This article is based on a study on writing practices in Vocational Teacher Education. By using a quantitative survey of bachelor students and qualitative interviews of a sample of teacher educators, as mixed methods, we got a double perspective on how writing is practiced by experiences and utterances from students and teacher educators. The study explores how students develop their writing competences and what kind of writing competences are emphasized in Vocational Teacher Education. The concept "writing competences"in this study has a dualistic or two-sided approach; one is related to professional, discipline and context specific writing, the other to a generic, transferable and context independent writing competence. The article discusses the need of generic and transferable writing skills as an important part of professional communication in a text-based and fast changing labor market. This aspect will be essential when students as full-fledged vocational teachers shall educate pupils to become skilled workers. The theoretical framing of the study is based on a socio-cultural approach in line with New Literacy Studies, and on theories that explore new perspectives on literacy and context. Our research questions are: What kind of writing competences are emphasized in the Vocational Teacher Education, and how do writing practices prepare students to their future work as vocational teachers? The results show that students have little development of writing competences during their bachelor studies. One explanation is that a lot of writing during education also develops their writing competences. Another is teacher educators' supervision of writing competences. However, teachers supervise in different ways with focus on different factors of writing skills. The latter is probably related to teachers' own competences and attitudes towards the need of writing competences in general. But it can also be related to institutional policy and priorities towards writing competences. Worth mention, is that students ask for more focus on writing practices and learning to write academic texts. Writing practices has a primary goal to mediate learning in Vocational Teacher Education, and to a lesser extent to develop students' writing competences in the perspective of a future as vocational teachers. 2020 © adno.
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