‘If You Do Not Write, You Dry Up’: Tensions in Teacher Educator Research and Academic Writing

Abstract

Teacher educators struggle to balance heavy teaching loads, research, writing, and institutional service. This qualitative study uses institutional ethnography to question how college leadership understand the significance of academic scholarship in the professional lives of college-based teacher educators in Israel. Data from interviews with eight college position holders shed light on the working lives of college-based teacher educators and how they are positioned as researcher-writers in an institution where scholarship expectations are blurry. Findings reveal three themes: the importance of academic activity for institutional prosperity, the difficulties in academic scholarship experienced by teacher educators, and the support the institution provides to encourage and maintain academic activity. The discussion contemplates the tensions between institutional and individual teacher educator advancement. The complexity of the institutional structure deserves attention to achieve institutional aims and attend to individual faculty’s professional needs and desires. The implications of this study are significant for leadership in teacher education and higher education around the world, prompting leaders to rethink ways of supporting faculty involved in research and writing alongside teaching and additional roles. Balancing conflicting roles, providing clear expectations, and maintaining an ongoing dialogue between teacher educators and leadership regarding professional development needs can lead to institutional prosperity alongside individual professional advancement.

1. Introduction

It is difficult to define the role of teacher educators in general or even in a specific institution [1]. The work of teacher educators, in which teaching, institutional service, and research are interwoven, is recognised as onerous and complicated in many countries [2,3,4,5]. Teacher educators are influenced by and influence the institutional context in which they work [6]. To appreciate teacher education frameworks, we must consider the particular context’s historical, cultural, and political characteristics [7] and view them in light of global changes in higher education.

The country and the specific institution in which teacher educators work determine the professional expectations placed on them in teaching and research [8]. Since the 1980s, when Israeli colleges of teacher education were recognised as academic institutions, the emphasis on research and academic writing for publication has escalated [9]. This academisation process aimed to improve instruction in schools and strengthen the status of the teaching profession [10]. The transition into scholarly activity was challenging for many teacher educators, especially those who were previously teachers in schools [11].

At the beginning of the 2022–2023 academic year, Nikki, a teacher educator, was struggling to find time to engage in academic writing in her professional life. Aware that many of her colleagues were “drying up”, disconnecting from research and writing for publication, she responded to those challenges faced by teacher educators by initiating a grassroots academic writing community for her peers in an academic college of education in Israel. The community, called Etnachta, which means lull or break in Aramaic, provides a supportive social space for teacher educators to engage in research and writing. The community’s aim is to develop a writing routine that enables teacher educators to pause, preserve time for scholarly activity, and engage in collegial conversations about writing [12].

In this study, following the initiation of the writing community, we explore how eight members of institutional leadership in that college perceive the significance of research, writing, and publication by teacher educators and how they view the academic and professional development needs of teacher educators.

1.1. Teacher Education in Israel

Both colleges of education and universities award undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education qualifications in Israel. In 2018, colleges educated 81 per cent of the country’s teachers [13]. Like in many other countries, teacher education in Israel is very different in colleges of education than in universities [14], and there are consequential distinctions in the academic cultures of the various institutions [15,16].

Since the 1980s, following a Council for Higher Education decision, Israeli colleges were required to begin a process of academisation leading to permission to grant higher degrees and recognition as official academic institutions [10]. Initially, teacher educators’ roles focused on teaching and supervising pre-service teachers and increasingly included research. Teacher educators in colleges of education have traditionally held heavy teaching loads without time allotted for research and writing [17]. Today, teacher educators in colleges teach double the hours of university-based lecturers [18], and research and writing are not included in their employment schemes [19]. Although the policy requires teacher educators in Israel to hold a PhD and publish research for promotion [8], post-doctoral writing and professional development are not compulsory in colleges of education. Guberman and Mcdossi [9] discuss the conflicting nature of professional priorities delineated by institutional leadership in Israeli colleges of education, where teaching responsibilities and professional development activities are often incompatible with promotion requirements based on scholarly publication. Like in universities, college-based teacher educators can gain academic promotion with an increase in salary if they publish papers in recognised academic journals [9]. In Israeli colleges, many teacher educators choose not to work towards publication, even though it is a significant requirement for promotion [14]. Research activity in colleges of education is, therefore, still comparatively low and is often limited to practitioner studies [8].

1.2. Challenges for Teacher Educator Writers

Academic writing in all fields is considered laborious and stressful and requires a great deal of time [20]. The rough peer-review process causes many researchers to feel vulnerable [21]. The challenges of academic writing for teacher educators are not unique to Israel. Loughran [22] identifies the blurriness surrounding the expectations of teacher educators regarding research and writing, “expectations that could be described as ranging across a continuum from the implicit to explicit and hence not easily recognized nor grasped by beginning teacher educators” (p. 277). Malm [23], writing in Sweden, draws attention to the tension between the pressure on teacher educators to write and publish and the burden of teaching and mentoring. Similarly, Knowles et al. [24] in Australia and North America argue that finding time for writing is difficult for teacher educators, and Smith and Flores [25], located in Norway and Portugal, identify “the tensions between teaching and research in relation to time, competence, institutional and external demands, and … self fulfillment” (p. 429). In the UK, almost all of the participants in a study by Nicholson and Lander [26] claimed that they did not have time for research, citing the writing element as the hardest. Turner and Garvis [5] researched the working lives of Australian teacher educators and found that

The most frequently reported stressor for teacher educators was workload intensification, followed by university policy, processes, and procedures. Factors found to decrease teacher educator wellbeing included: job insecurity, excessive workload, supporting student wellbeing, perceived lack of institutional support, and teacher-researcher role conflict.

