Through means of an ongoing trajectory study of teachers in Chile moving from teacher education into schools, this article examines how teacher education research may contribute to feeding into institutional improvement as well as the macro level of teacher education policy. It first provides some contextual information on the development of Chilean teacher education in the aftermath of the military dictatorship period (1973–1990) and of a research base within its institutions. Then it centres on how future teachers from 11 teacher education programmes report on their learning and growth processes before and after their final practicum, and refer to the contextual effects of school placement on these processes. To this end, questionnaires before and after the practicum experience were administered to an initial group of 152 future teachers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 of these teachers as well as one observation in their classrooms and schools. The key elements examined were motivation, pedagogical satisfaction and self-efficacy, as well as conditions of practicum and teacher assessment of its effect on learning and commitment to teaching.