Societal, governmental, and research expectations of universities in contemporary western society have led to increasing calls for teacher professionalism and accountability as well as research excellence and research-informed teaching. Consequently, demands on academic staff development continually emerge, which academics may view as oppressive. This paper reports research that critically examined the commonalities between a pre-established set of discourses about resistance to teaching development and views about teaching and learning in academics' comments on student evaluations of teaching. The comparative study and the identification of commonalities are used to speculate about implications for academic development approaches both with teachers and institutions.