Conference Agenda

Context of the study

Teacher educators are pivotal to the quality of future teachers (Loughran, 2006; Murray et al., 2011; White et al., 2020). Consequently, research on teacher educator identity has expanded, highlighting a complex and challenging becoming process (Berry & Forgasz, 2016). However, this scholarship predominantly focuses on practitioner-pathway teacher educators transitioning from schools to universities (Murray & Male, 2005; O'Brien & Furlong, 2015), paying far less attention to academic-pathway entrants like PhD graduates (Newberry, 2014; Yuan, 2020). This gap is critical given a global trend of recruiting teacher educators for their academic qualifications (Liang et al., 2025; Newberry, 2014; Yuan, 2016, 2020). While some studies have begun to examine identity construction during doctoral education (Murphy et al., 2014; Tucker & Adams, 2023), little is known about the complexities of prospective teacher educator identity development among doctoral students who have little or no formal school teaching experience. This study addresses this by examining the first author's experience. Situated as a doctoral student on the curriculum team for a self-study program for teacher educators, the first author experienced a liminal space, generating significant identity tensions regarding legitimacy of teacher educator identity. Using liminality as an analytical lens (Turner, 1969), this autoethnography explores this ambiguous identity development.

Theoretical framework

Developing from the work of van Gennep (1960), Turner (1969) used liminality to refer simultaneously to one phase of the multistep transition process effected through a rite of passage, the place within which that transition takes place, and the state of being experienced by the person making the transition (Cook-Sather, 2006). Turner (1969) used "betwixt and between" to capture the essence of his theory of liminality. The place within which the transition unfolds is an "in-between" place that bridges "what is" and "what can or will be" (Turner, 1981, p. 159). The state in which the initiand finds himself or herself during this transition is "ambiguous, neither here nor there" (Turner, 1974, p. 232). Liminality is thus transformed from a linear and concentrated process, bounded by simple notions of time and space, to one which is complex, multifaceted and flexible, but which still affords an opportunity for deep change and reorientation (Wood, 2012). Furthermore, liminality has been quite often used to explain and discuss the transition within the context of teacher education. Although teaching practicum/internship has often been conceptualized as a liminal period during which pre-service teachers transition from students to teachers (Cook-Sather, 2006; Hallaran et al., 2025; McCaw, 2021; Pierce, 2007; Wilkins et al., 2012; Wood, 2012), scant attention was paid to teacher educator identity. In the present study, we adopt the theory of liminality to further illuminate the dynamic nature of prospective teacher educator identity development. The specific context of this study—where the first author, as a doctoral student, contributed to a training program for teacher educators—constitutes a liminal space that highly aligns with the theory, embodying the "betwixt and between" characteristic.

Consequently, the central question guiding this study is: How does a teacher education doctoral student navigate and construct the prospective teacher educator identity in a liminal space? The study can contribute to the limited knowledge of the process of prospective teacher educator identity construction, particularly for those candidates without prior teaching experience, and offer practical insights for the preparation of teacher educators.

Teacher education is inherently future-oriented. In this context, 'classroom readiness' refers to the policy-mandated condition at which a graduate teacher is deemed prepared to enter the classroom as a professional. Here, 'classroom readiness' refers to the moment when teacher candidates meet the prescribed standards of preparedness, set out by policy and officially endorsed as ready to begin teaching professionally. Classroom readiness signifies that graduate teachers are endorsed for professional practice, prepared for work that does not yet fully exist (Weise, 2020), and in classrooms shaped by social, political, and ecological uncertainty (Burridge & Buchanan, 2022). At the same time, professional learning is temporally layered, drawing on past experiences, present conditions, and imagined futures (Priestley et al., 2015). Yet contemporary teacher education policy increasingly treats ‘classroom readiness’ as a measurable, mandatory endpoint to be secured before graduation. This raises questions about how such classifications continue to govern teachers’ work beyond initial qualification.

This work responds to ECER’s emphasis on time and place-bound knowledge. It examines how policy ideas of ‘classroom readiness’ formed during teacher preparation persist as graduates begin their teaching careers. The research asks how policy ideas of ‘classroom readiness’ from the practicum continue to shape teachers’ professional judgement, agency, and sense-making in their first year.

