The disjuncture between university and school spaces has long been discussed in the literature around pre-service teacher education (Bullough, Hobbs, Kauchak, Crow, & Stokes, 1997; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Zeichner, 2010). Not only is the physical space and infrastructure of schools different from that commonly found in universities, but also the pedagogies, ideologies, and power dynamics are different and not necessarily compatible (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010). Initial teacher education (ITE) institutions around the world have been criticised for insufficient integration of teacher education providers with schools and systems, as well as weak approaches to assessing the classroom readiness of their pre-service teachers (Ryan & Bourke, 2016). One of the ways in which governments and regulatory bodies seek to ensure the consistent preparation, readiness, and quality of teachers is through the implementation of Professional Standards. Beyer (2002) argues that standards only provide a technical approach to teaching and do not take into account the broader political, social and philosophical underpinnings of good teaching. Leaton Gray and Whitty (2010) argue that they fragment teachers’ professional identities.

It is useful to consider early research on the conceptualisation of teacher work. Zeichner (1993) described four traditions or metaphors of teaching in pre-service teacher education courses. The first is based on the assumption that a sound liberal arts education coupled with an apprenticeship experience in a school is the sensible way to prepare pre-service teachers. The emphasis is the ‘teacher as a scholar’ with subject matter specialism. The second began in the 1920s with a move to break down and analyse the teaching task to provide a comprehensive description of the traits and duties specific to teachers, referred to as the metaphor ‘teacher as clinician’ (Sultana, 2005). The third of Zeichner’s categories focuses on the development of the learner as the basis for determining what should be taught. This child oriented and student centred education approach included the metaphor of ‘teacher as artist’. The last tradition emphasised the need for students to critically think about social order, referred to as the metaphor ‘teacher as researcher’ where intellectuals have the cerebral and moral commitment to be agents of change.

This study draws upon these metaphors of practice to explore the identities and work of teacher educators in a large metropolitan university in Australia and poses the key research question: How do teacher educators understand and use professional standards in their teaching courses?

We use Lefebvre’s (1991) trialectic theory of spatiality to foreground the promulgation of Standards in pre-service teacher education as a complex, spatialised enterprise (Ryan, 2011). The three spaces (perceived, conceived, lived) operate simultaneously, each influencing and being influenced by the others.

Spatial practice (firstspace; real):Lefebvre considers this to be the space of daily practices, routines, locations, infrastructure, and relationships that are established and reproduced. It is a space where everyday things and practices are ‘perceived’ as normal. Lefebvre suggests that spatial practice ensures continuity and some level of cohesion. It implies some level of competence or performance of established social practice.

Representations of space (secondspace; ideal):‘Conceived’ spaces are representations of power and ideology, of control and surveillance (Lefebvre, 1991). They are the underpinning ideas or the ‘ideal’ of how society should be, and thus they influence what happens in ‘perceived’ everyday space, while at the same time being influenced by such spatial practice.

Lived space (thirdspace; heterotopia): Lived space is a space to resist, subvert and re-imagine the ‘real-and-imagined’ spaces (Soja, 1996) of everyday realities and hegemonic ideologies. It offers the potential for space to be made and remade with generative possibilities for critical transformation and civic participation.

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