This special issue of "Perspectives in Education" arises from a symposium entitled "Academic depth and rigour in initial teacher education" jointly organised by four universities in South Africa. The symposium, held in October 2014, attracted 125 delegates from 18 South African higher education institutions (HEIs). Representatives from the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Department of Basic Education and a delegation from the European Union also attended. The forty-eight papers presented over two days enabled teacher educators to engage in robust conversations about the academic depth and rigour of courses offered to pre-service teachers. Presentations ranged from considerations of the overall conceptual coherence of initial teacher education (ITE) curricula and benchmarking quality to contributions that grappled with academic depth and rigour in specific subjects and courses offered in ITE programmes. This issue of "Perspectives in Education" provides a space for teacher educators who have been working to strengthen academic depth and rigour associated with ITE programmes to share their research, conceptualisation of courses, pedagogical innovations and assessment strategies with the sector more broadly. A contribution of this special issue to the national conversation about ITE is to show how a wide range of teacher educators, from different institutions and working in different subject areas, are working with academic depth and rigour to support the development of conceptually informed practice. This introduction to the issue first makes a case for why academic depth and rigour in university-based coursework is crucial for preparing prospective teachers for their work within the South African context and then introduces the papers.