Gain the interdisciplinary tools, learning science and confidence to understand, lead and reimagine the future of learning.
Education is being asked to do more than ever before
with systems that no longer fit the world we’re in.
From climate breakdown and the rise of AI to inequality, burnout, and outdated institutional models, education systems are under strain. Incremental reform isn’t enough.
The MASc in Education Futures is for educators and learning leaders who want to understand education as a complex system and learn how to change it.
Combining systems thinking, learning science, innovative practice, interdisciplinary methods, and a personalised capstone, the programme helps you redesign learning across institutions, organisations, and communities.
If education is being turned on its head, this is where you learn how to lead within that complexity.
.jpg)
Build the systems thinking, learning science, and interdisciplinary tools to redesign education for a changing world.
Master's degree (MASc)
Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverra et tellus. Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverr.
September 2026
Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverra et tellus. Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverr.
2 years
Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverra et tellus. Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverr.
£7,000 / year
Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverra et tellus. Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverr.
8-10 hours per week
Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverra et tellus. Leo laoreet eget scelerisque consequat viverr.
Whether you want to lead change, redesign learning, or reimagine what education could be, this degree gives you the space, rigour, and community to do it well.






Why now
Education systems are under growing strain. They were never designed for today’s interconnected climate, social, political, and economic challenges, or for technologies like AI, which are reshaping how knowledge, assessment, and expertise work.
Together, these pressures point to a deeper metacrisis of meaning, purpose, and values.
At the same time, institutions face pressure to innovate, prove impact, and support people through constant change.
The part-time MASc in Education Futures brings together psychology, technology, policy, culture, and design to help you step back, understand education as a complex system, and build the insight and tools to lead meaningful change, not just manage within outdated models.

Challenging education, drawn from experience
The London Interdisciplinary School was founded to challenge how universities work and to design an education fit for the complexity of today’s world.
As the first UK higher education institution in 60 years to open with its own degree-awarding powers, we’ve been shaking up education from day one. Our BASc and MASc graduates are confident, adaptable, and prepared for modern work, with employers already seeing the value of this approach.
For a master's degree focused on education, leadership, and transformation, The London Interdisciplinary School offers not just a place to study it, but acts as a living example of how it can be done differently — and better.
Learning at LIS is:
Interdisciplinary, experiential, and systems-led.
Bold enough to challenge the 20th century norms and assumptions.
Grounded in networks and relationships.

