This presentation focuses on the future-oriented movements that take shape when vocational teachers and vocational students negotiate how a practical task could, and should, be handled and solved in vocational teaching situations in vocational workshop settings. The data consists of video recorded lessons from four vocational programmes in Swedish upper secondary school, and the analysis is based on the theoretical and methodological framework of CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach). By focusing on the longitudinal orientations towards a future doing that are set into play in the teaching situations, we will show how aspects concerning a specific vocational learning content that revolves around a vocational practical doing compete for the space by a vocational learning content of a more general nature. We argue that the specific and the general vocational learning content does not necessarily have to be in conflict with each other in the teaching situation. Rather, they can complement each other and open up for more in-depth vocational learning. As such, our study emphasises the importance for vocational teachers to develop teaching strategies to navigate between helping the students in their problem solving here and now, and contextualising the specific vocational learning content and making vocational learning relevant for future vocational occupation and working life.