Education continues to be a well-researched topic and the importance to reimagine schools of the future could not be a more pressing concern than it is today. As critical tensions steeply arise, such as climate change, systemic inequities, or digital ethics, we must wonder whether the present education system is adequately preparing children for the critical uncertainties of today and of tomorrow. And, as the Ontario education system is facing unprecedented circumstances with the unearthing of thousands of Indigenous children beneath Canadian residential schools, and the school disruptions caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic, the fragility and declining relevance of the institution is being exposed.

Instead of a prescriptive approach on specific strategies and policies that could take place, this study focuses on creatively re-imagining schools of the future through systems analysis frameworks to identify levers of change, paired with a foresight approach utilizing the Three Horizons framework. To inform, validate, and challenge these frameworks, an ongoing literature review took place over the duration of the study, and a small sample size of education system actors was interviewed and invited to participate in a foresight workshop. Together, these efforts aim to explore a response to the question: How might we shift our paradigm of education to chart a pathway forward to re-imagined schools of the future?

A lever of change worth exploring, which is the focal point of this study, is education orthodoxy across system actors. I explore how a shift in fundamental education ideology could have a drastic impact on the education system, possibly producing a preferred future. While I propose that an ideological shift can have far reaching ramifications, I acknowledge that it must be matched with other systemic interventions, but that changing the way we think about education is certainly a critical starting point.