This article is part of the results of a PhD dissertation at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.The paper is about research on the learning process of future teachers of history and social sciences, and it is focused on a core aspect of the teaching praxis: the purposes of teaching.This is a case study about the process of autonomous practice of five students at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile in their last semester of studies.Their cases were built through interviews, their own high school biographies, observation of field practice and the analysis of didactic resources they developed.These materials allowed rebuilding their pedagogical thought through their representations on teaching.This answered to how these representations are related to the teaching practice and the influence their personal experiences and tertiary education had on their teaching purposes.The aim is to analyze those factors that facilitate and those that obstruct the influence of tertiary education in didactic decisions, and identify the measures that must be implemented in order to improve it.