This article is a discussion of the educational being and becoming of university students. It focuses on the reflexive adaptations of a group of teacher education students at a South African university. I consider some key processes related to their formal epistemological induction into their professional becoming as teachers. Based on a discussion of dialogical interactions with my students on a teaching practice programme, I offer the argument that induction into the knowledge of the university has to take into account the ontological dimension of their becoming. This article suggests that university knowledge and pedagogy will find greater conceptual purchase if it is alert to the nature of student becoming. The article deploys the concept "teacherly becoming" to discuss how the students engaged with their professional education in the light of their teaching practice experiences at a school and their university learning on a teacher education programme. (Contains 4 notes.)