There is a taken-for-granted assumption in teacher education that providing the teacher with observation tools will help develop the expertise that is necessary for quality education. When the history of science and cultural studies are considered, it is possible to think about learning to observe as a political practice; generating principles to govern the making of the self and subjectivity. This dissertation explores the cultural practices of observation as historically embodying certain epistemological principles that change over time to make the teacher as a particular kind of person. Drawing upon historical archives and ethnographic accounts, the study examines how observation entails multiple temporal dimensions: past classifications and ordering that are brought into the present to discipline what is seen and thought; and the categories and distinctions that teachers "see" are anticipatory. They are directed to what the teacher should be through the rationality inscribed in the practices of observation. The study explores changing epistemes embodied in the practices of observation in U.S. teacher education from the late 19th century when teacher education became more formalized to the present: "scientific" observation in Progressive Education (chapter 3), "systematic" observation in Post-War education (chapter 4), and contemporary "algorithmic" observation (chapter 5). The historical is a genealogical ordering of changing principles related to the making of the teacher. While observation has always been used for teacher education and evaluation, the study makes visible the shifting principles of observation that fabricate who the teacher is and should be; and how these principles are connected to constructions of "the nature" of the child that paradoxically produces the difference. The study provides alternative ways to understand the politics of knowledge and professional education. By historicizing current trend to standardize, systematize, and digitize the practices of observation from critical modes of analysis, the study makes intelligible the anticipatory reasoning of education that differentiates the kinds of teachers and children to actualize some desired future. The study informs that, without teasing out the historical effects that have limited the present ways of thinking, seeing, and acting on education, similar styles of reasoning are continuously re-inscribed in the name of "new" education reforms. In doing so, the study makes it possible for teachers, teacher educators, reformers, and researchers to resist conforming to the pre-established discourses of education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]