In this introduction to the special issue on “Utopias and Science Fictions in Education Theory and Philosophy”, we explore the points of departure that brought these contributions together, including our Summer School in the coastal town of Gdynia (generously supported by PESGB and the European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk) where participants were given the opportunity to enact in real time utopian and speculative modes of thinking and writing on the present state of education. The Summer School was a culmination of several years of thinking together about the role, the actuality, or indeed the (im)possibility of utopias and science fictions in theorising about education, which we briefly summarise in the text. This special issue showcases how science fiction and educational theory, when placed in dialogue, can reanimate the utopian dimension of education. By experimenting with axioms, reassembling everyday utopias, and engaging in speculative fabulation, the essays collected here suggest that utopia remains vital for charting the horizons of educational thought. Within these horizons, utopian thought may no longer appear as the grand projection of modernity but persist as practices and forms of thinking and theory production, offering, just like science fiction, a mode of imagination and a way of inhabiting the present otherwise. To affirm this is not to indulge in mere fantasy, but to recognize that education itself consists in and educational theory could become an invitation to think beyond what is.
Brady et al. (2026) studied this question.