This research explores the effects of institutional constraints on instructional practices in a preservice generalist teacher music education program in Ontario, Canada. Using Institutional Ethnography and document analysis of active texts, we, an adjunct and tenured professor, use our own experiences to elucidate the multiple points of control and constraint in which teacher education instructors operate. We examine the ways in which "official" documents, such as course outlines, activate institutional expectations and relations of power, and promote standardization (convergence). We explore factors that influence our curricular choices, pedagogical strategies, and occasional acts of resistance; and how these impact differently tenured and adjunct faculty. The paper includes an introduction to the Action Research project that sparked this inquiry, in which we are investigating generalist teacher confidence and engagement with teaching music in the elementary classroom.