Teacher educators play a crucial role in the educational landscape, serving as key actors in sustaining and advancing high-quality education (Meeus et al., 2018). They are widely regarded as the core of teacher education through their responsibility for designing, implementing, and evaluating curricula, pedagogical approaches, teaching practices, and educational development (Hadar & Brody, 2017). As the quality of teachers depends fundamentally on their education and training, increasing scholarly and policy attention has been directed toward teacher educators’ roles in educational practice, research, and policy since the early 1990s (Flores, 2018). Despite this attention, the profession continues to be described as hidden (Snoek et al., 2011), poorly defined (Ping et al., 2018), or insufficiently understood (Kaasila et al., 2023).

Teacher educators’ work is inherently diverse and complex, encompassing a wide range of tasks, responsibilities, and challenges that require specific combinations of knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions (Ping et al., 2018). Such diversity may generate tensions and conflicts, as individuals are required to navigate multiple and sometimes competing expectations and standards (Kelchtermans et al., 2018). One way to conceptualize and structure this complexity is through the notion of professional roles (Meeus et al., 2018).

In their influential review, Lunenberg et al. (2014) identified six professional roles of teacher educators. A professional role is defined as a “personal interpretation of a position based on expectations from the environment and on a systematically organized and transferable knowledge base” (p. 6). As teachers of teachers, teacher educators are expected to educate future teachers and support their professional development by modelling exemplary teaching and learning practices. However, their expertise cannot be reduced to practical experience alone. Consequently, teacher educators are also expected to fulfil the role of researcher, generating new knowledge for themselves and others while supporting their own professional learning through research engagement. In addition, teacher educators may act as coaches, guiding and supervising student teachers during teaching practicums; as curriculum developers, constructing coherent teacher education curricula grounded in theoretical and practical insights; as gatekeepers, monitoring access to the teaching profession through assessment and evaluation; and as brokers, mediating between teacher education institutions and schools by fostering collaboration, partnerships, and alignment between theory and practice.

This study examines how these professional roles are articulated in teacher educator job advertisements. Job advertisements are formal documents that provide insight into employers’ expectations regarding qualifications, experience, skills, and professional responsibilities (Kim & Angnakoon, 2016). The analysis of job advertisements is a well-established approach for examining professional expectations, labour market dynamics, and recruitment trends (Harper, 2012). The guiding research question is: 

• How are professional roles portrayed in teacher educator job advertisements: what do the roles entail and how are they emphasized in the advertisements?

This study responds to the call to provide greater insights into what it means to be a teacher educator (Richter, Brunner, Richter 2021). By analysing professional roles in job advertisements, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the profession, illustrates the expectations placed upon it, and provides insight into how it is conceptualized. It serves as a valuable addition to the existing body of literature on teacher educators, which has primarily focused on their self-perceptions as professionals (Richter, Brunner, and Richter 2021).

Job advertisement analysis is grounded in document analysis, a systematic method for examining various pre-existing organisational and institutional documents not initially created for research purposes (Bowen, 2009). Document analysis offers several advantages for qualitative inquiry, including reduced ethical concerns and high data stability; however, ensuring credibility requires a transparent and well-justified sampling framework (Kim & Angnakoon, 2016). To minimize sample bias, job advertisements were collected from the official websites of all seven Finnish universities offering teacher education. Data collection occurred during two separate six-month periods. The final dataset consisted of 74 teacher educator job advertisements. The analysis employed deductive qualitative content analysis, using predetermined categories derived from existing theory (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008), specifically the six professional roles identified by Lunenberg et al. (2014). The analysis was primarily manifest rather than latent, focusing closely on explicit content and observable descriptions within the text. Nevertheless, interpretation was necessary due to the inherent vagueness of professional roles (Lunenberg et al., 2014) and the often concise and formulaic nature of job advertisements. The analytical process began with repeated readings of the advertisements to gain an overall understanding of the data. Meaning units related to professional roles were identified and coded using NVivo software, guided by a structured categorization matrix. In addition, quantification was used to used to illustrate how the professional roles were weighted in the teacher educator job advertisements.

The job advertisements included between one and five professional roles, most commonly four (M = 3.77). The most dominant roles were teacher of teachers, curriculum developer, and researcher. The teacher of teachers role primarily involved teaching in bachelor’s and master’s programs, with teaching quality frequently described as “high-quality” and “research-based.” The researcher role appeared at three levels: familiarity with research (typically at entry-level positions), active engagement in research, and leadership of research initiatives (mainly at the professorial level). The curriculum developer role entailed participation in program development, ranging from general involvement to explicit responsibility for curriculum coordination. Other roles were less prominent. The coach role appeared in approximately two-thirds of the advertisements and typically involved supervising teaching practicums. The gatekeeper role was relatively rare and related to admissions processes and thesis assessment. The broker role focused on building and maintaining connections between teacher education institutions and schools or early childhood education settings, particularly to support practicum arrangements. By clarifying and operationalizing professional roles that have often been described as vague, this study contributes to a more concrete understanding of teacher educators’ work and supports the use of professional roles as a framework for professional development (Lunenberg, Dengerink, & Korthagen, 2014). Notably, the near absence of the term teacher educator in the advertisements mirrors earlier findings (Nuttall et al., 2013). These results may inform teacher education institutions as they reflect on recruitment practices and advocate for clearer recognition of teacher education as a distinct and valued professional field.

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