Teachers' knowledge-utilisation is the main subject of this dissertation and attention is payed to connections between theory and practice. This focus also includes the environment in which the thinking and acting teacher has to interact. The intention is to understand under which circumstances the practitioner works and utilise theory-oriented or research based knowledge as well as more ordinary knowledge in school. The aim is to increase the understanding of how knowledge is received, generated or regenerated and locally utilised. It is principally an exploratory study.

This study is based on 33 interviews with eleven active teachers in four primary schools and one secondary school during the school year 1993/94, in one local community in the south of Sweden and a survey (1994) based on questionnaires with 127 answering teachers from four of the five schools mentioned above three primary schools and one secondary school.

The results show that there are three main areas in the system of utilisation, namely teachers' knowledge, teachers' practice and usable knowledge. Teachers' knowledge is personally constructed and often specifically directed towards the pupils or their relation to subjects or teaching. The context, i.e. teachers' practice often has an abundance of stimuli in combination with a high level of unpredictability. Usable knowledge is often concrete, recognizable and adjusted to teachers' practical work. In between these three main areas teachers carry on an active dialogue. This system of knowledge-utilisation characterizes the dynamics and the tensions between the components - they all contribute actively to the process of utilisation.