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

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how persistent categories of written language in institutional texts support the cultural-historical production and re-production of teacher educators as kinds of academic workers in Australia. Fifty-seven job advertisements and allied materials produced by Australian universities were downloaded across a seven-month period. These texts were understood as key cultural artefacts not only for the recruitment process but in conveying what it means to be a teacher educator. A surprising finding was the almost complete absence of the ‘teacher educator’ within these texts. Analysis revealed, instead, textual distinctions between the advertisements (shown to be preoccupied with the image and positioning of institutional priorities and the supporting materials) which were characterised by the language of Human Resources. Ambivalence around the work of research within teacher education was another notable feature, which is interpreted in relation to institutional anxieties about the Australian government’s Education in Research for Australia initiative.

Keywords:

• teacher educators
• Australia
• academic work
• higher education policy