Futures-orientations in mathematics education

How we position ourselves in relation to the future is fundamental to the way we think about mathematics education research and practice. Yet this relationship is often assumed rather than made explicit. In this conceptual paper, we synthesise key terms, theoretical frameworks, and research related to futures (explicitly or implicitly) across the mathematics education literature, by mapping them onto five futures-orientations: mathematics education in the future; mathematics education for the future, mathematics education about futures, liberating mathematics education from the future; and mathematics education healing futures. This futures-oriented mapping of the field suggests that mathematics education is already deeply entangled with the future, even when futures remain unspoken, through curricular rationales, modelling and data practices, notions of progress, and sustainability imaginaries. By foregrounding futures-orientations, we invite critical reflection on how prevailing approaches may reproduce dominant narratives of sustainable futures, while opening a conceptual space to reimagine alternative futures, resist future-as-inevitable, and orient mathematics education toward ethical, plural, and reparative futuring. This text is part of the article collection entitled “Mathematics Education for Sustainable Futures” (available at https://link.springer.com/collections/acebaagbha ).