Beyond the Inevitable: Challenging Techno-Determinism with Futures Thinking

“We have to adapt to the changing technological landscape.”

“AI is the future of education – we need to get on board or get left behind.”

I’ve heard variations of these statements countless times over the past few months, both in my conversations with educators and in broader discussions about AI in education. Each time, something about them has left me feeling uneasy, but it wasn’t until I revisited Facer’s work on futures thinking that I could articulate why: techno-determinism – the belief that technology follows an inevitable, linear path of development that society must simply adapt to.

The problem with techno-determinism isn’t just that it’s factually questionable – it’s that it robs us of our agency. If technology simply “evolves” along a predetermined path, what role is left for us except passive acceptance? This perspective transforms technology from something we create and shape into an autonomous force with its own inexorable logic.

This brings me back to that paradigm shift I experienced at the beginning of this journey, when I first encountered futures thinking. What struck me then, and what strikes me now with renewed force, is the radical proposition that the future isn’t something that happens to us, but something that happens with us.

Futures thinking offers a powerful alternative to techno-determinism. While techno-determinism presents a singular, inevitable technological future, futures thinking encourages us to imagine multiple possible futures and recognize our role in shaping which one comes to pass. It rejects the notion that technological development follows a predetermined path and instead emphasizes that the future, and technology, is shaped by human choices, values, and social contexts.

In my conversations with educators over the past few months, I noticed how techno-deterministic narratives often shut down conversation rather than opening it up. When we frame AI as an inevitable force that education must adapt to, we immediately narrow the discussion to how we should adapt, not whether or in what ways we should engage with these technologies. We foreclose the possibility of alternative paths before we’ve even explored them.

Futures thinking, by contrast, invites us to ask richer questions:

What kind of educational future do we want to create?
How might AI serve or undermine these aspirations?
What values should guide our engagement with these technologies?
What alternative futures become possible when we view technology as something we shape, not something that shapes us?

The work of Ross and Bayne & Gallagher that I mentioned in my first blog post emphasizes this point: our agency has not been stolen; it has just been dormant. When we reject techno-determinism and embrace futures thinking, we awaken this dormant agency.

This doesn’t mean ignoring technological developments or refusing to engage with them. Rather, it means approaching them critically and intentionally, recognizing that we have choices about how, when, and whether to incorporate them into our educational practices.

For my project, this means moving beyond the question of how to “implement AI in education” to the more fundamental question of what kind of education we want to create, and then considering how (or whether) AI might serve these aspirations. It means helping educators reclaim their agency in the face of techno-deterministic narratives that present adaptation as the only option.

Perhaps most importantly, it means recognizing that the most significant barriers to thoughtful AI integration in education aren’t technical but conceptual – the mental models and assumptions that frame how we think about technology in the first place. By challenging techno-determinism through futures thinking, we can create space for more thoughtful, intentional, and agency-affirming approaches to AI in education.

The future of education isn’t a technological inevitability – it’s a space of possibilities that we collectively create. And in that space lies our power, our responsibility, and our hope.