This paper explores some different theories concerning professionality related to the teaching profession. In European societies there are forces of professionalization as well as de-professionalization of the teaching profession in play, and there exists differing views of what teacher professionality should be described as. In some views lies the risk of instrumentalization of teaching, where teachers become mere suppliers of pre-determined content and the learners become receivers of that content. Views like these narrow the space for what education can be defined as, and in some teachers’ opinion, miss the whole idea of what their profession is about. The everyday situation for teachers in schools is often ambiguous and complex, raising high demands for professionality and judgement in complicated issues such as promoting the development of individual students into democratic citizens, which is the object of my doctoral thesis.