ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how ideas of the future are produced and how they come to be accepted and acted upon. Visions of the future can matter a great deal in the present, and can have consequences for what happens, and perhaps just as importantly, what does not happen. Different approaches to thinking about the future of learning generate different kinds of understandings of what is possible, and what might be desirable. The politics and methodologies of future-making, the nature of anticipation and its relationship to speculation, and the importance of language and imaginaries are all discussed and explored in this chapter, in the context of how we might treat the future as a site of critical engagement. Critical futures work, including speculative approaches, attempts to open up new possibilities for education and learning and to act responsibly towards futures it is involved in producing.
