The diversity and complexity of the post-modern era places new and important challenges on teacher education. The crucial role that personal dispositions have for professional learning needs to be better understood and acknowledged. Teacher training programmes need to focus more on objectives such as promoting conflict literacy, self-awareness, empathy, leadership and collaborative skills, i.e. taking into account not only the cognitive but also the social and emotional aspects of human development. In this article, Swedish lecturers’ descriptions of what they consider to be competences and qualities necessary for future teachers constitute the starting point for a wider discussion on the decisive role of beliefs and emotions in being and becoming a teacher. Issues raised here should be able to contribute to a better understanding of what it means to be a teacher and, consequently, result in improvements in the planning of teacher training programmes.