Acknowledgements; 1. Researching the Teaching Profession under Restructuring - Sverker Lindblad and Ivor Goodson; 2. "We've Come Full Circle": Restructuring Primary Teachers' Work-lives and Knowledge in England - Caroline Norrie and Ivor Goodson; 3. Some General Developments in the Restructuring of Education and Health Care Professions in Europe - Dennis Beach; 4. Teacher's Working Life under Restructuring - Peter Sohlberg, Magdalena Czaplicka and Sverker Lindblad; 5. European School Teachers' Work and Life under Restructuring: Professional Experiences, Knowledge and Expertise in Changing Contexts - Jörg Müller, Caroline Norrie, Fernando Hernández, Juana M. Sancho,Amalia Creus and Verónica Larraín; 6. Teachers' Experiences of Restructuring: Problems and Possibilities of a Generational Approach - Jorge Ávila de Lima, Jarmo Houtsonen and Ari Antikainen; 7. Conclusions: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Professional Knowledge - Ivor Goodson and Sverker Lindblad

European welfare institutions such as education and health care are restructuring their organisations in terms of decentralisation, deregulation, privatization and so forth. As a consequence professional positions and demands on professional competencies in these institutions are in transition. At the same time European societies are changing in different ways, e.g. in terms of a "knowledge society" as well as in demographic and cultural changes. Professionals such as teachers and nurses are meeting such changes in their work with students and clients.Thus, there is a need to study these transitions and changes. Here we are doing this from a "bottom-up" perspective where we are comparing experiences in different institutional and national contexts. This study combines two kinds of narrative research; a study of the systemic narratives produced by governments who are restructuring educational systems and the life history narratives of those professionals working within those systems and their perspectives on ongoing restructuring.