This study focuses on teacher education for life environment studies (LES) from around 1992 to 1998 and aims to clarify the development and characteristics of teacher education in early LES through an analysis of LES textbooks for pre-service teachers. The following two questions are addressed: (1) What kind of LES teachers were intended to be produced in early LES? (2) How were they intended to be produced? The analysis revealed two points. First, the aim of sharing the essence of the subject with pre/in-service teachers. Second, the results show four different approaches to conveying an understanding of the essence of the subject: (1) the theoretical explanation type, (2) the alternative presentation type, (3) the construction from lessons type, and (4) the construction from life experiences type. The first of these is further divided into a child's-learning-oriented type and a society-surrounding-the-child type. This research may help design teacher education in relation to curriculum and instruction.