Radical Pedagogy: Orientations for the Near Future

This paper explores radical pedagogy as a future-oriented, imaginative, and transformative educational stance that responds to the cascading complexities of our time. The paper discusses pedagogy as a vital site for reclaiming social imagination and cultivating alternative, desirable futures. In response to what has been described as a contemporary crisis of imagination, radical pedagogy is framed as an emerging, plural, and collective practice. Drawing on critical and speculative traditions, the paper discusses four interconnected orientations that might shape radical pedagogies for the near future: transversal collaborations, playful pedagogies, relational attunement, and rebellious hope. These orientations offer pathways for reconfiguring educational practices toward more profound collectivity, relationality, and sustainability. Rather than providing prescriptive methods, the paper invites diverse partners, including educators, creatives, and civic actors, to engage in shared inquiry into how pedagogy can be reimagined as a collaborative and transformative force. In doing so, it contributes to the expanding body of work that seeks to articulate pedagogy and education not just as preparation for the future, but as a lived, experimental, and imaginative practice of world-making both in the present and the future.