(p. 12)

1.3. Institutional Ethnography

In recent years, institutional ethnography has increasingly been used in educational research [27]. The institutional ethnographer is interested in how organisational mechanisms regulate people’s lives and experiences in a particular context [28]. Research begins with the experiences and viewpoints of people “whose everyday activities are in some way hooked into, shaped by, and constituent of the institutional relations under exploration” [29] (p. 18). Often, a researcher is familiar with an organisation’s “administrative or professional practices and sets about studying how they are carried out, how they are discursively shaped, and how they organize other settings” [29] (p. 22).

There are different ways of conceptualising institutional ethnography. According to Kearney et al. [30], it is a “critical theory/methodology, with a particular focus on people’s everyday lives and how their lives are organized and coordinated by institutional forces” (p. 17). Walby [28], however, argues that it is “neither a theory nor a methodological technique per se; it is more like an agenda for inquiry that is guided by particular theoretical and methodological commitments” (p. 141).

Institutional ethnography usually focuses on work procedures and how they are regulated and integrated [31]. Work is usually defined as paid employment [32], but institutional ethnography, originally interested in the work women do in unpaid contexts, proposes a definition of work which incorporates “anything or everything people do that is intended, involves time and effort, and is done in a particular time and place and under local conditions” [32] (p. 10). All kinds of work in and around the organisation are explored, leading to an understanding of the relative value attached to different activities in the institution [33]. The employment structure and the wages earned reflect the status of the institution and the individual employee. Devault [31] argues that “institutional ideologies typically acknowledge some kinds of work and not others” (p. 294).

A critical examination of the social relations central to an institutional organisation can uncover and clarify the position of various stakeholders [30]. According to Smith [33], institutional ethnography’s “critique of objectified knowledge and its use in the management of institutional life suggests that, frequently, and in systematic ways, the categories and conceptual frameworks of administration are inattentive to the actual circumstances of the diverse lives people live” (p. 33). Taber [34] argues that institutional ethnography reveals an organisation’s “ruling relations”, allowing the researcher to “begin to interrogate and challenge them” (p. 20). Our choice of institutional ethnography in this study is grounded in our interest in the working lives of teacher educators in an organisational setting and the “opportunities for intervention and change” that it presents [35] (p. 11). That interest led us to the research question leading this inquiry: how do college leadership responsible for the professional development and promotion in the institution understand the significance of research, writing, and publication in the professional lives of college-based teacher educators?

2. Materials and Methods

This is a qualitative study exploring the institutional standpoints and processes in one college of education in Israel. We see the value in this kind of research when it reaches our readers and joins “clusters of related studies, and parallels in studies of different institutional complexes, [which] reveal the meta-discourses that reach across arenas and societies … Each investigation takes us a bit farther and opens new avenues for inquiry” [31] (p. 296). This study seeks to explore the professional lives of teacher educators “from the perspectives of the insiders who work, teach, study, research, guide and lead in the fast-changing contexts of that field” [36] (p. 8). Institutional ethnography, which can be conceptualised by researchers in many ways, provides us with different lenses, enabling us to scrutinise the work of individuals as they are influenced by an organisational setting.

2.1. Participants

This study involved eight senior employees holding or previously holding leadership positions in a college of education in Israel. Leadership roles in the institution are grounded in a “rotation policy”, which determines that teacher educators are chosen to hold positions on a temporary basis for a predetermined number of years [37]. Seven of the eight participants held doctoral degrees and teaching certificates, seven were female, and seven were or had been in academic leadership positions. Four of the eight served as faculty deans, and two of the eight had served as heads of the institutional research authority. One of the participants was in a senior administrative position. The eight participants were all central figures in determining college policy and work conditions for teacher educators.

Name (All Names Are Pseudonyms)	Academic Status
Neta	Professor
Hanny	Professor
May	Senior lecturer
Iris	Senior lecturer
Zohar	Professor
Moran	Professor
Tal	Senior lecturer
Ori	Non-academic ranking

2.2. Data

We chose interviews as the data source in this study. Brinkmann and Kvale [38] explain that knowledge generated in interviews is the result of the unique interplay between the interviewer and the participant in a particular context. Interviews are used in this kind of qualitative research to “understand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meanings of their experiences, to uncover their lived world” [38] (p. 3). Interviewing is a central data form in most institutional ethnographic studies, and interviewees are often institutional leaders or policymakers [29]. Interviews are used to look beyond the individual participant to identify the interrelations between different people working in different parts of the organisational network [29].

This research generated data through interviews with eight position holders. Four interviews took place face-to-face in their offices, and four were conducted online. All the interviews were in Hebrew and approximately an hour in length. The interviews opened with the request, “Please tell me about yourself as an academic writer”. The following questions focused on the participants’ knowledge of the Etnachta writing community for teacher educators and their understanding of the roles of teacher educators in the college regarding research, writing, and publication.

2.3. Data Analysis

The interviews were fully transcribed in Hebrew by a professional, and the authors translated chosen quotations in the writing of this article. We read the interview transcripts individually and then together. Initially, one transcript was chosen for reading and discussion to generate a shared language between us about the interview content and ways of reading it. We each read and reread the transcript, marking significant elements in the interview and noting points of interest to explore in all eight interviews. Our choice to engage in analysis together and apart was based on our understanding that a single data source can lead to disparate interpretations based on individual connections to the topic or the participants, prior knowledge or beliefs, and reasons for researching the issue [39]. We used a form of thematic analysis involving a close exploration of the interview transcripts in an “interpretive, inductive process of identifying themes” [40] (p. 33). According to DeVault and McCoy [29], “people in an institutional setting describe their work using the language of the institution” (p. 37). One of our aims in the analysis process was to uncover those terms and expressions used by college leadership when they described the work of teacher educators.

