Trends in Education 2026: The Case for Intentional Shifts

It feels as though things are moving very quickly and that there’s a lot of conversation about change - some changes that we’re being deliberate about, and some that are foisted on us. Because of AI, some of this kineticism may feel like progress, but the sheer speed and volume of change can just as easily stall decision-making and slow real momentum. Cultural shifts and technological acceleration aren’t simply introducing new tools or new languages - they’re stripping away our ability to defend practices that persist out of habit rather than conviction. For schools, the question isn’t whether change is coming, but whether we’ll respond with deliberate intention or allow automation and inertia to decide for us. Meaningful change and momentum require intentional structural and cultural shifts - what follows are five to prioritize for 2026 and how schools can start acting on them this year.

Cambridge Dictionary selected “parasocial” as the Word of the Year, and schools should pay attention. The word names a version of connection that feels real but lacks reciprocity. Students now treat one-sided relationships with celebrities, influencers, and increasingly AI systems as substitutes for belonging. Schools need to respond by becoming more unapologetically relational. Knowing students well, being known by them, and building trust over time isn’t a sentimental ideal, it’s core infrastructure. Schools that treat relationships as secondary will find themselves competing with simulations of connection they can’t outscale or out-perform. Schools that design intentionally for real human relationships will become more distinctive, not less.

Artificial intelligence is forcing an equally direct reckoning with how schools use time and attention. I saw this during a professional learning day I was facilitating where an administrator mentioned that she typically spent weeks over the summer reviewing discipline cases from the prior year, looking for patterns and themes to inform the year ahead. During a short break between sessions, she decided to see what AI could do. Ten minutes later, she’d surfaced themes that normally took weeks of manual review. The takeaway wasn’t that her role mattered less. It was the opposite. When the mechanical work collapsed, what remained was judgment, contextualization, and the ability to act on what the data revealed.

This is the real implication of AI for schools. It’s not about asking educators to work faster. It’s about redesigning expectations so that professional time goes toward work that requires human discernment, intellectual leadership, and relational presence. Processes that existed largely because they were once unavoidable need to be rethought or retired. Schools that fail to make this distinction will exhaust their people protecting workflows that no longer serve learning.

The need for redesign becomes even clearer when schools examine the student experience as a whole. Shadow a student for more than a day and you’ll see not isolated stress points but a system shaped by decades of accumulation. Students rapidly switch between multiple subjects, pedagogical styles, and expectations, then move to extracurricular commitments and significant homework loads. We’ve normalized this without sufficient attention to its cumulative effect. The implication isn’t that we should protect students from challenge or complexity. We need to take responsibility for coherence. Schools can’t keep optimizing individual courses in isolation while ignoring the lived experience of students.

At the center of this rebalancing is the role of the teacher and, more broadly, the range of learning experiences we allow ourselves to value. This came into focus during a recent conversation with a student entering the early stages of the college process. She asked how she was supposed to know whether she’d enjoy a school centered on lectures or one built around seminars. She realized she’d never really experienced either. Her schooling, like that of many students, had lived largely within a narrow pedagogical lane.

This isn’t a failure of intention. It’s a failure of imagination. Schools have entrenched themselves in camps, privileging certain modes of learning while quietly dismissing others. In doing so, we’ve limited students’ exposure to the full range of intellectual experiences they’ll encounter beyond our walls. A riveting lecture delivered by a passionate expert and a collaborative, real-world project aren’t opposing philosophies. They’re complementary experiences, and both belong in a well-designed education. Pedagogical inclusivity means giving students access to different ways of thinking, learning, listening, and contributing, then helping them develop the judgment to navigate among them.

In an AI-rich world, this makes the teacher’s role more important, not less. Students don’t need fewer ideas or fewer perspectives. They need experts who can curate experiences, connect ideas across contexts, and help them move between depth and breadth without becoming overwhelmed. We don’t achieve balance by flattening differences or reducing ambition. We achieve it through intentional design and teachers we trust as intellectual leaders.

Alongside these structural shifts is a cultural one. I believe this year will mark a move away from deficit-based models of community toward something closer to what author and leader Eboo Patel describes through the metaphor of the potluck. A potluck assumes contribution. You invite people believing they have something worth bringing, and that their identity is connected to that contribution rather than in tension with it. For schools, this has practical consequences. Communities built around contribution invite shared responsibility and sustained engagement. Equity work doesn’t disappear in this model. It gets grounded in dignity, agency, and mutual investment.

Taken together, these shifts point toward a more assertive moment for schools. We need to design a relationship, not assume it. We need to protect time for work that only humans can do. Student experience needs to be coherent, not merely rigorous. Pedagogy needs to be expansive rather than rigid. We need to position teachers as expert navigators of complexity. We need to build community on the assumption that everyone has something to contribute.

In a world increasingly shaped by simulation, speed, and scale, schools face a clear choice. They can automate inherited structures and defend old camps, or they can use this moment to clarify purpose, rebalance effort, and recommit to learning as a fundamentally human endeavor.

Michael Nachbar
GOA Executive Director

Prior to founding GOA, Michael served as Lakeside School’s middle school assistant director, and worked for seven years at Village Community School in New York City in a variety of roles, including teacher, curriculum coordinator, and director of technology. He began his career as a Teach for America corps member, teaching high school English in Roma, Texas.

He is a frequent speaker and workshop facilitator at national and international conferences, and has presented dozens of times on such topics as educational trends impacting schools, modern teaching and learning, and global education.

Michael is an active board member for several education organizations, including the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), Independent School Association Network (ISAnet), and Jump! Foundation, and serves on the advisory board for Sea Change Mentoring. Previous boards include the Mastery Transcript Consortium and Summer Search. He lives in New York with his family.

For more, see:

• Expanding Teacher Range: Building Expertise Across Three Domains of Teaching
• GOA as a Lab School: Innovation Through Practice
• Stop Choosing Sides: The False Dichotomies Holding Education Back

GOA is a nonprofit learning organization that reimagines learning to empower students and educators worldwide. In partnership with our global network of 150 schools, we provide interactive, relationship-driven courses, expert resources, and innovative thinking that help to expand and elevate academic programs. Together, we help students and educators become open to the extraordinary.

Follow us on LinkedIn for the latest learning opportunities and news. Sign up for GOA Insights, our newsletter focused on innovative ideas and best practices for the future of learning. Become a Member School.