This paper will suggest that in an age of mass education, increasing economic competition and challenges to the harmony and traditional social fabric of life, ensuring the high quality of teachers in schools is of paramount importance. It will suggest that quality is related not only to the knowledge and skills which may be developed during training and improved during the course of a career, but also to the passion which the best teachers and teacher educators bring to their work. Both, however, are working in the context of accelerating changes which challenge teachers' traditional roles, responsibilities, practices and a sense of professionalism. These changes are being shaped by government interventionist policies, so-called 'performativity' agendas which are designed to respond to the diverse challenges of increased social economic competition in changing worlds of work, a growing preoccupation with material wealth with a corresponding lack of attention to other kinds of wealth. Recently educationists have been called to focus not only upon pupils' academic progress but also their well-being – again, in response to governments’ concerns with changes in the social fabric, expectations and aspirations of society as the ligatures which bind people together in webs of social obligation begin to loosen. One of the effects of change of this magnitude is to increase teachers’ and teacher educators’ sense of vulnerability and to heighten the risk of erosion of their passion for their work. The first part of this paper will, therefore, describe the link between passion and teacher quality. In the second part I will discuss three qualities of good and effective teachers. In the third and final part, I will discuss the implications of what research tells us about the influences on teacher quality and suggest some lessons for those engaged in pre-service and in-service training and development.