The question of the professionalisation of teachers, in particular through the progressive universitarisation of their education, is the subject of many reflections throughout 20th century. During this century, the development of social, political and economic stakes takes the form of an increasingly complex system of education which improves also the level of qualification of teachers colleges. The transfer of teaching training to a higher level has constituted for a few decades a tendency in many Western States, but the relevance of academic training for teaching including a large professional part is nonetheless not unanimously approved, although it brings training closer to the place where educational knowledge is produced. On the other hand, expanding since a few decades, educational sciences increasingly take place in the universities in the form of institutes or faculties of education (or educational sciences). Jointly with this institutional rise, and following the example of other social sciences, educational sciences face new scientific demands and strong socio-professional pressures because they are requested to contribute to the professionalisation process. Although this double process seems topical, in particular as part of the planned European harmonization concerning academic studies, we think that a historical and theoretical analysis of professionalisation discourses on teacher profession across the 20th century will provide new insights about the following questions. What is the legitimate knowledge in education to train teachers as professionnals? What are the instances that are legitimated to define it? What are the influences of the emergence of pedagogy and educational sciences as disciplinary field on teacher profession? And inversely, what are the influences of the evolution of the teacher profession on the disciplinary field we will call "educational sciences"? A first theoretical and critical review of scientific literature, based on a content analysis of a large collection of contributions to the topic allow us to distinguish three ways of questioning. 1. Does the knowledge that is produced in the domain of science (and by experts) increase or diminish the autonomy of actors, more particularly of teachers, including in what concerns their relationship to students? The dialectic between freedom and control is thus the center of the questioning. It implies also the analysis of the evolution of the power relationship between the different actors of the field during the period studied. 2. Considering the transfer of teacher education into higher education, which knowledge can be proposed in teacher education that guarantees professionalization? What knowledge can potentially be mobilized in action? 3. How and why do new forms of production of knowledge on education appear? To what extent are these new forms issued of and do they transform the profession? What are the institutional relationships between profession and discipline? Following these three ways of questioning, we will discuss the theoretical interpretations and empirical analyses of the history of this relationship in the European and North American debate during the 20th century. We will analyse how the history of this relationship is described and interpreted (with empirical sources like the international surveys of the International Bureau of Education or the Reports of higher teaching's Congress during the World Fairs) and what are the underlying theoretical points of view of the sources. We will then compare these points of view with the ones adopted in the current secondary literature on the topic.