A review of teacher education for primary and secondary schooling, the’ Donaldson Report’, was carried out last year in Scotland. The Report is to be welcomed in that it distances itself from policies on teacher education which ‘seek to attain particular standards of competence and to achieve change through prescription’. It is significant because it dissents from instrumental approaches to teacher education. It is important therefore to temper a welcome for such dissent, with a concern about what remains overlooked: there is a welcome emphasis on pedagogy there is very little about pedagogical relationships. Similarly in philosophical investigation of pedagogy, very few focus on pedagogical relationships. I criticise reliance on pedagogical traditions focusing only on adult/child relations and I argue: pedagogical relationships are (a) key to understanding good teaching, (b) not reducible to other kinds of human relationship, most notably those of family, clients or consumers, (c) need addressing in both initial and continuing teacher education. I show that these conclusions have implications for the implementation and future development of teacher education in Scotland.