The issue of how to produce high quality teachers is an ongoing concern for teacher educators worldwide. Research studies consistently conclude that despite the best efforts of teacher educators to provide programs that equip new teachers well for their work in schools, many new teachers find it difficult to enact what they have learned in their teacher education in a systematic or sustained way. The efforts of McElhone and her colleagues from Stanford illustrate an attempt to address this problem through focusing on the role of "vision" (Hammerness, 2003) with their teacher candidates as a means of guiding and inspiring these new teachers in their work and, in so doing, using vision as a "protective buffer" from the kinds of forces that might get in the way of these teachers enacting the ideals and practices advocated in their teacher education program. The research reported in their paper is interesting on several levels; it illustrates how a group of teacher educators select and collectively enact a focus on a broad goal in their pre-service program; it traces how that goal is understood and enacted in the practice of the student teachers both during their preparation and into their first year of teaching; and it illustrates how researching the influence of the program on these student teachers' practice subsequently informs the work of these teacher educators and the design of the teacher education curriculum. From a self-study perspective, it is this aspect of research informing practice that this author addresses in responding to the paper by McElhone et al. She states that if self-study is to influence practice, teacher educators need to examine who they are in the ideal that comprises their vision for practice. Through articulating their visions and testing these with each other and the student teachers with whom they work, professional growth can be enhanced for all participants in the learning-to-teach process.