The question of how to go about developing school systems tends to be answered, for the most part, by reference to the teaching profession or teachers’ professional development. The Austrian project IMST seeks answers to this question by changing lessons in the natural sciences and mathematics and in the promotion and development of professionalism of teachers in schools.  One measure is to have regional networks.  In each of the nine Austrian provinces such networks are under development.  The establishment of these networks is organized by a steering committee and financially supported by the project and the individual provinces (cf. Web-Team, 2008).  The aspirations for these network is that they will further develop the professionalism of teachers, will raise the level of quality in instruction and will integrate as many different types of schools as possible in their proceedings.   The concrete aims of the networks, and the methods to achieve them, are developed by steering committees which include representatives from school administration, the professional development department of the pedagogical institute and teachers of natural sciences and mathematics in secondary schools. These groups decide on the form and content of the network, which, in turn, create strategies which are intended to enhance teacher professionalism. The forms and content of these networks are the focus of this paper. For this purpose, we reference the results of an explorative study.  This study adopted a qualitative methodology in which fourteen steering committee members from seven provinces were interviewed.  The evaluation of the data was carried out according to documentary ananlytic methods (cf. Bohnsack, 2003) and qualitative content analysis (cf. Mayring, 2003), using case studies.  At the same time, the work was carried out with the aid of the habitus concept of Bourdieu (1992) and profession-theoretical considerations (Häcker & Rihm, 2005). In light of this, the question as to which concepts and ideas the parties concerned fall back on and subsequently, which contributions the regional networks are making to instructional development can be examined.