This 2020 Forecast illuminates how we are shifting toward a culture of creation in which each of us has the opportunity – and the responsibility – to make our collective future. People are creating new selves, organizations, systems, societies, economies, and knowledge.

We are seeing “educitizens” define their rights as learners and re-create the civic sphere. Networked artisans and ad hoc factories are democratizing manufacturing and catalyzing new local economies. These creators are highlighting the significance of cooperation and cross-cultural intelligence for citizenship and economic leadership.

Furthermore, advances in neuroscience are creating new notions of performance and cognition and are reshaping discussions of social justice in learning. Communities are beginning to re-create themselves as resilient systems that respond to challenges by replenishing their vital resources and creating flexible, open, and adaptive infrastructures.

Together, these forces are pushing us to create the future of learning as an ecosystem, in which we have yet to determine the role of educational institutions as we know them today.

Key themes:

1. Resilient School Communities
2. Amplified Educators and Learners
3. A Global Learning Economy
4. Design as Philosophy
5. Contested Authorities
6. Diversifying Learning Geographies: Deserts and Oases

Learn more about the Key Themes

To get started with the 2020 Forecast, click on one of the links in the graphic below to begin exploring.

How to Use This Forecast

This 2020 Forecast is a tool for thinking about, preparing for, and shaping the future. It outlines key forces of change that will shape the landscape of learning over the next decade.

The forecast contains four major types of information:

Drivers of Change are major forces of transformation that will shape our efforts to remake learning. They represent the convergence of several trends into emerging ideas and phenomena that will disrupt traditional narratives and assumptions about learning. The questions under each driver serve as useful starting points for discussion.

Trends are distinct directions of change that point to new concepts or new patterns of behavior that will shape the future of learning.

Signals are examples, or early indicators, of the changes described by the trends and the drivers of change. By providing analogies, data, and explicit stories, signals help make the future seem more concrete.

Learning agents suggest new roles and functions that might emerge in the future ecosystem of learning. They appear next to the drivers of change to which they seem most relevant. However, those included here are only examples, and their placement is by no means comprehensive. The learning agents depicted in this forecast might also manifest in conjunction with the other drivers of change.