Students and peers who nominate academic staff for teaching excellence awards unwittingly invite them to reflect on their work, and explain their practices to other academics. What is an effective system of academic support for these applicants and should academic developers be doing it at all? Is it possible that academic developers and academic staff merely function as disciplined bodies, subjecting themselves to external scrutiny and re-forming themselves within an alien[ating] mould, rather than exploring and consolidating unique contributions? In this article, we explore how teaching award policy initiatives can re-shape identities and practices in unpredictable ways. (Contains 2 tables.)