With Head and Hands Youth Perspectives on Vocational Learning, Mastery, and the Future is a development project that aims to highlight young people’s vocational interests, engagement, and practical wisdom. The project brings forward young people’s own stories about choosing vocational education, their experiences of learning and mastery, and their understandings of future opportunities in work, further education, and personal development.

The project draws on experiences from the international pilot project Youth, VET and the Future and is being developed as an independent initiative in a Norwegian context. Through qualitatively oriented development work and creative forms of dissemination, the project seeks to challenge stereotypical perceptions of vocational education as less demanding or less prestigious than other educational pathways. The project is based on an understanding of vocational competence as holistic and multifaceted, where analysis, judgement, creativity, adaptability, and professional discretion are central.

The ambition is to strengthen the understanding of vocational education as a meaningful and socially important form of education, characterized by responsibility, reflection, and complex professional judgement.

The project is aimed at young people in vocational education and training, teacher educators, students, teachers, school leaders, and researchers with an interest in vocational education, vocational pedagogy, and teacher education. Findings will be disseminated through professional and academic publications, conferences, seminars, teaching, and professional networks at NTNU and in collaboration with national and international academic communities.