• Research challenges
  • Generations and lifecourse
  • Identities, citizenship, communities
  • Knowledge, creativity and communication
  • Work and employment
  • State/market/third sector
  • Cross-challenge activities
  • Original challenge long-list
• Stakeholder engagement
• Research into action
• Expert Advisory Group

Research programme

details about the project’s research objectives and activities

Beyond Current Horizons is building a challenging and long-term vision for education in the context of social and technological change.

The objectives of the project are:

• to build an evidence and ideas resource base to support strategic decision making in the field of education and technology
• to produce a set of scenarios to support strategic decision making in the field of education and technology
• to generate informed debate about the challenges and choices facing education in the context of social and technological change
• to enhance the capacity of policy makers, key stakeholders and practitioners to think and talk about the future on an ongoing basis.

These objectives are being addressed through three activities:

Building the evidence

Commissioning world-leading researchers to develop interconnected programmes of robust scientific review and ideas generation, identifying emerging trends in society, technology and education that will act as the most significant drivers of change in education (see the research challenges - ‘Generations and lifecourse’, ‘Identities, citizenship, communities’, ‘Knowledge, creativity and communication’, ‘Work and employment’ and ‘State/market/third sector’).

Beyond Current Horizons is also informed by Professor Stephen Heppell’s horizon-scanning work - see the horizonTAL website for more details.

Engaging stakeholders and the public

Delivering a programme of online and face-to-face activities to encourage the debate and understanding of future trends and develop long-term visions for the potential purpose, nature and organisation of education (see stakeholder engagement and public engagement).

Translating research into action

Developing tools and resources to gather together and share the evidence and ideas, making sure that the work of Beyond Current Horizons leads to meaningful and accessible ways for all audiences to make use of it (see research into action).

What has been achieved so far?

Activities to date have included:

• the design of a coherent scientific and technical approach to the research programme
• an international review of methods for futures studies and of futures scenarios (see Futures Review)
• interviews and workshops with leading thinkers and researchers in diverse fields from virtual worlds to museums and galleries
• public engagement events with parents of young children, teenagers and teachers
• a programme of industry engagement
• commissioning a set of outline challenge papers in fields as diverse as demographics and artificial intelligence
• establishing an Expert Advisory Group and developing five key research challenges
• the design of a set of online engagement tools.

All of the outcomes from the project are posted in the findings section as they become available - keep up-to-date with all the latest developments by subscribing to the e-newsletter.