2.4. Ethical Considerations

This study received ethics authorisation from the Ethics Committee of the Mofet Institute. It is arduous for educators in institutions of higher education to conduct research in their own workplaces [41]; the practice also requires heightened sensitivity to ethical conduct. We spent time and effort grappling with ways to conduct this research ethically and in ways that respected the participants as part of our ongoing responsibility to them as colleagues. Additionally, we are ethically responsible for preserving the well-being of our teacher educator colleagues, the institution we are studying, and our field of practice [42]. To preserve the participants’ anonymity, additional details like specific leadership positions and age are not provided, and all names are pseudonyms [43].

2.5. Researcher Positioning

Etherington [42] argues that scholars can achieve “validity and rigour in research by providing information about the contexts in which data is located … reflexivity in research conversations and writing creates transparency and goes some way to addressing the ethical issues and power relations between researcher and researched” (p. 47). In research in and around higher education, it is common for the researcher and the study participants to work in the same institution; those studies are often called “insider” research [44]. Brinkmann and Kvale [38] urge researchers to acknowledge the power relations involved in the interview setting and its influence on the process of knowledge production in the study. In our study, the authors “represent differing degrees of insider-outsider positioning in relation to the community they are researching [which] raises complex methodological issues and intricate ethical dilemmas” [39], (p. 442). It is, therefore, significant that Nikki who interviewed the participants is a teacher educator of lecturer status and has recently become a department chair at the college of education. She was interviewing leadership in her own institution, many of whom were responsible, directly or indirectly, for her professional advancement and academic promotion. The initiative to open an academic writing community in her college emerged out of Nikki’s struggle to balance her heavy teaching load alongside institutional service and her desire to find time for academic writing. Orna is a teacher educator of professor status and a faculty dean in another college of education in Israel. She was not involved in the college of education explored in the study. The combination of two researchers positioned differently strengthens this study and provides additional insight and trustworthiness.

3. Results

Three major themes emerged from our analysis of the interviews, which aimed to uncover how college leadership understand the significance of research, writing, and publication in the professional lives of college-based teacher educators:

(1)

The importance of academic activity by teacher educators for institutional prosperity;

(2)

The difficulties in academic scholarship experienced by teacher educators;

(3)

The support provided by the college to encourage and maintain academic activity in the institution.

3.1. The Importance of Academic Activity for Institutional Prosperity

In the interviews, college leadership identified three elements that they considered crucial in strengthening the academic nature of the college to ensure institutional prosperity:

A. The institutional structure, B. improving teaching, and C. knowledge generation. The importance of academic scholarship and publication, as seen by college leadership, is illustrated in Figure 1.

3.1.1. The Institutional Structure

Academic institutions are characterised by the structure of faculties and departments. This structure, which provides the basis for opening a variety of programmes for students’ professional development, is dependent on academic ranking.

“We have very few professors; the college’s academic profile is very low. Even in the master’s program, we need professors, and there aren’t enough; many faculty aren’t researchers”. Understanding the significance of academic rankings, Iris shared her concern. She was aware that college departments must all have a strong team of teacher educators with high academic credentials and was worried about the institution’s present academic profile. Neta referred to those high-ranking teacher educators as “academic leadership reserves, which will run the college academically, not just in research, but in pedagogy, management, in defining the institution’s future”. Regarding future leadership in the college, Moran argued that the college needs people to receive their professorships earlier in their careers: “Otherwise, the college doesn’t enjoy the benefits of their promotion … We need a group of home-grown professors; it’s important for the academic committee and a range of roles—rector, president, in short, we need local professors”.

3.1.2. Improving Teaching

Several leaders connected research and writing with being informed and relevant. “Writing keeps us updated”, Tal commented, connecting research and teaching:

Doing research requires you to be renewed, to change all the time … You can see the difference between faculty who are active researchers and those who aren’t. Researchers’ syllabuses are up-to-date and change all the time. Others can stick with the same syllabus for a decade, and they won’t change a letter.

May, too, emphasised the importance of being informed and involved in scholarship.

People should be up to date. The more you research and write, the more you are exposed, a thousand times more, and you are a thousand times better as a lecturer. A thousand times better. And people look up to you.

Similarly, Zohar argued, “Those who dry up can’t be good teachers—teacher educators or classroom teachers”. These three examples show how the leadership understand the impact of teacher educator research on the institution. They connect research with up-to-date, relevant syllabuses and superior performance as educators.

Several leaders discussed teacher educator research and writing as a means of strengthening the college’s student body through high-quality teaching. May, for example, focused on research courses and claimed, “You are a thousand times better teaching a research course if you research and write”. Similarly, Neta argued that

You can’t talk about applied research without being an applied researcher. That means that you can’t talk about soccer without being a player. A player needs to be active. To just be a trainer, a coach, without being a player … You need to be an active player who is developing … It is unquestionable!

The understanding is that teacher educator researchers provide high-quality instruction for the student’s benefit and, thereby, improve the quality of the institution.

May and Moran both emphasised the importance of teacher educators as role models for their students. May shared, “It’s fun for my students that I am an authority in fields I am good at. It’s fun for them that I suddenly appear in a book, article or internet news site … They feel proud”. Moran argued, “It just can’t be that someone who finished their doctorate and ended the story teaches in the master’s program. They need to be an example”. In Moran’s understanding, to increase students’ higher education opportunities, doctoral research should be the beginning of a teacher educator’s research career, leading to continuing research and a publication profile.

