The philosopher George Santayana (1910) famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (p. 284). In other words, the “best” way to prepare for the future is to study the past and through that, identify patterns and trends, and then extrapolate them into the future. There is of course a fundamental assumption here—that the patterns of the past will faithfully extend into the future. It may be argued that this assumption, if ever true, is not necessarily applicable in the tumultuous times in which we live in today. So how are we are educators supposed to think about the future and plan for it?

We (Sean Leahy, Ben Scragg, and I) explore this topic in a recently published chapter in a book titled Uncertainty: A Catalyst for Creativity, Learning and Development (edited by Beghetto and Gaeger). Complete citation and abstract given below.


Leahy, S., Scragg, B., & Mishra, P. (2022). Creatively confronting the adjacent possible: Educational leadership and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In R. Beghetto, & G. J. Gaeger (Eds.) Uncertainty: A Catalyst for Creativity, Learning and Development. Springer.

Abstract: In this chapter we explore the unknown possibilities that lie in the shad- ows of disruptions and innovations known as the adjacent possible. We frame the challenges educational leaders face when trying to prepare for an increasingly vola- tile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that is propelled into the Fourth Industrial Revolution imbued with rapidly changing and unevenly distributed technological proliferation. Throughout our chapter, we offer strategic mindsets in design and futures thinking to combat the growing challenges of preparing educational systems that are rife with existing deep and complexly interwoven wicked problems for uncertainty. We propose that looking to the past, we can discover insights into meta-patterns and the ways we failed to predict the futures that emerged from previous discoveries and innovations. Using this frame, we discuss the potential of combining the interconnected mindsets of futures thinking and design, not to predict the future, but to prepare our educational systems for the uncertainty of the future.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

TPACK Newsletter #41, May 2019

TPACK Newsletter #41, May 2019

Here is the latest pdf version of the TPACK Newsletter (#41, May 2019), as curated and shared by Judi Harris and her team. (Previous issues are archived here.) This issue includes 59 articles, 4 book chapters, and 20 dissertations that have not appeared...

Learning Futures: The Podcast

Learning Futures: The Podcast

What if education systems were doing more and thinking differently about preparing learners to thrive in the future? The Learning Futures Podcast (from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College) is a series of conversations on improving education and the future of learning....

Tipping point for online learning?

Tipping point for online learning?

Is the Covid19 crisis the tipping point for online learning? As we wrote in our introduction to the Silver Lining for Learning webinar series …this crisis has forced schools and universities to close, pushing often unprepared institutions to move teaching and learning...

Too cool for school: Using the TPACK framework

Matt Koehler and I just published an article in Learning & Leading with Technology, the membership magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The complete citation is as follows: Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2009, May). Too Cool for...

Visualizing feeds

Sean Nash of Nashworld (recognizing a fellow data visualization junkie in me) had sent me this link a while ago ... but I just got around to it today. Check out FeedVis. So what does FeedVis do - think of it as a tag-cloud generator on steroids. Lots of fun there -...

SITE 2008 Keynote

The SITE Keynote presentation by Matt Koehler and myself is finally ready to release to the world. I know converting 350 sildes, and synching them to the narration was a huge task - and Matt has already spent countless hours on this. He ended up with a 60 GB file...

Art is a lie… that tells the truth

Picasso famously said, "Art is a lie that tells the truth." This design below is my attempt to represent this quote - at least the first part of the quote. Of course, as most things go, it is not clear whether Picasso ever actually said these specific words. But...

Happy 2020 (& and new video)

Happy 2020 (& and new video)

We have been creating short videos to welcome the new year since 2008. This year was no exception. These videos, created on a shoe-string budget, are usually typographical in nature with some kind of an optical illusion or AHA! moment built in. Check out our latest...

Empathy through gaming: New article

Over the past couple of years my research team (the Deep-Play Research group) and I have been writing an on-going series of articles  around the broad topic of Rethinking technology and creativity for the 21st century. Published in the journal TechTrends, these...

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