Over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the future-focused pedagogical approaches we see being promoted and implemented in schools. I’ve heard some principals say “we’re an inquiry-based school”, or “we’re a project-based learning school” for example. While the value of such approaches lie in the research-informed frameworks and guidance provided, there is always a danger that in pursing these things we can become ‘locked into’ a particular approach or strategy and miss the benefits of others. Much of what’s driving this thinking is my observation in many schools and conversations with many educators that in the wake of current education reforms, the emphasis on these valuable approaches is being sidelined while teachers focus on the ‘hour a day’ routine of literacy and numeracy.
So I’ve been thinking about a way of bringing these to the foreground of our thinking, and not letting them simply ‘disappear’ while our attention is diverted elsewhere. Rather than focus on simply promoting one particular approach over another, I’ve been thinking about how we might bring these different ideas into alignment so that the focus remains on developing the capabilities required of our young learners to thrive into the future, and to feel empowered to actively engage in and influence the way that future is being shaped. In other words, to become Future Makers.
It is one thing to have a shared vision for what we want our young people to achieve, but another to create the sorts of learning experiences and environments that will achieve this. The education landscape is awash with advice on how to do this, each claiming to provide the answer. We see the result of this with campaigns to promote things such as project-based learning, competency-based learning, futures literacy or learner agency for example.
Focusing on any of these things exclusively can ignore the value of the others. The reality is that, in most cases, the implementation strategies of each overlap to some extent or other. Instead of being narrowly focused, we could gain a lot from a more integrated view of how we draw value from each of these domains.
The integrated question becomes: How do we create learning experiences where students exercise authentic agency, develop visible competencies, through sustained inquiry into real problems, oriented toward multiple possible futures they have power to shape?
The diagram (and the explanations that follow) below provides a framework for thinking about how each of these domains might contribute to a broader aspiration of creating future makers in our schools…
WHO – who has the power in the learning relationship?
The foundation: Who has power in the learning relationship?
Expanded understanding: Learner agency goes beyond “student voice” as a token gesture. It’s about fundamentally redistributing epistemic authority – recognising that learners are knowers, not just receivers. This means:
- Co-design of learning: Students participating in curriculum decisions, assessment design, and success criteria
- Metacognitive capacity: Building learners’ awareness of their own thinking, preferences, and growth edges
- Identity and belonging: Creating space for learners to bring their whole selves, cultural knowledge, and lived experience as legitimate curriculum content
- Response-ability: Developing the capacity to respond thoughtfully to challenges rather than simply comply with directions
The shift: From “what do I need students to do?” to “how do I create conditions where learners can exercise meaningful choice and develop self-directed purpose?”
Sample resources: Agency By Design: An Educators’ Playbook; Big Picture Learning; The Learner Centred Collaborative
WHAT – The Substance of Learning
The substance: What capabilities matter, and what knowledge is important?
Expanded understanding: CBL reimagines what counts as achievement by making learning targets transparent and progression flexible. But it’s crucial this doesn’t become mechanistic:
- Knowledge as foundation and context: Competencies don’t exist in a vacuum – they require rich, connected knowledge domains. Learners draw on conceptual and procedural knowledge to think critically, communicate effectively, and create new understandings.
- Granular clarity with holistic integration: Breaking down complex capabilities while ensuring learners see how pieces connect to meaningful wholes
- Transferable competencies: Emphasising skills that travel across contexts (critical thinking, collaboration, adaptive problem-solving) alongside domain-specific knowledge
- Mastery orientation: Replacing time-based progression with demonstration of understanding – failure becomes feedback, not judgment
- Equity through transparency: Making hidden curriculum explicit so all learners understand what success looks like and multiple pathways to get there
The shift: From “covering content this term or this semester” to “what evidence shows this learner can actually do something with their learning?”
Sample resources: CompetencyWorks; Mastery Learning (Khan Academy)
HOW – The Approach of Learning
The method: How does deep learning happen?
Expanded understanding: Inquiry-based and applied learning experiences, highlighting real-world relevance and problem-solving, often tied to projects and community contexts, create the ‘container’ where agency, competency, and purpose converge through sustained, complex work:
- Authentic context: Problems that matter beyond the classroom, with real audiences and genuine consequences
- Sustained inquiry arc: Extended time to grapple, iterate, fail, and refine – mirroring how actual work happens
- Interdisciplinary by nature: Breaking artificial subject boundaries because real problems don’t respect them
- Thinking made visible: Using protocols for reflection, peer critique, and revision that externalize and develop cognitive processes
- Public accountability: Presenting work to authentic audiences raises stakes and motivation
The shift: From “activities that engage students” to “extended investigations that develop disciplined thinking and tangible impact.”
Sample resources: PBLWorks; NewMetrics, Transforming what we Value in Schools:
WHY – The Purpose of Learning
The purpose: What future are we preparing for?
Expanded understanding: This is perhaps the most radical dimension – challenging the assumption that education is about preparing for a predetermined future (e.g. the world of work) and instead embracing the following:
- Pluralising futures: Practicing “futures thinking” as a discipline – exploring multiple possible, probable, and preferable futures rather than accepting one trajectory
- Anticipatory capacity: Developing comfort with uncertainty and complexity rather than seeking definitive answers
- Systems thinking: Understanding how change happens through interconnected systems, feedback loops, and emergence
- Agency in the face of complexity: Moving from “the future will happen to us” to “we are actively shaping what emerges”
- Present re-imagination: Using futures thinking to challenge and let go of present assumptions (why do we assume school must look like this?)
The shift: From “preparing students for the workforce” to “developing humans who can navigate unknowability and contribute to shaping better possible worlds.”
Sample resources: Teach the Future – https://www.teachthefuture.org/; Taking a Future Focused Approach in education – What does it mean?; The Future Focus principle (MoE)
The Integration:
What makes this framework powerful is how these dimensions require each other:
- Agency without competency = voice without capacity to act effectively
- Competency without agency = skilled compliance rather than self-directed capability
- Projects without competency focus = engaging activities that don’t build transferable learning
- Projects without futures thinking = solving yesterday’s problems with outdated assumptions
- Futures literacy without agency = paralyzing awareness of complexity without power to respond
- Futures literacy without projects = abstract speculation disconnected from action
Download the Creating FutureMakers thought piece
This post contains a summary of the ideas I’ve pulled together in the latest FutureMakers Thought Piece – titled Creating FutureMakers. It’s available for free on the FutureMakers website – simply navigate to the Thought Pieces on the menu bar.
I’m keen to hear if you think your thoughts in what I’ve written – in particular, what you think of the Planning Challenge that I’ve included starting on page 22? Please respond in the comments below…
