There is a strong critique of the reductionist, technical and instrumentalist impacts of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers from critical policy researchers in education. At the same time, advocates of the standards espouse their potential as providing a common language of teaching. We argue that both views are based on logical rather than empirical warrants. Therefore, this study sought to gather empirical data via a survey of 229 teacher education students followed by focus groups in an endeavour to record their perceptions on the use of the standards as assessment criteria for professional experience. The findings are that a majority of the students were advocates of the standards as a learning scaffold. This was especially true in contexts where their supervising teachers were not au fait with the standards. The implications of this study for teacher educators are that the formative assessment potential of the standards requires pedagogical consideration in professional experience alongside their more commonly understood role as summative assessment criteria.