About Future Education

Future Education

Future Education is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal co-founded by Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou and OAE Publishing Inc. It made its debut on 20 May 2026 at the Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education, held in Taicang during XJTLU's twentieth anniversary year. Its Editor-in-Chief is Professor Youmin Xi, Executive President of XJTLU, whose founding editorial, “Reshaping education: the ecosystem imperative”, opened the inaugural issue, Volume 1, Issue 1, in September 2026. The journal publishes work across four areas: the transformation of educational ecosystems; human learning in an era of AI; transnational and cross-cultural education; and the practical pathways through which educational innovation takes root.

A journal launched at an AI and education conference

The circumstances of the launch were chosen to state the journal's purpose. Future Education debuted on 20 May 2026 at the Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education (ICAIE), held from 13 to 15 May 2026 at the XJTLU Entrepreneur College in Taicang, and the university's announcement followed on 20 May. XJTLU describes the journal as a peer-reviewed, open-access publication focused on the systems, institutions and pedagogical models that will define how humanity learns in the decades ahead. At the launch, Professor Youmin Xi argued that the rapid development of AI is not simply a technical disruption, but an invitation to rethink the very architecture of education. Min Fan, President of OAE Publishing Inc., noted that the launch represents OAE's most substantial commitment yet to education research, drawing on its global networks to amplify the journal's reach and impact.

The founding university: XJTLU in Suzhou

Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University is the Suzhou-based joint-venture university whose founding Executive President, Youmin Xi, has led it with an explicit mission to explore new models of education. Xi has described the founding ambition as creating an international university in China and a Chinese university recognised internationally, combining quality assurance standards from the UK, flexibility from the US and the education foundation system from China. In May 2021, for its fifteenth anniversary, XJTLU launched its Academy of Future Education — the academy from which Professor Xi's editorial correspondence for the new journal is addressed, at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123, Jiangsu, China. The academy combined the university's Educational Development Unit, Department of Educational Studies, Institute of Leadership and Education Advanced Development and Learning Mall, with a remit to research, explore, support, disseminate and impact every level of education in China and around the world. Future Education is that academy's project in journal form: the same institution that experiments with education models also publishing the peer-reviewed record of such experiments.

Editor-in-Chief Youmin Xi and the founding editorial

The journal's Editor-in-Chief is its co-founding university's Executive President. Youmin Xi's founding editorial, “Reshaping education: the ecosystem imperative”, appeared as the opening item of Volume 1, Issue 1, cited as Future Education, 1(1), 1, with DOI 10.20517/futureeduc.2026.06; the editorial was received on 31 August 2026, accepted on 2 September 2026 and published on 18 September 2026. In it, Xi welcomes readers to the inaugural issue of the new international journal and states that it is born out of a conviction that the current global education system needs rethinking. His own journey — first as a science student, later as a scholar studying complex systems, and then as founding Executive President of XJTLU — informs the editorial's central metaphor: education as an ecosystem, to be reshaped as a whole rather than adjusted piecemeal. The journal, he writes, is therefore not simply another education journal. Professor Stuart Perrin, named at the launch as Chief Officer of (Education) Ecology and Executive Editor, made the complementary point: rather than marvelling at what AI can do, the more urgent question is what it should prompt us to change.

The four areas the journal publishes

XJTLU's launch announcement defines the journal's territory in four areas. First, the transformation of educational ecosystems — the systemic level at which Xi's editorial argues change must happen, covering institutions, structures and the relationships among learners, teachers, technology and society. Second, human learning in an era of AI — what happens to learning itself when artificial intelligence is present in the classroom, the workplace and the home. Third, transnational and cross-cultural education — the field in which XJTLU itself operates, as a Chinese university awarding degrees in partnership with a British university and educating students across cultures. Fourth, the practical pathways through which educational innovation takes root — the implementation question that decides whether new models survive contact with real schools and universities. Together, the four areas move from system to learner to border-crossing to practice, giving authors a clear map of where a manuscript belongs.

