How Do Teachers Respond To Sustained Change?

Higher Education is facing profound shifts. Employers seek graduates who can work effectively with others in rapidly changing contexts, defined by globalisation, diversity, digitalisation, climate change, complexity, a European war, and a recent global pandemic. The latter caused an instantaneous switch to online learning, where academics were forced to conduct their normally face to face classes through video conferencing tools. The calls for sustained change are challenging academics to rethink their traditional teaching roles and to develop new understandings of future-oriented learning methods and goals for their students. This paper describes the research we have conducted into how academics have responded to these challenges, both short term (emergency remote teaching) and the long-term shift to new ways of teaching (e.g., for transdisciplinary learning working with diverse communities on their solutions). The authors have explored this issue over the last two years, using qualitative research methods, through workshops and interviews, which have been analysed for major themes.