Plenary - Creativity and the Future of Learning: Designing Education for What Comes Next
Education systems are navigating unprecedented challenges, from rapid technological change and growing inequities to increasing uncertainty about the future of work and learning. In response, creativity is often named as a critical competency; yet it is frequently treated as an add-on and narrowly framed as innovation, artistic expression, or isolated classroom activities, rather than as a core pedagogical approach. This space will invite practitioners and academic leaders to rethink creativity as a foundational capacity for navigating complexity and designing meaningful learning experiences. It proposes creativity as the basis for creative pedagogy, a way of teaching creatively, teaching about creativity, and fostering creative learning across educational contexts. Through this lens, creativity becomes a human-centered and strategic response to educational challenges, supporting learners and educators in developing self-awareness, adaptability, and purpose. Participants will leave with new ways of understanding creativity as an ethical and human response to the challenges shaping the future of learning, along with a renewed sense of agency to design education for what comes next.
Carolina Cuesta-Hincapie, Associate Professor
Carolina Cuesta-Hincapié is an Associate Professor in the Marketing and Innovation area at the Business College of EAFIT University in Colombia. She holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction and a master’s degree in Education from Purdue University. Her research explores the intersection of creativity and instructional design, focusing on designing learning environments that foster creative thinking, futures thinking, creative self-efficacy, and learner agency. Her recent publications include a critical examination of the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking assessment, analyzing the alignment between creativity theory and large-scale educational measurement. With an interdisciplinary background in Microbiology, Innovation Management, and Learning Design and Technology, Dr. Cuesta-Hincapié brings both scholarly and practical perspectives to her work. She taught Entrepreneurship and Innovation for 7 years in Colombia, integrating creativity-centered pedagogical approaches to support creative learning and the development of an entrepreneurial mindset across higher education contexts. Beyond academia, Dr. Cuesta-Hincapié collaborates on regional initiatives that bridge research, practice, and policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her work includes Creativity: Skills for Life, published with the Inter-American Development Bank, and ongoing projects on intercultural creative thinking as an inclusive pedagogical approach that integrates futures thinking and human-centered design to advance educational innovation.
