FORUM 68.2  Summer 2026 – Call for papers

Posted on 04/02/2026

Copy date: Wednesday 15 April

Special issue:  ‘The futures of teaching’, co-edited by Professor Viv Ellis and Professor Marie Brennan

Contributions are invited for the Summer 2026 number of FORUM (68.2) for which the copy date is Wednesday 15 April.

What will it mean to be a teacher – and teach – in the future? What should be the relationships between schools and communities, young people and school systems? Is it possible to escape the colonial and class-based logics that have structured both how we prepare teachers and how they are permitted to teach? How can we overcome the challenges currently faced by teachers and by schools to imagine new futures for teachers and teaching?

This special issue will put teachers’ work into a broader international context and actively seek to create resources for local public debate – new ideas, new language and new practical options for moving constructively to reimagine teaching, teacher education and schooling. Each paper in the special issue will be written to provoke discussions that might create opportunities to shape a new, hopeful and future-oriented discourse about teachers, teaching and schools in society.

The starting point for the special issue is that it is now time to work towards a positive future rather than either continuing to critique the status quo or reinvent the past. Most work on futures has tended to extrapolate on current trends or to imagine idealised, utopian institutions. However, different futures need to be constructed in practice in order to move forward from the current situation.

Writing that addresses the purposes of teaching, teaching’s relationship with technology and AI, the nature of teacher education, or ways in which teachers improve on a still-dominant transmission-based approach, are especially encouraged, as is writing that draws on imaginative practice.

FORUM welcomes writing which is heart-felt as well as thought-through. There’s no set length for a FORUM article. Although many weigh in at about 4000 words, many are shorter. Nor is there a set way of writing an article. We certainly welcome academic papers, but personal reflections, critically alert consideration of issues and experiences, and informed discursive writing are welcome too, as are texts written by more than one person.

This special issue is being co-edited by Professor Viv Ellis and Professor Marie Brennan, but if you would like to contribute, please email Patrick Yarker in the first instance. The deadline to send in an article for the Summer 2026 number of FORUM is Wednesday 15 April 2026.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Patrick Yarker
Editor, FORUM: for promoting 3 to 19 comprehensive education
https://journals.lwbooks.co.uk/forum/
patyarker@aol.com