We present the findings of research carried out on those who educate educators. One of our focuses is on the social representations (SR) that teachers have of the legal bases that have historically sustained teacher education programs in Argentina and which continue to do so in the present, highlighting both changes and stabilities as well as their effect on current educational practice. The methodology used was qualitative (documentary analysis, lexicometric analysis, hierarchical evocations). We established Nodes, categories and subcategories of analysis in order to determine which aspects of this issue are part of the core of teachers’ SR and which are peripheral. Our findings – inconsistent with images of undervalued teachers portrayed by the media, clouded by society’s frequent complaints – may help to orient transformations in political decision-making seeking to improve teacher practice, recovering, precisely, said legal bases and their evolutions.