Preparing teachers for uncertain futures has become an urgent concern in an era marked by artificial intelligence, ecological instability, and accelerating sociopolitical change. While teacher education has increasingly emphasised transversal skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and adaptability, far less attention has been paid to foresight competency as a distinct and learnable professional skill set. This study addresses that gap by examining how foresight-oriented pedagogies can cultivate pre-service teachers’ capacity to anticipate, interpret, and act within conditions of uncertainty.

Foresight competency is understood here as the integration of rational and intuitive cognitive processes that support anticipation, sense-making, ethical judgment, and design under uncertainty (Hines et al., 2017). Unlike predictive or planning-oriented approaches, foresight competency enables educators to work with multiple plausible futures, question default assumptions, and translate anticipatory insight into pedagogical action. This competency aligns with UNESCO’s (2021) framing of futures literacy as a foundational human capability, while extending it through concrete professional practices relevant to teaching.

The study draws on qualitative data from foresight workshops embedded within pre-service teacher education programmes in India and Finland. Participants engaged in futures scanning, scenario development, and science-fiction prototyping, producing speculative graphic narratives, visual identity maps, futures matrices, and reflective texts. These pedagogical activities were designed to function as structured yet imaginative learning experiences that foreground uncertainty as a productive condition rather than a deficit to be managed.

Data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), allowing analytic categories to emerge inductively from participants’ meaning-making across multimodal artefacts and dialogic reflection. Futures literacy and transformative learning theory functioned as sensitising concepts rather than deductive frameworks.

Findings reveal four interrelated patterns that illuminate how foresight competency develops as a professional skill set. First, uncertainty functioned as a catalyst for reflective agency: participants moved from anxiety and linear thinking toward plural, conditional interpretations of educational futures. Second, participants shifted from technological anxiety to ethical stewardship, repositioning teachers as mediators of human–technology relationships rather than technical operators. Third, professional identity evolved from content delivery toward design-oriented roles focused on shaping humane learning ecologies. Finally, hope was reframed as critical intentionality—a disciplined commitment to act ethically within uncertainty rather than naïve optimism.

Together, these findings demonstrate that foresight competency can be cultivated pedagogically through structured futures-oriented practices. Rather than remaining an abstract disposition, foresight emerged as an actionable skill set linking anticipation to ethical judgment and pedagogical design. The study contributes empirical evidence to futures literacy scholarship by showing how anticipatory capacity can be embedded within teacher education, and extends transformative learning theory by foregrounding imagination and future-facing identity formation.

The paper argues that integrating foresight competency into pre-service teacher education strengthens the profession’s capacity to respond meaningfully to global uncertainty. By equipping educators with tools to engage ethically and imaginatively with multiple possible futures, teacher education can move beyond reactive adaptation and prepare teachers as intentional designers of humane educational futures.

This study employed a qualitative, interpretive design informed by science‑fiction prototyping as articulated in speculative design and futures studies (Blythe, 2014; Johnson, 2011). In these approaches, narrative and diegetic artefacts function as epistemic tools for exploring socio‑technical futures, allowing participants to think with possible worlds rather than forecast them. This perspective guided the integration of science‑fiction prototyping into pre‑service teacher education as a means of developing foresight competencies. The pedagogical intervention was structured as an immersive learning experience combining anticipatory exploration, speculative design, and reflective inquiry. Following Blythe’s (2014) emphasis on narrative as a research device and Johnson’s (2011) conceptualisation of prototyping as a way to interrogate assumptions, workshops invited students to engage with signals of change, construct plausible future scenarios, and produce science‑fiction prototypes imagining schooling in 2040 and beyond. Data were generated through foresight‑oriented workshops embedded in initial teacher education programs in India and Finland. In India, a week‑long (15‑hour) intensive formed part of a Postgraduate Diploma in Education program and involved 21 pre‑service teachers. In Finland, the intervention took place within a five‑credit second‑year course; 16 students consented to participate in the research. Participation in the research was voluntary and conducted in line with institutional ethics guidelines. Analysis followed constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). Initial coding focused on participants’ language and framings of uncertainty, agency, and ethics, followed by focused coding and constant comparison across contexts and artefact types. Futures‑focused analyses and goal‑setting tasks provided additional insight into how participants attempted to operationalise anticipatory thinking. The use of multimodal data aligned with research‑through‑design principles (Blythe, 2014; Johnson, 2011), acknowledging that imaginative and anticipatory learning often unfolds through visual and dialogic forms. Transformative Learning Theory and futures literacy served as sensitising concepts while allowing categories to emerge inductively. Narrative artefacts were treated as legitimate sites of knowledge production (Blythe, 2014; Johnson, 2011).

This study demonstrates that foresight competency can be cultivated as a core professional skill set within pre-service teacher education. Through structured futures-oriented pedagogies, participants developed the capacity to work productively with uncertainty, integrate ethical judgment into anticipatory thinking, and translate imagined futures into pedagogical intention. The findings contribute to futures literacy scholarship by providing empirical evidence of how anticipatory capacity can be enacted pedagogically rather than remaining a conceptual aspiration. Futures literacy emerged as a lived professional practice, expressed through narrative, visualisation, and dialogic reflection. At the same time, the study extends transformative learning theory by showing how imaginative engagement with future scenarios supports identity transformation oriented toward what educators may need to become, not only what they already know. Foresight competency functioned as the bridge between knowing and acting. Participants did not merely imagine alternative futures; they articulated how professional judgment, responsibility, and pedagogical design would need to evolve under different conditions. This positions foresight not as speculative abstraction but as a practical skill set enabling educators to navigate complexity ethically and intentionally. For teacher education, the study underscores the need to move beyond present-focused competency frameworks toward pedagogies that explicitly engage with uncertainty, imagination, and ethical responsibility. Integrating foresight competency into initial teacher education can strengthen educators’ capacity to respond to global challenges without reducing teaching to compliance or technical execution. In the context of widening knowledge-producing actors, data-driven governance, and contested futures, cultivating foresight competency supports teachers in exercising professional judgment rather than deferring authority to algorithms, metrics, or predetermined reforms. Preparing teachers for uncertain futures therefore requires not only new knowledge, but new capacities for anticipation, sense-making, and action.

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