Frugal pedagogical innovation: reframing creativity in higher education teaching

This article explores how pedagogical innovation is enacted under constraint in UK higher education, drawing on interviews with academic educators, senior leaders, and technology-enabled learning (TEL) professionals. It develops frugal pedagogical innovation (frugal PI), a new conceptual framework that reconceptualises innovation in higher education. Integrating Frugal Innovation Theory and Self-Determination Theory, frugal PI reveals how innovation actually emerges. Findings show how participants reframed constraint as a catalyst for creativity, developing small-scale, values-led practices that often remain invisible within recognition systems privileging visibility and scale. These practices reveal how everyday adaptations sustain teaching quality and professional identity while resisting performative narratives of transformation. By positioning frugal PI as relational, ethical and sustainable, the study advances pedagogical innovation debates. It calls for recognition structures that privilege sustainability, autonomy and collegial support, reframing innovation as grounded professional practice rather than institutional spectacle.