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With the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), the status of teaching has been moved towards the centre of concerns in the UK higher education (HE) sector. This interest develops further the notion of teaching excellence created through various institutional and sectoral schemes such as the Higher Education Academy (HEA) fellowship. Whilst excellence schemes and the TEF all highlight the importance of teaching, they also run the danger of reducing it to lists and simplified proxies.

This chapter argues that reductive characterisations of teaching, through metrics supporting the TEF, such as the national student survey, or ‘idealised’ descriptions of the foundational aspects of ‘excellent practice’, all lead to partial accounts of the teaching process. Such characterisations might lead to creeping performativity and increasing organisational attempts to control. An alternative account of teaching is proposed based on complexity theory. This sees teaching as emergent, multifaceted and contextually based. It refutes notions of ‘best practice’ and argues that any attempt to capture ‘excellent practice’ is to reduce the holistic nature of the processes that bring teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment together.

Purpose – This chapter reflects upon my experiences as a PhD researcher examining the portrayal of multiculturalism in contemporary Welsh- and English-language fiction about Wales. It discusses my emotions regarding my identities as a second-language Welsh speaker and as an early career researcher, and how they affected my participation in this field.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on my PhD research, which examined how different cultural groups were portrayed in fiction as ‘others’ due to Wales’s complex linguistic and cultural position. This involved analysing contextual research about multiculturalism in Wales to explore discourses of belonging and alienation. This chapter reflects upon my emotional responses to the field as a Welsh speaker and new academic, and how this in turn affected my research.

Findings – Embracing my changing relationship with my Welsh-speaking identity, I reflect on how my research touched upon contradictory feelings I had about the Welsh language and Welshness. I discuss the effects my changing feelings over time about linguistic hybridity, and my growing confidence as a young academic, had on my engagement with different texts and writers. This is discussed in light of the relationships I was able to form with some creative authors and academics in Wales’s close-knit literary and scholarly society.

Originality/Value – This chapter argues that confronting their own emotional engagements with their research topics enables researchers to better understand why certain subjects are so contested. It can also prepare researchers to communicate their ideas effectively in the difficult debates that arise around such subjects.

A number of commentators have noted significant changes in the American polity over the last half century. More interest groups with more issues are active in the polity now (Dahl, 1994). There is more ideological polarization among political elites (DiMaggio, Evans, & Bryson, 1996, 2004). Participation in voluntary associations has declined among the post 1945 generations, weakening civil society (Putnam, 2000). The new organizations in the polity are more hierarchical in structure, unlike the older voluntary associations that were built on lateral ties (Skocpol, 1996, 1999). Rising education levels have produced lower voter participation rates (Brody, 1978; Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Berry, 1996). Finally, a number of observers have noted that public opinion, constructed in part by extensive polling, has become a significant force in the polity and this has helped fuel the rise of a media centered politics (Herbst, 1993; Schudson, 1991). This is not an exhaustive list of changes that observers have noted, but it is enough to suggest that the older Tocquevillian polity and the civic culture of the U.S., portrayed so effectively by Almond and Verba (1963), have been transformed in significant ways.