Set against a background of policy shifts that call into question the continuing role of universities in initial teacher education (ITE) provision (Beauchamp, Clarke, Hulme & Murray, 2015; Childs 2013), the doctoral research précised in this paper is an exploration of university-based teacher educator (TEd) knowledge in the context of ITE for the post-compulsory and training (PCET) sector in England. There is no publicly agreed, codified knowledge base for teaching, and the academic preparation of TEds for ITE work is not formalized in any professional qualification. It is possible, therefore, that there may be differences amongst TEds as to what counts as appropriate or relevant teacher knowledge, or what knowledges should be privileged, potentially conveying mixed messages as to the basis for success and achievement in PCET teaching. This may also have implications for cumulative knowledge development in the field of ITE PCET and, more broadly, ITE PCET’s place in the academy. The study was motivated by a paucity of empirical research into the knowledge practices of university-based TEds for ITE PCET who are generally considered, along with their compulsory schooling TEd counterparts, to be a poorly understood and under-researched occupational group (Murray & Kosnik, 2014). The research adopted a qualitative approach, drawing on data from 27 in-depth semi-structured interviews with university-based TEds from three universities in England. These institutions reflected the range of types of university engaged in this provision: the research-intensive, the teaching-led, and the hybrid research-teaching institution. Supplemented by programme and associated documentation, the interviews explored TEds’ perspectives and experiences of knowledge practices in intellectual production, curriculum construction and pedagogy. The focus of this paper will be TEds’ research practices in the intellectual field. The theoretical framework reflected a social realist approach, in which the intention was to make visible TEd knowledge as an object. The aim was to uncover and explore the structuring of this knowledge by surfacing the potentially competing claims to legitimacy as inhered in its organizing principles. The Autonomy and Specialization dimensions of Maton’s (2014) Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) have provided the conceptual architecture for this purpose, furnishing the means of conceptualising the structuring of ITE’s external relations (that is, external to university-based ITE PCET as a distinct field in its own right) and relations between its social and knowledge dimensions. The findings suggest that TEds perceived their field as one of relative low autonomy in which they had little collective agency to insulate it from external sources of power and influence; the values that stemmed from outside the academy courtesy of increasing government control and intervention were the principal bases of legitimation. Further, university-based ITE was portrayed by TEds as marginalised within the academy, deprived of resources with which other academic disciplines and their disciplinary custodians in the academy, it was claimed, were equipped. TEds considered their field to be one lacking academic legitimacy in the eyes of non-ITE academy peers. Collectively this appeared to have consequences for TEds’ knowledge practices in which knowledge specialization seemed to be relatively weak, particularly, but not solely, in the context of TEd research practices. Analysis drew attention to the potential for TEds to strengthen university-based ITE’s intellectual autonomy and the epistemic power of its knowledge base. It may be suggested, for example, that re-orienting TEds’ research foci in consideration of teacher educator pedagogy as a researchable object of study, would be a valuable first step in that regard.
