Sweeping reforms in Swedish schools over the last 10-15 years have created new expectations for the role and work of teachers, a fact that has generated a pressing need for continuous professional development. Traditional courses and in-service training days have often been criticized for top-down approaches, creating learning that is difficult to transform into practice. Instead, the starting point of learning must be understood as something that happens between individuals and in relation to the common practice. In Sweden, group facilitation has increasingly become a new way to meet the demands of professional development in schools. Group facilitation in this context refers to school-based group discussions as a means of developing practice. The facilitation group involves more than two teachers and is led by a person who has been assigned the commission to function as a facilitator/supervisor. However, thoughts about what group facilitation is, or may be, are vague and ambiguous, which in turn is reflected in practice. Facilitators, such as consultants, therapists and educationalists with different educational backgrounds, crowd an arena lacking mutual and characteristic concepts. Forms and purposes vary, constituting a broad field of different activities labeled "facilitation", while the lack of accumulated knowledge about group facilitation in schools has become obvious. This current study aims to describe and interpret how group facilitation for teachers is practiced and perceived in Swedish schools. The questions to be answered are: * How common is group facilitation in different kinds of schools? * What motives do schools have for performing group facilitation? * What forms of facilitation exist concerning organization and content? * What meaning do participants ascribe to facilitation, in terms of learning and competence development? * What experienced educational and professional changes are derived from group facilitation? * How do principals understand the benefit of group facilitation as a means to different dimensions of school development? A web survey has been carried out that acts as a basis for research interviews with principals, teachers and facilitators. The result of the web survey shows that facilitation is a frequently-used, valuable means for school development and that some kind of development, as a result of the activity, is observed in most cases. However, the motives for group facilitation, the choices of facilitators and types of observed development vary. These are subjects that will be further investigated and analyzed through the interview investigation. The presentation will treat some findings from a pre-study, built on research interviews with principals. A summary of preferably Scandinavian research within the field will also be presented.