In doing so, this work challenges the Australian policy fiction that policymakers can secure graduate teacher readiness at a single pre-practice moment. This work also exposes how evaluative governance shapes teachers’ early career experiences (Neale, 2019; Priestley et al., 2015). Here, policymakers use ‘classroom readiness’ as a policy classification and governance mechanism, rather than a neutral measure of professional competence. Readiness does not represent an achieved state but functions as a category that continues to influence teachers’ sense-making and professional judgement over time. While the empirical focus is Australian, the analysis addresses wider European and international debates about accountability, evidence, and the governance of teacher professionalism.

Rather than elevating one crisis above others, this research explores how teacher education policy anticipates and constructs future teachers through readiness narratives. These narratives shape which professional responses teachers consider thinkable, legitimate, and sustainable (Robertson, 2022; Grek et al., 2023). From this perspective, ‘classroom readiness’ acts as a form of anticipatory governance, not a neutral measure of professional competence. However, most studies of teacher readiness focus on practicum or early career in isolation. Scholars have yet to theorise the longer-term governance of professional sense-making. Addressing this gap motivates the paper’s central conceptual contribution: the development of Architectures of Becoming.

This presentation charts a way forward for teacher education research through the development of Architectures of Becoming (AoB). AoB is a conceptual and methodological framework for understanding the ongoing formation of teachers. It examines how policy, professional judgement, and practice interact over time, and is attentive to the longer-term processes through which teachers are formed. AoB makes it possible to trace how particular understandings of learning and professional judgement are produced, stabilised, and gradually taken up across successive phases of teacher education and early-career practice. Attention is directed not only to formal policy requirements and the subjective dimensions of practice, but also to the cumulative effects of governance arrangements on professional sense-making over time. In this way, the AoB framework highlights how the interplay of policy and practice shapes professional subjectivities, what teachers come to regard as worthwhile, which forms of uncertainty they learn to manage, and how they imagine their place and responsibility within the profession (Mockler, 2013; Kelchtermans, 2019).

Across many education systems, teacher education has become a key site of contemporary governance. Internationally, schooling systems are increasingly organised through performance metrics, standards frameworks, and audit cultures that seek to render educational practice visible, comparable, and accountable (Ball, 2003; Lingard, 2011). Teacher education sits centrally within these shifts. In Australia, accreditation requirements, Professional Standards for Teachers, and performance-based assessments are coordinated through national regulatory organisations such as the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL, 2011). These policy infrastructures define what counts as quality teaching, legitimate evidence, and professional readiness. They also align teacher preparation with broader regimes of governance-by-numbers, where professional trust is increasingly mediated through indicators and compliance structures (Lingard & Lewis, 2017; Mockler, 2013). Across many education systems, teacher education is therefore increasingly governed by performance-based accountability, professional standards, and accreditation regimes, shaping how teachers come to experience, narrate, and perform professionalism across their preparation and early careers.

In Australia, final-year Teacher Performance Assessments have become high-stakes gatekeeping instruments. They define what counts as readiness to teach. They also shape how professional competence is narrated, displayed, and judged. These mechanisms are designed to assure quality and public trust. Yet they do more than measure practice. They privilege forms of evidence, authorise specific professional identities, and offer to structure what can legitimately be said, done, and valued in teaching (Ball, 2003; Lingard, 2011; Mockler, 2013). What they make visible matters, as well as what they push to the margins. Following Biesta’s (2015) critique of the evidentiary turn, this research work begins from the concern that contemporary accountability regimes risk narrowing professional judgement to system-recognised performance. Professional judgement, understood here as the capacity to discern what a situation calls for and to act responsibly amid uncertainty, depends on practical wisdom, ethical deliberation, and responsiveness to context (Kemmis et al., 2014). These dimensions of practice do not sit easily alongside assessment systems that prioritise standardised indicators and auditable artefacts.

At the same time, teachers enter classrooms shaped by relational demands, social complexity, and unpredictable learning environments. Research on teacher identity and agency reminds us that good teaching is inseparable from personal commitment, vulnerability, and relational work (Kelchtermans, 2009; Palmer, 2017; Mockler, 2011). Yet policy and accreditation discourses continue to privilege what can be standardised and measured. A misalignment emerges between what research suggests teachers need to flourish professionally and what institutional systems recognise as evidence of effectiveness.

This research adopts a critical-normative orientation and does not claim neutral description of teacher education systems. Instead, it examines how accountability arrangements shape professional becoming and asks how alternative conditions might better sustain professional judgement, ethical agency, and democratic responsibility in teacher education.