Distinguished University Professor Kathryn Hibbert.
New project to use strategic foresight to envision education policies and practices for an uncertain future
How can education systems make sound decisions today when the social, technological and economic conditions young people will encounter tomorrow are increasingly difficult to anticipate?
A new Western University-led research project, developed in partnership with the EdCan Network, will investigate whether strategic foresight can provide education researchers, practitioners and policy makers with rigorous new ways of engaging with that uncertainty.
Led by Kathryn Hibbert, Distinguished University Professor in Western's Faculty of Education, the two-year project, Strategic foresight as a research methodology to strengthen policy and practice in K–12 education, has received a $74,230 Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). SSHRC lists the project among the recipients of its February 2026 Insight Development Grant competition. The project will culminate in a national working symposium to be hosted at Western’s Faculty of Education from Friday, May 7 to Saturday, May 8.
"Education is always preparing young people for a world we cannot fully know," said Hibbert. "Yet much of the evidence available to educators and policy makers necessarily tells us about conditions that already exist, or things that have already happened. This project asks what we might learn by adding rigorous ways of studying uncertainty, change and alternative futures to the education research toolkit."
A methodology for engaging with uncertainty
Strategic foresight uses systematic methods to investigate emerging trends, uncertainties, assumptions and possible directions of change. The Western-led team will adapt and examine methods including environmental and horizon scanning, systems mapping, causal layered analysis and scenario development within a Canadian K–12 education context. The aim is to examine a range of plausible futures and what they reveal about choices being made in the present.
"We are interested in whether thinking systematically about several possible futures can help us notice assumptions, relationships and consequences that are harder to see when we look only from the perspective of the present," Hibbert said.
Bringing educators into the research process
A defining feature of the project is the role educators and education leaders will play in the research.
The EdCan Network, Canada's independent, nonpartisan non-profit connecting research and practice in primary and secondary education, is a core partner. Its Executive Director, Kathleen Lane, brings extensive national reach and deep experience connecting education professionals with research and policy.
EdCan identified this project as a priority, launching a National Foresight project in February, 2026. Lane noted, “We are hearing from educators that student needs are evolving quickly and that the training and resource that educators have access to isn't keeping up with the pace of change”.
Through the EdCan Network, the project will draw on established relationships with teachers, administrators and system leaders across the country to ensure practitioner knowledge shapes every stage of the work.
The project will convene a strategic foresight working group in which education professionals and researchers examine emerging trends, test assumptions, map relationships within education systems and construct and interrogate possible future scenarios.
"Teachers and school and system leaders experience the consequences of education policy every day," Hibbert said. "Their professional knowledge needs to be part of the process through which possible futures are interpreted, questioned and imagined. We want to create a research space in which different kinds of expertise can genuinely work together."
The initial research will lead to the development of contrasting scenarios for Canadian K–12 education, supported by narrative cases and other tools that make those futures tangible enough to examine and debate. The broader two-day national working session to be hosted at Western in May, will bring educators, researchers and policy actors together to work with the scenarios and explore their implications for educational decision-making. The project is designed to test and refine the methodology rather than produce a prescribed set of policy recommendations.
An interdisciplinary team
The research brings together expertise that does not typically reside within a single discipline or sector.
Working with Hibbert and Lane are Nicole Fournier-Sylvester, a strategic foresight researcher with extensive experience in education and federal foresight work; Suzanne Stein, strategic foresight scholar and advisor at OCAD University; Joel Murphy, Director of Futures Research at Acadia Divinity College; and Jennifer Murphy, Director of National Program Initiatives at Shad Canada.
Collectively, the team brings expertise in education research, strategic foresight, systems thinking, futures research, youth and workforce futures, professional engagement and knowledge mobilization.
The project will also provide advanced research training for a doctoral research assistant who will work across the research process, from environmental scanning and foresight methodology to analysis and knowledge mobilization.
Studying how multiple forces interact
Education systems are currently grappling with intersecting changes involving artificial intelligence, workforce conditions, student well-being, equity, demographic change and evolving expectations of schools. Strategic foresight offers tools for considering how these forces may interact over time.
"The question is also, 'What are the patterns we may not yet be seeing, what assumptions are shaping the choices available to us, and what different futures could those choices help create?'" Hibbert said.
The project will ultimately produce open-access resources including a futures report, scenario-based narrative cases, discussion tools and methodological scholarship examining the use of strategic foresight in education research.
The research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through an Insight Development Grant.
