Educating for Tomorrow: Seeding a Critical Culture of Digital Innovation among New Generations in the AI Era through Speculative Pedagogy

The rapid development of AI technologies presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in education. This paper presents a multi-lab pathway to foster a critical culture of digital innovation among younger generations, based on three pillars: critical pedagogy, futures studies and digital innovation. It aims to equip secondary students to critically imagine, analyse, problematise and engage with the complexities of the digital age. Speculative design is explored as a transdisciplinary methodology for cultivating critical thinking and creative engagement with future scenarios. The InspAIr laboratory operationalises these concepts in practice through activities such as scenario building and artefact creation. In exploring the integration of speculative design into education, this paper argues for a transformative approach that emphasises critical awareness, imagination and agency, preparing new generations to responsibly navigate and inhabit futures.