Exploring possible futures for the schools of 2050
Education systems are increasingly asked to respond to climate disruption, technological acceleration, social inequalities, democratic fragility, and uncertainty, while often remaining organised around standardisation, disciplinary fragmentation, employability, and short-term performance. Therefore, schools do not simply prepare students to adapt to social, technological, and ecological change; they also shape the ways young people imagine what futures are possible, desirable, and worth pursuing. In the Anthropocene, this role becomes politically decisive.
The central claim of this IIF Policy Paper is that futures literacy should become a core educational competence, developed through interdisciplinary practices that connect science, literature, sustainability, and collective imagination. Science education can help students engage with complexity, uncertainty, systems thinking, and the socio-ethical implications of technological change. Literature and narrative practices can expand the range of futures students are able to imagine, question deterministic or catastrophic narratives, and support ethical and political reflection. Together, these domains can help education move beyond adaptation and become a space for collective agency.
The Policy Paper is addressed to a multi-level policy audience: school leaders and teachers, local and municipal education authorities, regional and national policymakers, teacher education institutions, and organisations working at the intersection of education, culture, science, and civic participation. This reflects the core argument of the brief: futures-oriented education cannot be implemented only through top-down reform, but requires coordination across classrooms, communities, institutions, and policy systems.
The IIF Policy Papers are reports on key topics in the research carried out by the IIF – Italian Institute for the Future, produced by young researchers thanks to grants funded by the 5×1000.
The Policy Paper develops this argument in four steps:
- First, it frames the educational challenge of the Anthropocene, drawing attention to the risks of instrumentalising education around growth, productivity, and technocratic adaptation.
- Second, it reviews key frameworks and trends shaping futures-oriented education, including GreenComp, international debates on futures literacy, the role of AI and techno-solutionism, and emerging research on futures thinking in science education.
- Third, it presents three examples of initiatives working at the intersection of education, science, literature, and futures thinking: Teach the Future, FEDORA/FEDORAS, and CoFutures.
- Fourth, it develops four scenarios for the school of 2050 using Dator’s Four Futures and the Three Horizons framework: Education for Performance, Education after Trust, Education by Optimisation, and Education for Common Futures.
The Policy Paper concludes with eight policy messages addressed to schools, local governments, and state/national policymakers. These messages call for futures literacy across curricula, stronger interdisciplinary teaching, teacher agency, public governance of AI infrastructures, and the use of scenario-based thinking to guide long-term education policy. The overarching recommendation is clear: education policy should not only ask how schools can adapt to the future, but what kinds of futures schools should help create.
Authors
Lorenzo Miani
Lorenzo Miani is a postdoctoral research fellow in Physics Education at the University of Bologna, where he earned his PhD with a thesis on future-oriented science education and sustainability competences. His research focuses on climate change education, uncertainty and complexity, futures thinking, and the development of sustainability competences through innovative educational approaches. He is currently involved in the European CLIMADEMY project.
Federica Moscatelli
Federica Moscatelli is PhD student at the University of Bologna. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, border studies, migration, and dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature in the Hispano-American context. Her doctoral thesis carries out an analysis of the reconstruction of alternative and communitarian futures in dystopias and post-apocalyptic narratives.
