This study examined the recruitment and appointment of university-based teacher educators in Aotearoa New Zealand. The findings revealed three institutionally reified and identifiable constructions of the teacher educator type of academic worker: the professional expert, the dually qualified teacher educator and the ‘traditional academic’ type of teacher educator. This study argues that the present recruitment and appointment processes are taking a bifurcated approach in the employment of education faculty, recruiting mostly professional experts or traditional academics to positions within university-based ITE. By taking such an approach, these institutional constructions are supporting several persistent and arguably troubling binaries shaping understandings of ITE in the university setting including theory/practice, research/teaching and academic/professional.