The curriculum
This master's is designed to foster ‘big-picture’ thinking about education futures while also building skills that you can apply in your current practice.
During this degree, participants will take the following two modules on education.
Our rapidly changing world is shaped by interconnected ecological, political, social, and economic challenges. Yet education policy and practice often remain grounded in nineteenth-century principles, including disciplinary siloes, hierarchies of knowledge, and separation from ‘nature’.
This module explores the shifting global contexts and legacies of education, including metacrisis and collapse narratives, ecological overshoot, decolonial movements, political polarisation, global goals, and the impacts of artificial intelligence on learning and assessment. Students connect these debates, reflect on their assumptions, and relate them to insights from the learning sciences.
Education is reframed as a network of relationships, from the micro level (intrapersonal, interpersonal, socio-ecological) to the macro (systems thinking and geopolitics), with a focus on micro-level relational practice and its implications for education futures in professional contexts.
This module will focus on the strategic application of innovative approaches to intervention design, learner assessment, and programme evaluation. Drawing on principles of Research through Design, participants will specialise in one of these three areas while also achieving a firm grounding in the other two. In their chosen specialist area, participants will design and beta-test a specific artefact and then discuss how they would improve it in response to user feedback.
The value of this module lies in its direct and immediate applicability to participants’ professional contexts (or, where appropriate, to an educational intervention that they plan to undertake in the future). It fosters a global perspective through the inclusion of case studies from the Majority World. By balancing autonomy with the principles of relationality taught in other modules, it builds participants’ confidence to lead, inform, and catalyse meaningful change within the sector, both individually and in collaboration with others.
All students build a shared interdisciplinary foundation while tailoring their skills to their background and goals. Alongside two compulsory core methods modules, you will choose one quantitative and one qualitative methods module to develop a balanced, real-world toolkit.
QUANTITATIVE METHODS
These modules develop your ability to work confidently with data, evidence, and analysis. ‘Cracking the Code’ is mandatory for anyone who cannot yet code in Python. If you are already confident in coding, you can choose between ‘Everything Counts’ and ‘Trials and Errors’.
Cracking the Code teaches python through data science. Students will learn to code by engaging in practical applications of python libraries as they relate to data science problems. We’ll also encourage students to think about the role of data science in tackling complex problems, considering the ethical and logistical dimensions of what you can actually do using python.
We teach python because it’s the most popular programming language and has a variety of applications including web development and quantitative research. If you’re going to learn one coding language, we think it should be python. But if you already know python, you can learn another language (e.g., R).
Knowledge and skills:
- Programming (python)
- Data science
This elective will introduce you to the basic principles of scientific knowledge and experimental design, and help you to start building your scientific literacy in terms of planning, executing, critiquing and understanding scientific literature. You’ll learn about different types of quantitative methods, the scientific method, and how this approach to research can enhance our understanding of real-world complex problems.
Knowledge and skills:
- Scientific method
- Building block of empirical research
- Ethics in experimental research
- Plan, execute, critique and understand scientific literature
Everything Counts is a quantitative module that acquaints students with different approaches to statistics (Bayesian and Frequentist).
These approaches represent two interpretations of how we can use numerical data to answer questions and inform decision-making.
It will also deal with how data can be used to tell a story, including studying the essentials of data visualisation.
Knowledge and skills:
- Statistics
- Mathematics
- Critical thinking
QUALITATIVE METHODS
These modules focus on how meaning is created, communicated, and interpreted through language, visuals, and narrative. You’ll develop tools to analyse and create qualitative data that shape understanding and decision-making.
Re:Form will teach students how to understand visual thinking and the ways in which media (photography, 3D modelling, illustration) help us communicate.
To do this, students will look at how visual media can be created, analysed and archived - from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Qualitative approaches centre on learning to interpret, read and curate visual media. Quantitative approaches will allow students to use their coding knowledge to engage with images at speed and scale.
Knowledge and skills:
- Media analysis
- Art
- Programming (python)
The Right Word aims to demonstrate how language can be produced and analysed using insights from linguistics. This will involve exploring the meaning of language (semantics) and its function in social context (pragmatics). The module will also explore narrative as a powerful tool in communication e.g., storytelling.
This module will also teach students the basics of methods in natural language processing (NLP). NLP allows language data to be manipulated at speed and scale, and is behind many of the advances in AI that have occurred recently.
Knowledge and skills:
- Linguistics
- Natural language processing (NLP)
- Storytelling
CORE METHODS
Throughout the programme, all students take two compulsory modules in complexity and integration. These form the backbone of the LIS approach, helping you connect ideas across disciplines, reflect on uncertainty, and integrate different methods, perspectives, and experiences into coherent insight.
This module investigates the intersection of culture and complexity, defining culture as any organized human activity. It examines how agents and subsystems interact to distribute value and establish norms. Students address the descriptive and organizational challenges of emergent phenomena. By synthesizing natural and qualitative social sciences, learners identify high-level patterns in dissimilar systems. This appreciation of complexity is a prerequisite for influencing systems in professional and intellectual life.
If interdisciplinary inquiry is to be more than a collection of concepts and methods, it requires us to understand how novel and synthetic results can be achieved by integrating different bodies of knowledge. This module will take a step back from learning in practice and focus on the process of integration, if not dis-integration, in theory.
The Capstone gives you the space to tackle a real education challenge that matters to you. Working independently, you’ll bring together the interdisciplinary tools and methods from the programme to produce a substantial piece of work, academic or practice-based, designed to have impact beyond the classroom and support your next professional move.
To gain a degree in the UK you must pass a certain number of credits in each year of the degree. Each module is given a credit, which you are awarded when you pass each module at assessment.
*The content of our modules is subject to change and approval as we revise our modules each year depending on student feedback and developments in the field.
Ash is an interdisciplinary academic, consultant, and visual artist who holds a PhD in Education for Sustainability from Wageningen University, as well as master's degrees in Biochemistry (University of Oxford) and Environmental Anthropology (University of Kent). He has contributed to over 30 publications (many in a previous name) across diverse disciplines, including education, sustainability, program evaluation, design, and healthcare. Ash is an External Examiner at Black Mountains College and was the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning consultant for the 'Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures' (TESF) Network Plus. Teaching science in schools showed him, first-hand, the limitations of existing educational approaches and the need to rethink how learning works.

Who are you?
The LIS MASc in Education Futures aims to bring together people shaping learning across sectors who are ready to rethink education and lead meaningful change within it.
If you’re asking not just “How do I improve what I’m doing?” but “How do I lead what’s coming?” this course is for you.
You might be…
An education leader in transition
- A teacher, school leader, consultant, or policy professional
- Ready to move into leadership, strategy, or system-level roles
- Looking for frameworks, confidence, and credibility to lead change masters in education leadership
An innovative educator or practice shaper
- A teacher, learning designer, or education technologist
- Curious about how learning really works
- Seeking an interdisciplinary degree that combines theory with practice
A learning or impact leader beyond the classroom
- Working in organisations, charities, or cultural institutions
- Designing learning, training, coaching, or public engagement
- Wanting deeper insight into learning, change, and impact

.webp)
Careers and development
Our careers offering for master’s students revolves around three key pillars:

Study without stepping away
That’s why this programme is designed for people who want to keep working while they learn. The structure allows you to apply ideas directly to your role, bringing real challenges into the classroom and taking practical tools straight back into your organisation.

Part-time, online
Designed for people that have other commitments and/or want to continue to work alongside study. For those that don’t want to regularly commute or live in London.
Finance
These are the fees for the 2026/27 academic year.
Find out more about our master's course fees, financing options, and support available through bursaries and grants.
How to apply
February 2026
until we fill places on the course
September 2026
Applications to our master’s degrees are considered on a rolling basis. We will continue to accept applications until we fill places on the degree. In order to secure a place on the course, we’d encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible.





