One of my aims is to put as many programs as possible into the research stream with a thesis … We have four programs out of nine with temporary or permanent authorisation to require a thesis … With a thesis it is easier for our students to continue to a doctorate. Today, most … finish with practical term papers. That means an additional year of study and a thesis, and then they can continue to doctoral studies, and not in all universities … Eight to ten per cent continue to doctoral studies; I want them to have a good beginning so that they can come to the university with their heads high and join the most advanced programs.

3.1.3. Knowledge Generation

Research and writing are also seen to strengthen the college’s image in a broader context. Ori explained, “Research should serve the institution’s interests … to represent the college around the world as a body that is research-oriented and a leader in education”. Neta stressed that the institution should “be proud that we have researchers at an international standard. Research can make the college prominent; it is the business card of the college”. Moran argued, “This isn’t philosophy or ideology; it’s simple: the higher the level of our programs, the more we have research streams with a thesis, the more the department’s reputation will grow”. She discussed the prestige attached to research and its role in competition with other institutions to attract potential students. “The competition is enormous … It’s the only way to survive, to show that we are like the universities”.

Tal was the only leader who mentioned the role of teacher educators in contributing to the professionalisation of teacher education through knowledge generation. Tal identified the problem as

A separation of authorities between creators of knowledge and disseminators of knowledge. That means that educators are a kind of passive hose which passes on knowledge developed somewhere else … When we write about our research, we join a professional milieu which generates and develops knowledge.

Tal saw a unique role for college-based teacher educators

… they fill a void in Israeli research as they research issues relevant to the field. They are at the junction because universities are too distant for a thousand and one reasons … The research of college faculty can develop a unique niche because we deal with teacher education and are connected to schools.

Tal provided specific examples like early childhood education and informal education. “There are many niches that if the colleges of education don’t go into them, they won’t exist, they won’t appear in the literature”.

College leadership is aware of the importance of teacher educators’ academic achievements in ensuring the continued growth and prosperity of the institution. However, they acknowledge the difficulty faced by teacher educators striving for academic promotion.

3.2. Difficulties in Academic Scholarship Experienced by Teacher Educators

According to college leadership, teacher educators find research, writing, and publication difficult for several reasons.

3.2.1. Academic Background

Most teacher educators come to the college from one of two backgrounds: from teaching and educational leadership in schools or from a university. Ori explained that

People don’t finish their studies and arrive here; they’ve usually progressed in educational or other fields; they come here with life achievements. They almost never begin here when they are very young. The percentage of people who arrive here from the field, from schools, is very high.

Moran described the academic challenges faced by many teacher educators who come from school employment backgrounds. “I’m not saying they can’t do it, god forbid, but it is much more challenging if you haven’t undergone the socialisation in academia, as a research assistant or something similar”. Teacher educators who come from the field usually find it more difficult to engage with research, academic writing, and the peer-review process.

Initially, Zohar denied that teacher educators should experience particular difficulties, but later, she identified publication as the most challenging element of writing for teacher educators.

The work, the time, and the knowledge that publication requires … it’s difficult, and it doesn’t matter if you are a good educator or not … There are things you need to know, and nobody teaches you them … you learn them from personal experience; there are some that the process finishes them off and others who grow from it.

Zohar distinguished between research, writing, and publication.

There are people in the college who are wonderful researchers, but the moment they sit down and work on publishing, it doesn’t work; they can’t do it. They can teach research methodology well, but they can’t take their research and get it published. It doesn’t work.

Teacher educators in the college are burdened with heavy teaching loads and many institutional service tasks. As Ori explained, many of the teacher educators employed in the institution have a field-based rather than an academic-background. Those educators need to undergo a process of identity work to include a more theoretical outlook in their practice. Challenging questions of professional identity are often prominent as teacher educators move between focusing on practice in the field, research, and theory. One of the reactions to living in those two worlds and coping with the heavy workload is to slow down. Many teacher educators find themselves slowing down in their academic progression. Even though it might hold more prestige, they have less experience in academic scholarship. Neta contended, “Every person who begins the complex, demanding, and exhausting process of working on a doctorate has a passion for research. They don’t receive a doctorate to get a specific job”. She expressed concern that “afterwards, something happens between the doctorate and the process of academic promotion in the colleges. People slow down. They get into a routine which greatly affects them, and somehow, they lose the passion”. Moran identified the same problem:

The longer people drag their feet after completing their doctorate, the worse their situation is … there is a handful of people who manage to progress after a break, but it is really, really difficult; it’s carving in a mountain … it is very, very difficult, and most get stuck and don’t succeed.

Zohar shared,

It’s Neta’s, my, the department chairs’, and the deans’ role to run after faculty … to push them, and push them, and push. I admit that sometimes, this leads to despair. People say, ‘I didn’t make any progress, I didn’t succeed, I didn’t move forward, I didn’t make it’. After three or four answers like that, I don’t bother.

Zohar expressed the frustration college leadership experience when they try to encourage and support teacher educators to continue writing after their PhD studies and meet faculty who are disengaged from research, too busy with their teaching, or not striving for academic promotion.

3.2.2. Employment Scheme

Tal described teacher educators’ employment scheme and salary: “Like in all colleges of education, their role is defined as teaching, not research. We get paid for teaching hours or leadership roles, and certainly not for research”. Tal identified and described the underlying challenge.

