Developers of teacher education emphasise a communal approach, entailing an ability to renew oneself professionally, discuss relevant issues, and solve problems together with other people, as one of the starting points of the teacher's work. There are increased demands that a dialogue should be initiated among teachers, between teachers and students, and between teachers and representatives of working life. It has been suggested that multiprofessionalism, where the aim is to cross the boundaries separating traditional professional domains, should be adopted as one of the principles to underpin polytechnics' educational activities. This involves the creation of a new action culture, which generates collaboration of a new kind. The aim of the study is firstly to describe polytechnic teachers' conceptions of collaboration and collaboration practices. The second aim is to find out what role collaboration plays in the teacher's professional socialisation. The third problem addressed in the study concerns the organisational culture of a polytechnic and how it supports collaboration. The theoretical background is derived from approaches used in research on teacher thinking and in organisational studies. The empirical research will be conducted in two phases: In autumn 2003, data was gathered by videotaping five group interviews of 3-4 people each. The interviewees were from different polytechnics. Thematically, this first round of data-gathering covers the contents and forms of teacher collaboration. In the second stage in 2005, data will be collected from one polytechnic unit using personal interviews and official documents. In this first data- gathering situation, the interviewees are polytechnic teachers from different work communities. What unites them, then, is working in the same type of school. Further, they are interviewed at a time when they are taking part in the same pedagogical training programme and are thus acquainted with each other. The interview data have been analysed within a micropolitical framework of reference where the teacher's work is seen as taking place in three arenas: teaching, administration and interaction. Different arenas demand different forms of participation and different competencies. The teaching arena is dominated by the teacher's individual work. Autonomy is the cultural foundation of the teacher's work, serving as the basis for the emergence of different collaboration practices. The work done in the administrative arena is more distant from the core of teaching; it was discussed as a "second" level of the teacher's work, where the focus was on reacting to the initiatives and policy definitions of the administration. From the teachers' perspective, it is a peripheral action field whose effect on their everyday activities is indirect. The interactive arena functions as a buffer zone between the administration and the teachers, reflecting the loose relationship between the arenas. The interaction arena brought together, on the one hand, a spontaneous and situational need, stemming from a teacher's work orientation, for informal collaboration and the management of everyday professional life and, on the other hand, efforts, stemming from administrative objectives, to organise, evaluate and anticipate the teacher's work in a longer term. Teachers' everyday life is dominated by the teaching arena, which is only loosely linked with the shared decision-making and management activities going on in the administrative arena. Interaction between the teaching arena and the administrative arena seems to form an important factor in the development of a work community's collaboration culture.