Teacher education towards teacher and learner autonomy is an ideological,
value-laden choice whose purpose and outcomes need to be continuously
scrutinised. The authors present three case studies where pre-service student
teacher development practices were investigated, and discuss their value and
shortcomings as regards their transformative direction. Our experience shows
that criticality and role democratisation are difficult to achieve in this context,
and that we need to develop further a scholarship of teacher education, as a way
to uncover the forces that impinge upon it and to envision new possibilities that
best serve the interests of teacher educators, teachers and learners