It creates a situation where faculty members can’t make a living respectfully, even when employed full-time. They need to work in various other places … Based on sixteen teaching hours per week, with meagre wages, the chance of successfully engaging in research seriously and intensively is very low. If we want to be cynical, we can say that teaching in the college is approximately seven months of the year, then there are free months, so if people really want to find the time for research, they can. [Laughing] Of course, if they have to work in other jobs … when you teach sixteen weekly hours, you have to prepare many courses and grade many exams—it is all very, very difficult.

Institutional ethnography turns our attention to how institutional structures and bureaucratic procedures, such as employment models, affect individuals’ lives and how teacher educators navigate and negotiate those structural limitations. Ori explained, “Today, you can get tenure for a third of a position, but you need to make a living, and as soon as you divide yourself between four or five places, you can’t really fit in”. May, too, discussed the disadvantage connected to the part-time nature of many teacher educators’ employment.

When you only give people third—or half-time employment, with very, very few hours, they aren’t even part of the group eligible to receive the resources. Until they have tenure, they can’t even reach the threshold of receiving resources from the college, even if they are really suitable for writing and academic promotion.

Zohar claimed that the specific faculty or department that the teacher educators work in within the college also influences their ability to progress academically. “If you aren’t on a team prioritising research and publication, you will be held back”. Similarly, she argued that the decision to progress academically is not always a personal decision. “If the college wants to promote you, it’s partly an institutional decision, not an individual one”.

Institutional ethnography shows that the employment scheme has power dynamics within institutions. It explores how authority is exercised and maintained through institutional practices such as the creation of work conditions, how employees are promoted, and hierarchical positioning. How people “have tenure” in part-time employment and have to manage working in several institutions affects individuals differently based on factors like social position, financial stability, family situation, and academic motivation.

Ori, however, believed “It must start with personal motivation. Research must be in your blood; you have to desire it very much to research while working full-time … in one or more institutions”. She argued that teacher educators’ ability to maintain a career in research and academic writing is not dependent on institutional structures; rather, it is based on an individual’s motivation. Moran also claimed that individual motivation is crucial.

It’s also a matter of motivation and priorities. Don’t tell yourself the stories that half of the faculty, or even more, tell themselves. ‘How can I do research?’ ‘It’s not comfortable!’ Yes, we do teach a lot, but if you want to, it’s possible.

Moran dismissed some of the difficulties teacher educators say they face in academic work. She saw teaching loads and time limitations as only partially responsible for the difficulty teacher educators experience.

“They are mainly women; most of the faculty here are women”, Ori explained. Most teacher educators employed in the college are women, many with additional carer roles. They usually have less time and ability to reach self-realisation, and their salaries are low. Moran stressed, “Their salaries are determined by what is called the ‘ranking of educational employees’; it’s the same collective agreement as schoolteachers, with nuances for colleges … It’s not really academia. It’s not the Council of Higher Education …”. Zohar also acknowledged the role of the teacher educators’ families and the importance of their support in academic writing and promotion. “There are some who succeed and others who don’t … I do not doubt that the support of the family environment and family expectations (if they want Mum to progress) make it easier”.

3.2.3. Financial Resources

Institutional ethnography uncovers the often invisible institutional mechanisms that shape teacher educators’ professional lives. Financial resources are an institutional mechanism that can facilitate equitable development opportunities but, at the same time, can grant more power to institutional leaders as they channel funds to areas that the institution needs. Those priorities may not reflect the needs of the individual.

May argued, “It takes resources to do research, it takes resources to edit in English … and there are no resources in the college, no real resources”. Zohar also mentioned a lack of financial support as a cause of difficulty. “I know that the financial tensions at in the college are unbearable. How much money can the college devote to that when nobody considers it a research institution, and nobody gives it research funds?”

Some leaders compared university conditions to those in colleges of education to explain the challenges faced by teacher educators. Zohar explained, “That’s the catch, the big difficulty. Universities allow you a little more time to cope with those difficulties, the college much less”. Iris stressed the comparison, “In the universities, the standard is six teaching hours … there is nothing, nothing, nothing to compare”. May mentioned other advantages universities enjoy:

They always have groups of master’s and doctoral students; that’s firepower, crazy. We don’t have that at all. A few people here manage to do it a little by managing themselves wisely in the master’s program. Otherwise … you’re alone; with the loneliness, we don’t have research students here at all, and it significantly delays any progress.

3.2.4. Changing and Blurry College Agendas

Ori mentioned institutional priorities, saying, “There are always changes; every time a new president arrives, bringing a new agenda, the spotlight moves to something different”. She highlighted the changing priorities by saying that

There is an expectation that teacher educators progress and research. There are presidents who are more and those who are less, but there is an expectation to research, write, and progress. [The previous president] said it out loud, ‘It’s important. I want to promote the faculty academically’.

Institutional priorities are often connected to the professional experience of college presidents; several have come from a background outside of education and teacher education. Discussing the institutional development of the college, Ori said,

In the past, there was some confusion between those who wanted this to be an academic place, like a university and those who didn’t really want that. In that gap, there are many grey areas that aren’t solved and aren’t managed.

Hanny exposed the blurriness of the research agenda, saying,

There is no agenda; the college doesn’t have any organised expectations [of new faculty]. Look at yourself. Has anyone ever told you what you have to do? Did they when they employed you? You’re nice, serious, okay, let’s move on. That’s how it works …. We don’t even have an organised index, not for requirements and not even for development to show people this is the direction. We don’t have it, and I think we should develop it. There are department chairs that it is important to them and others that it is less important to them. There are some that it is most important to them that everyone is nice.

