This paper argues for an understanding of teaching and teacher development that is realistic and based on research. It maintains that teaching is a highly complex job requiring technical knowledge, the highest levels of communication skills, empathy, maturity, intuitive understanding and skills in planning and organisation. It argues that debates about the best ways to support and enrich teacher development should be detached from questions about professionalism, which, in the end, is a sociological discussion rather than one about practice. It suggests that a more useful approach to the complexities of teachers' practice can be found in a generic analysis of craft practice. Support for this view is found in a range of fields of research and theory situated outside of education and, in briefly describing these, the paper aims to illuminate some important generic features of effective practitioner learning.