A longitudinal study following teachers (survey, observations and interviews) in eight years points out that first year teachers were surprised both in negative and positive ways when they started teaching in schools. Due to this 44% of newly educated teachers considered to leave the profession within a 3-4 years perspective. After eight years teaching it was a rather little part of the teachers who wanted to leave the profession. The biggest part of the remaining teachers liked teaching although there were a group of self-doubt teachers (15%). Tendencies to deprofessionalism did not seem to influence teachers concerning their wishes to stay or leave the profession. During eight years teaching their practice did not change and their con-ceptions of central elements in teacher professionalism did not change either. After eight years of teaching the teachers still found their personality as one of the most important factors in their practice. In other words, not much has happened in teacher professionalism since Lor-tie published his results about teacher professionalism in ‘Schoolteacher’ in 1975. Consider-ing e.g. political initiatives, the debate about evidence based practice. This is remarkable.