Education and AI: the journal's central question

No theme runs deeper in the journal's founding context than artificial intelligence. XJTLU chose an AI-and-education conference for the debut, and its president's Teachers' Day writing in 2024 had already framed the university's programme as exploring the “chemical reaction” between education and AI: deepening its higher education models with AI, launching experimental class projects at high-school level in Shenzhen, Qingdao, Xi'an and Suzhou, extending exploration to basic education in the Greater Bay Area, and cooperating with Linyi in Shandong on a college for interest-driven, personalised, lifelong, AI-supported learning. Xi's stated view is that the purpose of future education has shifted from eliminating ignorance to helping people cope with a world of uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity, changeability and scarcity. Future Education gives that programme a scholarly outlet: peer-reviewed work on human learning in an era of AI is one of its four named areas, and its launch speakers framed AI as a prompt to redesign education rather than merely a tool to insert into existing classrooms.

An ecosystem in practice: XJTLU's wider experiments

The journal's ecosystem language is grounded in the founding university's activities, which its pages can be expected to document and debate. The Academy of Future Education works to embed the university's philosophy into everyday classrooms in basic education: XJTLU's Second Basic Education Annual Innovation Conference, held in December 2025, brought together more than 300 frontline educators from across China to explore future ways of learning, and hosted the First Annual National Teaching Innovation Competition, where 33 finalist cases showcased pedagogical experiments focused on student development. Professor Wen Wang, the academy's Associate Dean for Primary and Secondary Education, has described long-term collaborative partnerships with schools across different regions. Xi's summary of that work — “when technology is rapidly transforming the world, the question education needs to answer is not how to move faster, but how to help people grow better” — captures the human-development standard the journal's title implies. A journal co-founded by a university running conferences, competitions and school partnerships has a living laboratory of innovation pathways to publish about, and a readership of practitioners as well as researchers.

The publisher: OAE Publishing Inc.

OAE Publishing Inc. is the journal's co-founder and publisher, and its president, Min Fan, presented the launch as OAE's most substantial commitment yet to education research, to be amplified through the publisher's global networks. The inaugural editorial's DOI — 10.20517/futureeduc.2026.06 — carries OAE's DOI prefix, 10.20517, and the article record shows the publisher's submission infrastructure behind the journal. For XJTLU, partnering with an established open-access publisher provides production, platform and dissemination, while the university provides the editorial leadership, the academic community and the founding idea. That division mirrors the launch itself: a university announcement, made at a university conference, for a journal whose reach is intended from the start to be international and open to all readers.

Open access and who should read it

Future Education is a peer-reviewed, open-access publication: its founding editorial is labelled open access, and the journal is freely available through its publisher. Its intended readership follows from its scope — researchers of educational systems and learning, scholars of transnational education, and practitioners and policymakers working out how innovations take root. Because its four areas span ecosystem transformation, AI-era learning, cross-cultural education and implementation pathways, the journal addresses readers who might otherwise be separated into technology journals, comparative-education journals and school-leadership publications. Publishing those conversations in one open-access venue, edited from a university that describes its own mission as exploring the future of education, is the journal's founding wager.

A twentieth-anniversary launch, and what comes next

Timing gave the debut an additional frame: the launch fell in XJTLU's twentieth anniversary year, two decades after the university's founding as an experiment in international education in China. A university that began as an educational innovation using its anniversary to launch the journal of its field is making a claim about continuity — that the questions it was founded to ask are now a research area in their own right. Future Education's record so far is short and precisely documented: co-founded by Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and OAE Publishing Inc., debuted on 20 May 2026 at the Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education in Taicang, led by Editor-in-Chief Youmin Xi with Stuart Perrin as Executive Editor, and opened in September 2026 with Volume 1, Issue 1 and the editorial “Reshaping education: the ecosystem imperative”. What the journal becomes will be decided by the work it attracts across its four areas — but its founding proposition, that education must be reshaped as an ecosystem for an age of AI, is already on the record in its first pages.