This article investigates teaching as collective work. The goals, functions and forms of teachers' collective work, and changes in professional representations or repertoire of actions through collective activity are identified. A synthetic framework is outlined and shown to be useful in addressing the data, by revealing the importance of interactions in professional competence acquisition. The article relates this framework to data collected from new teachers in the induction year in Scottish Secondary Schools (11-18) and discusses the relationship of collective work to competence standards. Some issues for teacher educators and further research questions are identified.