Discussing the difficulty teacher educators face in colleges of education, Neta argued, “In most of the colleges, there is no organised research culture. Research is not a condition for progressing in the institution … for achieving tenure”. Hanny continued to emphasise the fuzziness of the requirements,

If two people apply for a position, and one writes and the other doesn’t, the writer would be accepted … but it’s not written anywhere, and there is no organized format. We need to create an academic, not just an administrative, process of absorbing faculty. It needs to be much clearer, defined, and directed.

Iris, on the other hand, said, “When we accepted new people into the faculty departments, the admission requirements were that the person was a researcher and that they had publications”. The variety of responses here uncover a lack of unity in the perceptions, expectations, and role descriptions the college leadership has for the teacher educators employed in the college. Employment requirements are blurry and undefined.

3.3. Institutional Support for Research and Writing

All the position holders interviewed were enthusiastic about the institutional support provided for teacher educators interested in pursuing research, writing, and publication. Moran shared, “As a dean and other positions, my central aim has always been to promote faculty … We searched for many ways to help beyond financial assistance. We do everything we can to solve the issue of people who are stuck”. Neta stressed that “it is college policy to organise conferences, to encourage people to create international partnerships, to advance Erasmus agreements for research partnerships, and encourage people to participate in research focused events”. Some expressed pride in the college’s efforts and compared them to those of similar colleges of education. Moran, for example, explained,

In reality, there is endless support; you only need to come and take it … The college gives a tremendous amount, more than any of the other colleges of education; I say that with full responsibility; I checked … and we give it to people without academic rankings as well.

Tal explained,

Our research authority has always been an ‘institution’ compared to other colleges of education. It’s a kind of anchor that really supports the faculty members who want to do research and reach promotion … and in the end, the support bears fruit: very impressive research studies and promotions.

Tal qualified previous positive comments about institutional support by saying “We’re not giving enough; we aren’t providing good enough conditions for faculty members to engage in research”. Moran also moderated her remarks by adding “Of course, you can’t receive all of this from your first day here, but pretty quickly, you can receive help, lots and lots of support, even if you haven’t achieved academic promotion”.

3.3.1. Research Funds

All the interviewees mentioned the research funds, which May called “small grants”, that interested teacher educators in the college can apply for. The grants are not connected to regular salaries. Neta referred to those small amounts of money distributed: “Here, every researcher receives a little”. She regards those funds as a show of appreciation to teacher educators who engage in research. “There is appreciation, financial appreciation, not just verbal expression of appreciation”. Moran compared those funds to external research grants, emphasising how easy it is to receive financial support from the college.

Do you know what it means to receive a grant? In most cases, you won’t get it. So here they only ask you for a declaration of intention, ‘This is what I’m planning to do …’, and then, of course, you must show that you have done something …. I think it is simple, one page in Hebrew, not more than that, a declaration of intention.

May expressed frustration that many faculty members did not utilise that financial support.

It’s easy for people not to notice. I said to one of the department chairs, ‘I can’t believe you haven’t applied’; she simply hadn’t noticed. It’s a shame … I have always been very active and understood what I am eligible for. There is no way I would miss funds, ever.

May also expressed dissatisfaction with those who receive and do not use funds. “It really bothers me that we give money to people, and they don’t research and don’t write”.

3.3.2. Research Groups and Programmes

Several position holders referred to research groups initiated by the college research authority, faculties, or individual teacher educators as a form of support provided by the college. Hanny proudly described four or five research groups set up in her faculty, “I’m happy about it; it’s my personal agenda”. Iris focused on the social support developed in the groups: “There are people who find it good to sit in research groups; that’s how they push one another forward, together”. Moran explained that most of the research groups were very active, “and it works because they are working in a group, which gives a lot of confidence, and then they publish together, too”. Neta stressed the institutional interest in the initiative by explaining that each research group met with the college’s president yearly to discuss their progress and future directions.

The college leadership was markedly proud of the competitive “Academos” programme, which Iris described as “the attempt to produce a few professors for us” and Tal described as “inspiration directed downwards … It symbolises what the college thinks … and it provides very significant recognition. People awarded are happy that the college acknowledges their efforts and abilities and sincerely wants to help them progress”. Neta explained, “Last year, six researchers received the opportunity of reducing their teaching hours by twenty-five per cent in favour of academic writing … it’s very significant”. Moran outlined the programme benefits as follows: “First of all, they are given research funds, although they are modest, assistance with editing and translation. It’s not a great deal, but it’s better than nothing”. Moran expressed her enthusiasm: “It’s an excellent idea, it’s a collaborative initiative of the president and the rector”, explaining, “A lot of money is invested in those people, and they are identifying a group, an elite group … they are the spearhead, those who are going towards a professorship”. Hanny also expressed her approval of the programme but stressed the small number of recipients. “I think it is a nice program; it is minimal but nice”. Regarding the small number of participants, Tal said, “Even if only a few individuals are awarded, it is something to strive for”. Tal also commented on the evaluation of the programme, saying, “I hope it bears fruit. It will be tested very quickly; we will see if we have succeeded. If they manage to reach promotion in a year, two or three, each according to the academic rank they are approaching …” Neta excitedly stressed the programme’s uniqueness, comparing the institution with other colleges of education. “‘Academos’ is an extraordinary initiative that is exceptional in the Israeli college landscape. No other college has a program like that”.

