Introduction. Untilled Soil: What are the contested qualities in teacher education research which are relevant for education today?

This is an introduction in a special issue of EERJ (European Educational Research Journal) where we have acted as guest editors. In this introduction we problematize some aspects of teacher education research as a relatively new research field in an era where both the EU and national governments put a lot of pressure on educating quality teachers. The special issue consists of eight articles, both larger scale and small scale research sampling some of the diverse area of teacher education research.