Unexpected Connections

Education is a profession dedicated to creating futures that do not yet exist. Yet there are moments when foresight refuses to yield to familiar thinking. Problems become more complex, progress slows, and established approaches no longer seem enough. Do you recognise this dilemma? Maybe have a ‘wicked problem? We’re living through a massive disruption in education (again!).  So, what to do?

Beyond Prediction 

Never have we had such powerful tools for analysing the past. Large Language Models can reveal patterns, generate scenarios, and illuminate consequences at extraordinary speed. Yet the most important educational questions remain human.  What do we want to create? What assumptions should we challenge? What possibilities have we not yet imagined? Prediction extrapolates from existing data trends. Visioning deliberately creates alternative possibilities. Foresight combines evidence with imagination to help shape preferred and viable futures.

Every act of education shapes a future beyond itself.  AI helps us understand what may emerge from existing evidence. Equally important is our capacity to reframe problems, imagine possibilities and exercise judgement about what is worth pursuing.

Powerful Associations

Long before generative AI, creativity researchers such as William Gordon recognised that breakthrough thinking rarely comes from analysing ever more information. Instead, it often emerges when unexpected connections are made between ideas that appear to have nothing in common. By working with images, metaphors and analogies, associative visioning disrupts habitual patterns of thought, helping us to reframe problems, discover overlooked relationships and imagine possibilities that more linear ways of thinking may never reveal. Most of us have experienced this ourselves: an idea arrives unexpectedly while relaxing, discussing a book, looking at art, watching a movie, or listening to a conference presentation or podcast. 

Contemporary cognitive science offers a compelling explanation for how this works. Barbara Tversky describes visual representations as “tools for thought”, helping people generate fresh concepts, discover relationships, and construct new understanding. Words are powerful, but images allow us to explore ideas in diverse and unusual ways, often revealing possibilities and connections that language alone can leave undiscovered.

Visioning Together

 Associative visioning becomes particularly powerful when supported by a carefully designed process. Rather than rushing to solutions, participants progressively explore the present—its challenges, constraints, opportunities, and sources of support—before constructing shared concepts of possible futures. Through association, dialogue and collective interpretation, novel insights begin to emerge.

The greatest power of associative visioning emerges when thinking becomes collaborative. Individual observations become shared discoveries. One person’s insight prompts another’s connection; assumptions are questioned, perspectives broaden and possibilities evolve. The result is not only more ideas, but richer understanding. Collective insight develops into shared foresight, creating direction for purposeful action. In many ways, associative visioning extends constructivist thinking beyond making sense of the present towards imagining what might become possible.

Invitation

If education is about creating futures that do not yet exist, then learning to think differently about our dilemmas and wicked problems is surely part of our professional practice? At the OEB 2026 pre-conference workshop, Vision Directing, we’ll explore associative visioning together through a practical technique. The workshop offers a unique way to begin your OEB experience—and perhaps a way of thinking that will continue to influence and assist your work long after our time together in Berlin.

Gordon, W. (1961). Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity. New York: Harper & Row.

Tversky, T. (2019). Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought. New York: Basic Books

Written for OEB 2026 by Gilly Salmon.


Professor Salmon is a member of OEB26’s Global Council and is dedicated to transforming education –helping institutions, companies, educators, and learners embrace new possibilities with success, growth, confidence, and creativity.