AI and Futures Thinking in Teacher Education: Preparing Educators Across Educational Sectors

Dear Colleagues,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping educational practice, from planning and differentiation to curriculum development to assessment, feedback, and learner support. At the same time, wider forms of digital innovation, including learning analytics, immersive and simulation-based learning, digital credentialing, and technology-enabled work-based learning, are transforming how teaching and learning are designed and experienced, particularly in vocational education and training (VET) contexts. While much current discussion focuses on immediate classroom applications and tool adoption, teacher education must respond in ways that are not only practical, but also future-oriented.

This Special Issue seeks to explore how AI and futures thinking can inform teacher education and educator professional learning across primary, secondary, further education, and VET. Contributions are invited that examine how Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) can prepare educators to engage with AI and emerging digital innovations as long-term shifts in education systems and professional practice that is explicitly linked to labour markets. Futures-oriented approaches, such as futures literacy, scenario planning, horizon scanning, anticipatory governance, and applied research methods, can help teacher education programmes move beyond reactive responses to technological change and toward intentional preparation for multiple possible futures.

A particular emphasis of this Special Issue is co-creation as a strategy for ensuring teacher education remains responsive to the technologies that matter to learners and communities. We welcome contributions that examine co-design and participatory approaches involving student teachers, school pupils, VET learners, teacher educators, and stakeholders such as employers and industry partners. Co-creation is positioned here not only as a method of innovation, but also as a means of strengthening relevance, inclusion, and educator agency in AI-enabled and digitally evolving educational environments.

Empirical research, applied research studies, systematic and scoping reviews, conceptual and theoretical contributions, and practice-based case studies are all welcome. Submissions may address curriculum and programme design, professional competencies, assessment redesign, ethical and policy challenges, equity and inclusion, institutional leadership, and the evolving roles and identities of teachers and teacher educators. Collectively, this Special Issue aims to advance evidence-informed and future-ready models of teacher education that strengthen educators’ professional judgement, responsibility, and capacity for innovation across educational sectors.

Topics of Interest

Submissions may address (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• AI and digital innovation in teacher education (ITE and CPD) across primary, secondary, FE, and VET;
• Futures Thinking and futures literacy as components of educator preparation;
• Scenario planning, horizon scanning, and anticipatory approaches to educational and workforce futures;
• Educator capability frameworks: AI literacy, digital pedagogy, and innovation competencies;
• Generative AI in teacher education: opportunities, limitations, and pedagogical design principles;
• Assessment futures: authentic assessment, academic integrity, feedback, and evaluation in AI-rich contexts;
• Ethical and safeguarding issues: bias, transparency, privacy, accountability, and responsible innovation;
• Equity and inclusion in AI/digital innovation: access, disability, language learners, and digital divides;
• Simulation-based learning, XR/VR/AR, and virtual labs/workshops in teacher preparation (especially in VET);
• Learning analytics and data-informed teaching: educator preparation for interpretation, ethics, and action;
• Digital credentialing (micro-credentials, e-portfolios, badges) and implications for teacher education;
• Digital innovation in work-based learning, apprenticeships, and competency-based education;
• Teacher educator capacity-building: preparing teacher educators to lead AI and digital innovation;
• Institutional leadership and policy: anticipatory governance, strategy, and implementation in teacher education;
• Cross-national and comparative perspectives on teacher education in AI-enabled futures;
• Co-creation and co-design approaches with learners, student teachers, teacher educators, and industry partners;
• Evaluating co-created initiatives: impact on relevance, agency, inclusion, engagement, sustainability and governance.

Dr. Paul Flynn
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• AI in teacher education
• futures thinking/futures literacy
• digital innovation in pedagogy
• professional learning (ITE and CPD)
• educational technology ethics