The movement of teachers’ professional standards has risen globally under the demands of promoting teachers’ professionalization and improving education quality, controversies about whether standards are needed and what kind of standards are needed have always followed. The focus of controversy is whether standards can promote teacher professionalism and improve the quality of education. Regarding what kind of standards are needed, the academic circle has two views on the function of standards: developmental orientation and regulatory orientation. An analysis of the above controversies shows that whether standards are needed, what kind of standards are needed, and how to implement them are closely related.Standards are not a panacea to solve all educational problems, and standards have their functional boundaries. There is a tension between the developmental and regulatory functions of the standards.Whether standards are needed and what kind of standards are needed should be examined dynamically and contextually in the specific schooling cycle and in the larger spatio-temporal context to clarify what problems in education are expected to be solved by standards and what problems can be solved by standards.