Lost in production: the erasure of the teacher educator in Australian university job advertisements

Constructing the academic category of teacher educator in universities’ recruitment processes in Aotearoa, New Zealand

“…In a forerunner study to our own (Ellis et al 2011(Ellis et al , 2013 service in the form of relationship maintenance was considered the significant defining characteristic of teacher education work within school/university partnership ITE in the UK. Furthermore, the teacher educators were construed as a troublesome category of academic worker in England (Ellis et al 2013) and an all but erased category of academic worker in Australia (Nuttall et al 2013). In Australian universities, fierce marketization and increasingly corporatized governance meant that teacher educators' work was described in terms of generic academic skill sets and depending on the level of appointment, leadership and research capability (Nuttall et al 2013).…”

“…Interest in understanding the professional identities (Swennen and van der Klink 2009;Davey 2013) and WoTE (see for example Labaree 2008;Murray, Swennen and Shagrir 2009;Ellis et al 2011;Nuttall et al 2013) has gained momentum over these last few years although it is still an emergent domain of research and scholarship. The labour of teacher education, particularly in the university context, is generally considered to comprise research, teaching and service, although the nature of engagement in any of these domains will vary according to the position held, institutional priorities, national higher education policy and the range of expertise of contributing teacher educators in a given programme.…”

The changing work of teacher educators in Aotearoa New Zealand: a view through activity theory

“…Accompanying this is an emerging scholarship around the kinds of work that university based TEs do (Murray, 2008;Ellis, McNicholl & Pendry, 2012;Nuttall et al 2013). …”

“…Our research design emulates that of the WoTE studies in the UK and Australia (Ellis, Blake, McNicholl & McNally, 2011;Nuttall, Brennan, Zipin, Tuinamuana & Cameron, 2013). The original UK study (Ellis, et al 2011) used sociocultural discourse analysis followed by 3 rd generation CHAT to examine how the academic category of TE was constructed and maintained within higher education.…”

The Work of Teacher-Educators

“…The Australian group, led by Joce Nuttall, has already published on Phase 1 (analysis of teacher-educator job advertisements) of its WoTE research, in a special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching (Nuttall, Brennan, Zipin, Tuinamuana, & Cameron, 2013). The three papers from the Australian WOTE team in this issue analyse further phases of their project, following up on interviews with Deans/Heads of School who were contact persons for the original advertisements, and reporting on aspects of work shadowing and further interviews with teacher-educators.…”