According to national and international policy, teachers' work is supposed to be guided by reliable evidence in order to be effective and achieve the set goals. The purpose of this article is to problematise evidence-based approaches for teacher education by highlighting the occurrence of dilemmas in teachers' work connected to the assignment of educating democratic citizens. The article is a critical theoretical discussion that takes its departure in the teaching paradox of supporting students' initiatives to act as critical citizens. In order to address the current trend of anchoring teacher education in evidence-based methods, Swedish policy documents are used as a point of reference and are read through the lens of the teaching paradox and the need for teacher judgement. The analysis shows that policy texts fall short when it comes to the assignment to support students to take part in society as critical citizens. It is concluded that teacher education could gain from theoretically based case studies of dilemmatic everyday situations in which teaching for democratic participation is visible.