This article points out some essential issues related to how the teaching practices deal knowledge and knowledge historically accumulated by mankind. In the fi eld of education, the various forms of approaching this relation can be categorized into "teaching based on questions" and "teaching based on answers". To this end, the dialectic relation between questions and answers as the basis of knowledge production and knowledge appropriation is taken as the starting point. Some examples taken from the history of theories of education can illustrate the basic issues concerning teacher education.