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Teacher education is usually regarded as crucial for quality assurance and quality development in schooling. In their professionalization, teacher students are expected not only to learn "good practice" but also a literacy concerning the evaluation of (their own) practice. With reference to the "sociology of valuation and evaluation", the paper investigates how evaluative practices are conceptualized in different research perspectives on teacher education. It can be shown that both, theories of competence and theories of socialisation, focus upon judgements about appropriatemeans thatmeet predetermined standards, while they do not account for judgements about these standards themselves. Performativity theories draw attention to evaluative practices as social processes of negotiation, yet, they do not account for the framework within which evaluative judgements operate. To overcome these blind spots, the paper draws upon Alasdair MacIntyre's concept of a „Living Tradition" and its potential for opening different perspectives on becoming a teacher and developing a literacy to evaluate the practice of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]