Other forms of professional development initiated by the college leadership and provided for teacher educators were also mentioned. Moran mentioned “workshops focussed on English, presenting at conferences, article writing. Several women professors gave excellent lectures … all sorts of methodologies, quantitative and qualitative … and there are research forums where you can hear about articles and studies and present too”. Moran and Neta also mentioned the college’s annual research conference as supporting teacher educators’ academic development. Hanny described how she sent teacher educators struggling to write to join the Etnachta writing community. In passing, Moran also mentioned access provided to research tools and data banks and the college’s assistance in publishing books written by teacher educators.

3.3.3. Consultancy and Mentoring

According to the leadership, teacher educators in the college have a network of support; they always have someone they can go to for advice surrounding research, writing, and promotion. Moran described herself as a person teacher educators could always approach. “I invite people to come and ask me for advice, and they come, many people come … not all from my faculty”. May argued,

There is always someone you can talk to, even on short notice. I have sent many people to Zohar, and she gives you exactly what comes next and what you need to accomplish. People aren’t getting lost because of a lack of information. When they express interest, the college is very organised in what it provides … I think that gives a good feeling.

The leaders were referring to position holders or others higher up in academic ranking who were there to give advice and support. They did not mention peer support.

Several position holders mentioned a project developed by the research authority to closely accompany early career researchers. Moran identified them as “developing lecturers, those at the beginning of their journey, they’ve just completed their doctorate”. She explained, “The research authority insists that if money is left over, it goes to the developing lecturers; they are people who don’t have anything yet, and they need to start”. Iris expressed her appreciation for the project: “In my view, it is very, very, very nice”, and explained, “As a dean in the faculty, I often asked if there were two thousand shekels left in the budget for a young lecturer”. The college research authority also founded a mentoring programme where an early-career researcher is paired with a more experienced scholar. Neta explained, “We now have eight pairs like that. Mentors can be at the dean level; even deans find the time for mentoring”.

Some of the position holders qualified their enthusiastic statements about the support the college offers teacher educators interested in pursuing academic research and writing. Zohar admitted, for example, “It might be possible to invest more in the assistance given by the research authority; it depends on the college’s financial priorities”. Tal expressed pride in what the college provides for its teacher educator researchers but also reflected,

There is a lot to be satisfied with, the productivity, the doing, and the energy, but it is still saved for a limited group. I don’t know exactly how many, but approximately one hundred faculty members move around the research authority. They know how to respond to calls for papers and grants and are active. A large group isn’t there and doesn’t see themselves as belonging there. In short, I would be happy to see that grow if we could see it grow this year to 110 and next year to 120. I hope we are going in that direction.

The number of teacher educators enjoying the support offered worried Iris, too. “It’s the same people, the same circle of people … it’s not a high percentage who are benefitting from what the college has to offer”.

The rich results from our exploration of college leadership’s perceptions raise significant issues for discussion about the work of college-based teacher educators in their various roles as educators, academic researchers, and writers.

4. Discussion

This qualitative inquiry deals with the question: how do college leadership responsible for the professional development and promotion in the institution understand the significance of research, writing, and publication in the professional lives of college-based teacher educators? The Etnachta community, which aims to create a collegial space for academic writing for individual teacher educators, triggered our interest in this study of institutional leadership’s viewpoint. In this discussion, connecting our findings to global scholarship, we grapple with the tensions between the position holders’ understanding of the working lives of teacher educators, the needs of individuals, and the needs of the institution.

4.1. The Conflict between Institutional and Individual Advancements

Internationally, academic institutions are characterised by three elements: academic teaching based on the generation of new knowledge, the advancement of research in a range of fields, and the writing and publication of professional innovation [45]. From a historical point of view, the structure of academic institutions is conservative, hierarchical, and built around promotion tracks that afford control and power relations. At the same time, throughout the years, academic institutions have cultivated a vision of academic freedom for the creation of knowledge and preservation of institutional independence without political or social intervention [46]. Levin et al. [47] draw attention to the positioning of the individual and groups of faculty in the competitive neo-liberal culture in institutions of higher education, arguing that their professional “authority as individuals is negligible or nonexistent” (p. 3). These complexities are evident in the results of this study. The institutional ethnographer is interested in how organisational mechanisms regulate people’s lives and experiences in a particular context [28]. Our results, drawn from interviews with college leadership, uncover tension in the academic institution between the advancement of the institution’s academic positioning and the academic advancement of the individual researcher-writer. The tension is present in core areas, such as academic programmes, course syllabi, research funds, and publications. These areas are interdependent. Edwards [48] argues that in the United Kingdom, “Neo-liberalism … is shaping the content and practice of academia, and the identities of academics within it. In particular, the nature of research funding and performance in higher education has become framed by institutional and corporate goal-laden priorities” (p. 912) Although it appears that academic institutions and individual faculty have similar interests, which are to generate and disseminate knowledge, discover new areas of interest, and explore fields through innovative research, forces within and beyond the institutions are influencing priorities. Institutional and other stakeholders’ interests are not always in line with the needs, desires, and abilities of the individual researcher-writer.

This dichotomy is reflected in the perceptions of institutional leadership, and it creates tensions between the advancement of the structure of the academic institution through new programmes and faculty publications in journals and the individual promotion of the researcher. In interviews, the position holders stressed the advancement of research for the strengthening of the college and the opening of new academic programmes. They argued the need for individuals’ promotion for institutional advancement. Although the leaders all acknowledged the burden of the individuals’ workloads, in colleges of education in particular, their priorities were focused on institutional achievements. These results support the view of Taber [34] that institutional ethnography reveals an organisation’s “ruling relations”, allowing the researcher “to begin to interrogate and challenge them” (p. 20). This outlook reflects the tension between the institutional requirements and the personal needs of the teacher educators and highlights the constant conflict between institutional and individual advancements.

