Early career university teachers often have limited experience of the higher education literature making it difficult for them to identify what ideas have become central to justifying what university teachers ought to be doing in higher education teaching and learning. A review of the research literature in journals focused on teaching and learning in higher education identified seven researchers who the journals' authors consider skilled at making these kinds of arguments. A second-level analysis of the citations within this literature revealed that these researchers were associated with developing distinctive concepts within the field. This study concludes that some ideas have become strongly associated with certain researchers because they are identified as knowledgeable about important aspects of higher education teaching and learning. It found that authors in the sample used these signature concepts to answer five central questions about higher education teaching and learning. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)