<p>The texts that future teachers read in their pre-service training offer a way to understand the teacher education pedagogical field. In this research, we studied 12,193 texts read by prospective teachers in 25 primary teacher education institutions in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. This approach is a new methodology for the empirical study of the teacher education curriculum. Significant differences emerged across the four fields of knowledge examined: pedagogical knowledge, foundations of educational sciences, content knowledge, and learning sciences. The study shows that authors from the intellectual field of education, theories, and disciplines are totally different in each country. Chilean future teachers read more recent, international, and pedagogical content knowledge oriented texts. Argentine future teachers read mostly Argentine authors, and Uruguay future teachers read older texts, with a mix of authors and a more psychology-based orientation. The article shows that comparative study of the pedagogical field in different countries is a fundamental step to unravelling the importance of context in teacher initial education.</p>