This special issue of Policy Futures in Education asks authors to imagine educational futures. What do education, school, teaching, learning, curriculum, and pedagogy look like 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now? One way to think about these issues is futures studies. Based on work developed in the second half of the 20th Century (Bell, 1997; Dator, 2002), futures studies asks a series of questions, the most significant being: what is probable (what is most likely to happen); what is possible (what could happen); and what is preferable (what do you want to have happen)? Additionally, the best illustrations we have of futures thinking lie in science fiction, which often operates from a position of prefactual thinking – that is, anticipating what might happen should some future event occur. This is different from counterfactual thinking, in which the present is reimagined based on a past event (Sanna, 1996). Authors should adopt a prefactual perspective, and are encouraged to draw on examples from science fiction to imagine scenarios of the future of education.
Bell, W. (1997). Foundations of futures studies: Human science for a new era. Volume I: History, purposes, and knowledge. Transaction Publishers. Dator, J. A. (Ed.), Futures studies in higher education. Praeger. Sanna, L. J. (1996). Defensive pessimism, optimism, and simulating alternatives: Some ups and downs of prefactual and counterfactual thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(5), 1020-1036.
Please see the full CFP before submitting an abstract. Proposals with a tentative title, 250-word abstract, and author(s) should be sent to Special Issue Editor, Dr. David W. Kupferman, assistant professor of educational foundations at Minnesota State University Moorhead by November 15, 2020. Full papers are to be submitted by February 15, 2021.
The 
Call for Papers – Volume 40
Prof. Jun Li
Daniella Forster
One of our young PESA members, Mr Lin Cong, Jason, a PhD student in the Hong Kong University Faculty of Education, Social Contexts and Policies of Education Unit, has been selected for a Fulbright-Research Grants Council, Hong Kong Research Scholar Award 2020-21as Visiting Student Scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA for 10 months starting in 2021. Jason’s research is on multiculturalism and Chinese identity formation in Chinese societies, and issues of the Chinese diaspora in the United States regarding their Chineseness. This is another recognition for Jason who was awarded a 2019 PESA Research Grant. Congratulations!