Background: Development of active and interactive brokerage of educational knowledge has become an important and urgent issue in recent years and there are many ongoing activities across Europe linking research to policy in education. However, only few of these activities have mediation as an explicit purpose. Knowledge centres are sometimes promoted as a practical resource for such mediation and this model has recently been actively been considered in three Nordic countries; Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Research questions: What can the attempts to create knowledge centres in education in Denmark, Norway and Sweden tell us about the motivations to create such centres, the means by which attempts to create them are made, and the results of such attempts? What conceptual frameworks assist in undertaking such a comparative developmental study? Methods: The study is based on a document analysis of primary sources including policy papers on the development of knowledge centres, government reports and advertisements for staff. The presentation will describe and discuss findings of the study and their meaning the study of evidence informed policy making. Conclusions: The conceptual framework and other findings of the study will be presented.