Back to the Future of Educational Research

In 2020, OECD issued a report, Back to the Future of Education, arguing for more flexible and expansive views of possible futures for education.

A year later, UNESCO published another report “Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education,” catalyzing a global debate on how knowledge, education, and learning need to be reimagined in a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and precarity.

Whether COVID-19 or global climate change, human migration, or the rise of artificial intelligence – education is increasingly being transformed, often in unpredictable ways, this transformation needs to be guided by sound research, research that is grounded in context and history and yet with an eye towards designing for the future. And as both the OECD and UNESCO reports asserted, there are multiple potential future scenarios for education, and accordingly, no single “correct” direction for the future of educational research. <br