Brush Strokes on a Turbulent Canvas: Employing Critical Portraiture Methodology to Investigate Teaching Excellence at a Northern University

This study investigates academic narratives on ‘teaching excellence’ (TE) within the neoliberalised higher education (HE) landscape, and develops Critical Portraiture Methodology (CPM) to explore the lived experiences of four social science academics at an English university. TE remains a contested, politicised concept, often reduced to measurable institutional metrics, that overlook the complexities of educators’ professional realities. Addressing this gap, the study offers a nuanced, context-specific examination of TE, highlighting its relational, value-driven, and dynamic nature.This research seeks to paint a richer, more authentic portrait of TE—one that captures the depth, texture, and contradictions embedded within academic life. It critically interrogates how TE is conceptualised and enacted, examining institutional and external pressures that shape it. It contributes to critical HE research by offering an innovative methodological framework (CPM) that foregrounds educators’ lived experiences and agency, while challenging dominant discourses on TE. It extends traditional portraiture by integrating critical inquiry with narrative and artistic traditions. Using longitudinal qualitative research—semi-structured interviews, teaching observations, reflections, and sketch-notes—the study constructs in-depth portraits of four educators recognised for their excellence.Findings reveal that TE is deeply relational, context-specific, and shaped by tensions between pedagogical values and institutional constraints, and influenced by broader structural dynamics. Participants described TE in terms of fostering intellectual curiosity, critical engagement, and the facilitation of co-creational learning spaces—understandings often in conflict with managerial governance, metric-driven accountability, and academic precarity. The research also highlights the emotional and professional toll of neoliberal HE reforms, with participants experiencing change fatigue, disillusionment, and vulnerability due to serial restructuring and the erosion of professional autonomy. Despite this, they resisted performative teaching cultures by fostering spaces for creativity and critical dialogue. In conclusion, the study calls for a reimagining of TE that prioritises relational, values-based, and transformative educational practices over neoliberal performativity.