The expansion of school-based teacher training is impacting onthe practice of universities, schools and trainees. University tutors and managers were interviewed on how they experienced working in partnership with schools and how this impacted on the composition of their work. They variously reported on how their sense of professional purpose had been challenged as a result of changing expectations. Their involvement in research is used as a barometer for these changes. The teacher educators are depicted as wavering between governmental regulation (master discourse) and professional imperatives (university discourse), where the latter comprise an uneasy alliance of expertise in school and academic rigour. Through depicting the unsettlement of practice and accounts of it (hysteric discourse), the study points to possible resolutions that might be achieved through more systematic resistance to external demands (analytic discourse). The university teacher educator identity results from attempted resolution of these conflicting demands.