4.2. The Structure of Employment

Institutional ethnography usually focuses on work procedures and how they are regulated and integrated [31]. In the results, we present how college leaders explained the importance of institutional advancement in connection to the structure of the teacher educators’ employment. We found that the interviewees compared colleges of education to universities to stress the challenges college-based teacher educators face in balancing practice and academic work [49]. Characterising the work of teacher educators by comparing the institutional structure highlights the differences in employment models. Teacher educators employed in colleges of education in Israel are required to teach double the number of teaching hours required in universities [18]. Beyond those hours, teacher educators mentor students and attend staff meetings to design and advance programmes and stay up to date and engage in various kinds of institutional service. All of these create an employment structure that barely leaves time for individual academic and professional development, including research, writing, and publication [9]. The wage structure is also different in colleges of education. In Israel, all academic institutions must function according to the guidelines and under the regulation of the Council for Higher Education. Colleges of education, however, are also subject to the governing of the Ministry of Education [15]. The structural progression of the education system—from early childhood through to colleges of teacher education—positions teacher educators as part of the schooling structure, and the regulation of wages is in accordance. This strengthens the perception of teaching and emphasis on practice rather than academic promotion through research, writing, and publication.

The institutional structure of professions that are traditionally dominated by women (like nursing and teaching) creates a structure of power relations that makes upward mobility to positions of power difficult. This is the case in academic institutions. The burden of household work and caring roles disadvantages female academics in higher education [50]. Most of the teacher educators in colleges of education are women, and most come with employment backgrounds in schools. Others are teacher educators who did not succeed in reaching tenure in universities and had settled for a lower-level academic option. Many teacher educators who are combining academic achievements and family life prefer to work in colleges of education rather than the university context. They settle for an academic context in which the promotion process threatens their personal and familial worlds less. Leaders in those institutions, who are also usually women, recognise the gap between the ideal academic institution and the complex reality, where most of the faculty are talented, motivated women struggling to balance professional advancement and personal familial commitments [51].

In light of what we have written here about the institutional employment structure, together with the gender imbalance and the burden of a heavy workload without time and resources allocated for research and writing, it appears that colleges of education perpetuate the gaps in research, writing, and publication for those institutions and the individuals within them.

4.3. Implications

As teacher educator researchers, we, too, have struggled with the contradiction between heavy teaching loads and promotion through academic writing and publication. These hidden tensions are gradually understood by faculty in the course of Sisyphean work in the college. The Etnachta academic writing community, like teacher educator writing communities in other countries [6,52,53], exemplifies a way to fulfil the needs of teacher educators as researchers and academic writers as a response to the tension between the individual’s development and the institution’s advancement. In this article, we are sounding our voices, drawing awareness to the significance of research progress for the individual and the institution. In this section, we suggest a number of practical implications of this research. Additionally, we invite our readers to explore their own professional environments and to consider the ways in which their institutions balance organisational requirements and the professional needs of faculty in their research and writing. Workman [35] explains that although institutional ethnography begins with individual positions, it progresses to grapple with the organisational, “opening opportunities for intervention and change” (p. 11).

Acknowledging the hierarchical structure of institutions of higher education, this study suggests a need for ongoing dialogue between institutional leadership and teacher educators. Support for teacher educator researchers should be designed and budgeted for within that dialogue. Role expectations and the significance of research and academic writing, which are blurry [22], need to be more explicit and transparent to all stakeholders.

Increasing the number of programmes in the institution can broaden the variety of avenues for institutional development and, at the same time, open opportunities for teacher educator development. For example, a programme that requires the submission of a thesis can assist students in continuing to further higher education and entering doctoral studies in the future. This can grant teacher educators in the programme opportunities for research collaborations with colleagues from other programmes and with students.

There is growing interest in groups and communities for faculty development in academia (see [54,55]). Colleges of education should consider creating supportive research frameworks like those offered by universities, including allocating time and resources for research. Research groups, functioning as communities of practice [56,57], could emphasize teamwork, which addresses issues of loneliness in academia and concentrates on the well-being of faculty [3]. Support frameworks can create interactions between colleagues, which might compensate for the burden of the employment structure. Academic writing communities or research groups can generate a supportive research culture and create a shared dynamic institutional language. These collaborations might create reflective practices, which can advance research at an institutional and an individual level.

Additionally, colleges should consider different models of employment, alternative methods of dividing financial rewards, and ways to reduce the burden of teaching hours. A differential division of roles, for example, adapted to the preferences and abilities of individual teacher educators might be advantageous. Employment could entail different amounts of teaching hours and research time. These options could benefit the institution and individual teacher educators through the development of research leadership and expertise in teaching and professional practice in the field.

It is interesting that during the interviews with the position holders, the role of technological innovation was not raised. With the development of Artificial Intelligence, the worlds of research, learning, writing, and publication are already changing dramatically [58]. There is room to wonder how digital platforms might lead the institutional leadership to address the problems they have described.

4.4. Future Research Directions

In this study, college leadership presented what they do and provide for teacher educators in the institution to encourage them to increase their scholarly activity. Further research is needed to sound the voices of teacher educators and explore the solutions they suggest for overcoming the challenges raised here. Quantitative data could be helpful in understanding the employment schemes and the promotion processes in different kinds of institutions. This study is local and focuses on a single institution. Additional research should examine the teaching–research–service tensions and the need for balance in other kinds of academic institutions and in other geographical contexts.