Advancing Sustainable Higher Education Systems: Faculty Practice, Adaptability, and Lifelong Learning in Education for Sustainability

Education for Sustainability (EfS) has emerged as a key response through which higher education engages ecological, social, and civic challenges. While EfS is well represented in policy and conceptual scholarship, fewer empirical studies examine how faculty enact sustainability within everyday teaching practice. This qualitative collective case study investigates the lived experiences and pedagogical practices of four faculty members at a U.S. land-grant university. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, supported by syllabi, observations, and student responses, and analyzed using cross-case thematic analysis. Analysis identified four interconnected themes: latent complexity, personal commitment, inclusive scholarship, and adaptability to student motivations and context. These themes position EfS as a relational, context-responsive process shaped through interaction among faculty identity, student engagement, and institutional conditions. These findings reposition faculty practice as a primary mechanism through which sustainability is continuously enacted, adapted, and sustained within higher education systems, with implications for institutional policy, faculty development, and long-term sustainability capacity.