So you want to be a teacher educator? The job advertisement as a construction of teacher education in Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article contributes a Canadian perspective to a growing body of international research investigating teacher education, specifically as a category of academic work exemplified in employment advertisements. By investigating how Canadian employment advertisements in teacher education are constructed as mediating artefacts in the relationship between potential candidates and their goal of gaining an academic position, we attempt to identify contradictions inherent to systems of human activity, and surface institutional priorities regarding faculty hiring policies and the staffing practices within Canadian teacher education programs. Our study surfaces both similarities and differences with concurrent WoTE (Work of Teacher Education) investigations in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand regarding the teacher education as a form of academic labour, echoing their characterisation of the increasingly “precarious space” occupied by teacher education in post-secondary institutions.