This paper draws together the themes emerging from the papers in part one of the symposium and offers a conceptual analysis of the professional learning and practice underpinning these approaches. Each paper reports on a particular programme within a specific national educational system with its own professional culture. Yet there are strong resonances across these three sites which question some of the dualities which historically have underpinned teacher education notably theory and practice, teacher educator (academic) and teacher (practitioner). In recent years understandings of what it means to be a teacher have evolved. Recent conceptualizations have moved from the teacher as life long learner, teacher as collegiate member to teacher as enquirer. There is a danger that such conceptualizations become hollowed out by the dominant discourses surrounding educational policy and the imperatives around delivery. It could be argued also that these conceptualisations have simply added to the range of activities of the teacher but have only paid partial attention to the praxis of teaching. Constructing teaching as a clinical practice is an opportunity to challenge some of these dualities. There are questions about where and how student teachers learn and where and how knowledge about teaching is produced and used by whom.