University teaching staff and educational innovation for sustainable development: the case of the Campus Ocean project i³

University teaching staff are immersed in an academic context in which adaptations and changes are necessary in order to be able to respond to a society in continuous transformation. Education-al innovation is a response to this emergency that requires approaches in line with Education for Sustainable Development. The aim of this study is to understand the reasons why teachers are involved in educational innovation for sustainable development and the satisfaction they get from it. A qualitative methodology was adopted, based on a case study of the cross-border Campus Ocean i³ project, developed jointly by the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and the University of Bordeaux (France), backed by fourteen in-depth interviews that were conducted with participating faculty members. The results indicate that the teachers’ involvement is due to personal, institutional and strategic reasons, and this participation satisfies because it allows them to experiment and test, to learn from a complex and unstable environment, to learn from what is experienced and perceived, and to participate without pressure. It is concluded that intervening in an innovation project for sustainable development challenges certainties that induce the teaching staff to learn to reinvent themselves in order to respond to the university society of the 21st century.

Keywords:
educational innovation; education for sustainable development; university; teaching staff; motivation