ICT user skill is a relatively new subject area and has a limited pedagogical history. To date, most of the discussion has been about ICT within schools, particularly integration of ICT into other curriculum areas, with less emphasis on how to teach user skills, especially to adults. This research explores differing teaching practices within the adult ICT user skills environment from a teacher professional knowledge perspective. By examining the ways that teachers develop, maintain and enact pedagogical knowledge and by determining influencing factors, this investigation contributes to the subject and pedagogical understandings vital to an emergent subject area. A naturalistic, qualitative, multi-methodology approach was used, involving interviews, classroom observations, document examination, and learner questionnaires. This enabled flexible examination and triangulation of the varying influences on practice and the development of emergent models. The research identified seven different teaching approaches but concludes that ‘transmissive’ teaching styles focusing on procedural skills dominate. Activity is almost universally perceived by stakeholders as practical, hands-on and individual. The diversity and nature of the teachers’ professional backgrounds, ambiguous subject goals, perceptions of adults as learners, and strong institutional and examination influences all contribute to this narrow perspective. This thesis questions whether such one-dimensional subject and pedagogical outlooks could impact adversely on outcome, leading to skills deficiencies which may limit economic and/or personal ICT potential. Drawing on problem solving examples from the research the thesis proposes a more holistic approach to create a robust theoretical base for both subject and pedagogy.