This paper presents conceptions and reflections on initial teacher education for social justice based on a study that sought to identify the discourses produced in the initial education of teachers of the first and second cycles of basic education on the concept of social justice and to understand the effects of those discourses on the educational practices of teachers beginning their careers in urban schools. The study was developed in Portugal and was based on an analysis of programs offered in the curriculum for the bachelor's degree in elementary education and the master's degree in teaching of the first cycle of basic education (CEB) (first four years of schooling) and the second CEB (fifth and sixth school grades) and on biographical interviews with teachers of the first and second CEB who trained in the last five years and a teacher educator. The results show the inadequacy of initial teacher education in relation to the educational mandates that some of the urban schools apply to teachers' work and that the ideology of inclusion characterizes the discourses analysed. The results also reveal that the ethical dimension of the profession is not yet seen as integrating the core curriculum, being more dependent on human sensitivity, on teachers' initial education and on educators' professional ideology.