Digital education futures: design for doing education differently

The future is both an elusive, and allusive, concept. Who can predict the future, especially in todays complex and uncertain world? The last two years have illustrated this profoundly. And what of our digital education future what will that look like, and how can we shape it? What can we learn from where we have progressed to now in terms of collaborative and participatory, design-based research, innovation and technology, at this important moment in our educational history? We are pleased to announce the publication of this first special issue of the Irish Educational Studies on the topic of digital education futures, which helps to answer these important questions, looking at technology-enhanced learning in education as we learn and teach through and beyond COVID-19. This special issue publishes a diverse selection of papers that can help us to envision the future of education and how we can design for doing education differently, post-pandemic. The papers range from virtual reality and design-based research to blended learning, MOOCs and humanoid robots, offering us creative, principled and participatory insights and perspectives on how innovative technologies can be deployed to enhance learning and teaching.