitated reflection and discussion. Across programmes, teachers foregrounded domain-general competencies, such as punctuality, reliability, communication and cooperation, while embedding these in field-specific tasks and interactions. In Norway’s 2 + 2 model, this emphasis may appear counterintuitive, given that two years of school-based VET precede apprenticeship.
The findings show how employer expectations are translated into situated teaching practices and underscore both the importance of school-based preparation and the need to scrutinise the prominence of behavioural regulation.
