In higher education, expectations regarding the quality of education are constantly increasing, and the "VUCA world"—with its volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—regularly presents students and university teachers with new situations, such as the challenges of AI or sustainability. A fundamental question is how all this can be turned into learning opportunities in higher education (Zenk et al., 2024), which requires both teachers and students to be open to pedagogical innovations. Although higher education institutions have recently made rapid progress in supporting the pedagogical preparedness of their teachers in Europe (Zhang, 2025) and in Hungary (Dringó-Horváth, 2024), less attention has been paid to strengthening teachers' knowledge and expertise on higher education pedagogical innovation. 

Previous research shows that teachers generally struggle to define educational innovation (Halász, 2018), while diverse understandings of pedagogical innovation in higher education have also been identified. Based on our literature review, we developed a hierarchical framework of higher education pedagogical innovation by identifying interpretations according to their scope and complexity. The simplest understanding of pedagogical innovation was that of non-traditional teaching (Walder, 2017) or disrupting established teaching routines and listening to students’ voices (Elkayam, 2022). The second level is innovating teaching elements such as the application of innovative thoughts, and innovative use of teaching content, methods, resources, and evaluation (Zhu et al, 2013; Fernandez-Cruz & Rodriguez-Legendre, 2022; Elkayam, 2022). In Fraser’s model (2019), this aligns with the ‘innovative deliverer’ type, who are innovative in the way they teach. The third layer highlights the integrative nature of innovative pedagogies (Fraser, 2019) emphasizing goal-orientation in education and the intentional translation of ideas into actions. This approach also reflects the OECD definition of innovative pedagogies (Paniagua & Istance, 2018) centred on critical reflection on pedagogical purpose, the combinations of pedagogies and the potentials for adaptive teaching. The fourth level interprets educational innovation as a systemic change (Fraser, 2019; Fernandez-Cruz & Rodriguez-Legendre, 2022), involving large-scale initiatives, that integrate innovation development, research and dissemination and systemic professional development and learning of teachers (Stevens et al, 2023). 

Pedagogical innovation focusing on renewing teaching and pedagogies for developing students’ innovation competence (Keinanen & Kairisto-Mertanen, 2019) are identified as two parallel research fields, although closer integration between the two fields is promising. In our view, adding students’ innovation competence development perspective as a cross-dimension for interpreting pedagogical innovation can help reframe the role of students as active contributors and co-creators of innovation, rather than passive recipients of pedagogical innovations. The students-as-partners model of Healey et al. (2014) was applied to differentiate forms of student engagement in pedagogical innovations ranging from providing opinions, through active involvement and participation in decision-making, to partnership in co-creation, which leads to the development of students’ innovation competences. 

Taking part in educational innovations and learning as university teachers are mutually connected phenomena and in many European countries institutional systems have been established to support educational innovations for a longer time (Stevens et al, 2023). However, in Hungary these initiatives are newer and more sporadic. Within these evolving supportive learning environments, our research aim is to identify patterns and diversity in how pedagogical innovation is understood and enacted in higher education, in order to inform the development of more effective support systems for educational innovation and teachers’ professional development, and to strengthen their innovation expertise. The research questions are the following: (1) How do innovative educators in Hungary interpret pedagogical innovations in higher education? (2) How do they perceive students’ roles in pedagogical innovations? (3) What kinds of professional learning and development opportunities can be identified through the perception of educational innovations? 

The study adopts a qualitative research design based on expert sampling and includes semi-structured interviews with 28 innovative higher education educators from Hungary. In the sample selection process, five experts in educational innovations and higher education research identified the pool of possible participants for the study. The main criteria were the following for inclusion: (1) teachers who work and teach in research intensive higher education institutions (2) teachers identified as innovative based on their active involvement in educational development projects and applications within their institution or externally as well as (3) acknowledged and recommended by academic developers from their institutions as being innovative and forerunner university teachers. From this pool of innovative university teachers, 14 participants from soft science (e.g. business, education, humanities) and 14 from hard science disciplinary areas (e.g. engineering, medical and health sciences) were selected. The participants were coming from 9 higher education institutions from Hungary. Besides ensuring heterogeneity across disciplinary fields (soft and hard sciences), the sample strived to include different age groups, genders, university positions and years of expertise in teaching. The interview protocol drew on previous interview-based research studies about educational innovation in higher education (Hannan & Silver, 2000). The semi-structured interviews focused on the following topics: the aims of educational innovations, own educational innovation practice and processes, the characteristics of innovative teachers, colleagues and groups, innovation competences of university teachers, institutional facilitators and barriers to educational innovation, supportive community for pedagogical innovation. The interviews were around 60 to 70 minutes long and conducted online in MS Teams in the Spring of 2025. The research study was granted ethical permission (2024/620) from our university. Data were analyzed applying a collaborative thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Hemphill & Richards, 2018; Delve et al., 2023). The collaborative approach was started with planning the joint work of the three researchers involved in data analysis, then initial codes and themes were generated individually, then discussed and shared together for enriching the interpretations. Based on the jointly agreed main themes, all interviews were analyzed by two researchers, and the main themes were reinterpreted and finalized. For the analysis, MAXQDA 24.7 was used.

Our preliminary results show nine key themes for the interpretation of pedagogical innovations in higher education. The themes of innovation as ‘teacher’s self-fulfillment', ‘everyday practice’, and ‘increasing efficiency’ are primarily associated with the understanding of innovation as non-traditional teaching. These interpretations do not consider much student engagement in innovation. If yes, only at the level of consultation. Teachers often frame student resistance and indifference as key drivers of ongoing changes. A unique theme of educational innovation in higher education, is the ‘flying under the radar’ which is innovating educational practice without formal institutional recognition. This is typically connected to renewing assessment practices, and due to its ‘underground’ nature, it tends to involve students in decision-making. The themes of ‘experimenting with new solutions’ and ‘facilitating students’ active learning’ were those that connected to innovating teaching elements according to the literature review, the theme of ‘goal-oriented innovation’ was the one which focused on the integrative pedagogical innovation approach. However, teachers perceived student active involvement as weaker within ‘goal-oriented innovation’ than in the less complex approaches focusing on innovating specific teaching elements (e.g. methods or new technologies). Finally, the themes of ‘innovating through community building’ and ‘complex pedagogical and research innovations' were the most complex interpretations of pedagogical innovations and within these students were perceived as partners (Healey et al, 2014) and co-creators of educational innovations. Perceiving students as co-creators can contribute to the development of their innovation competences; however, university teachers have not recognized and reflected on this opportunity. Identifying typical patterns of the concepts about pedagogical innovation in higher education can contribute to more targeted and differentiated support for educators’ pedagogical innovation activities. Furthermore, strengthening awareness of the integration of teachers’ and students’ learning through and about pedagogical innovations can have a long-term impact even in evolving supportive learning environments.

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