In a few days, hundreds of people will gather for the 2025 Yidan Prize Summit to explore Education at a Crossroads. Keynotes will question what learning means in an age of artificial intelligence. Panels will debate how collaboration fuels and sustains change. Practitioners, policymakers, and funders from across continents will share what they have learned about leadership in uncertain times. But the real preparation for change isn’t about gathering information — it’s about learning to listen inward before the world moves again.

1. Define what “change” means in your world

Education today feels like steering through unpredictable currents. Artificial intelligence, demographic shifts, and climate anxiety are reshaping what children must learn and what societies value as “knowledge.” Across regions, governments are recalibrating their systems:

• In Kazakhstan, higher education reforms aim to align science and AI-era skills with new industries.
• In Singapore, assessment frameworks are shifting beyond recall toward creativity and design thinking.
• In Rwanda, Mastercard Foundation’s programs pair digital tools with teacher mentorship to strengthen inclusion.
• In the Middle East, the Queen Rania Foundation is piloting AI-assisted Arabic reading platforms to close early literacy gaps.

Different contexts, a shared horizon: every system is searching for balance between innovation and equity, speed and depth. The first step is to name the kind of change that touches your daily life most directly.

“Where do I see transformation around me, and what part of it do I want to understand better?”

2. Name the tension you live with

Uncertainty is no longer abstract; it sits in every classroom, staff meetings, and parent conversation. For many educators, the tension lies between embracing AI tools and safeguarding student well-being.

Recent findings from the Molly Rose Foundation (2025) show that more than one in three teenagers in the UK had seen harmful content related to suicide, self-harm, depression, or eating disorders within a single week. The figure rises to 50% of girls, and to 68% of adolescents with low well-being. These are not distant statistics — they describe the emotional ecosystem children bring into the classroom each morning.

You see it when a student hesitates to share online work for fear of judgment. You hear it when digital exhaustion replaces curiosity. Algorithms may be invisible, but their effects land on desks, faces, and hearts that you know by name.

So what does “innovation” mean when young people are already fighting unseen battles of self-worth and belonging? The tension is real — and naming it brings clarity. Reflection doesn’t slow you down; it steadies your course. [JW2] As any navigator knows, when the fog thickens, you don’t redraw the map each time; you look for a signal that keeps you oriented.

“Where do I feel both a sense of possibility and pressure in my work? What belief keeps me moving through that tension?”

3. Look for echoes, not replicas

When you pay attention globally, patterns begin to appear. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, educators are finding new ways to adapt to teaching challenges without losing local context or overlooking the potential of AI — not as perfect copies, but as echoes.

• In India, Yidan Prize laureate Rukmini Banerji’s Teaching at the Right Level shows how simple diagnostics and small-group instruction can lift foundational literacy and numeracy outcomes at scale.
• In Finland, teacher education now embeds AI ethics so that digital competence grows alongside moral literacy.
• In Kenya, CAMFED’s Learner Guides lead peer tutoring, transforming collective support for girls’ education into community resilience.
• In Chile, José Weinstein’s leadership programs use arts and culture to rebuild trust in schools after social division.

Each initiative reflects a different context but echoes a shared principle: systems improve when people take action rooted in local expertise.

“Which idea resonates with my own setting, even if it looks different? How might I translate it, not replicate it?”

4. Turn reflection into readiness

When you take time to notice your own compass, the work ahead feels lighter. Clarity transforms meetings into opportunities and constraints into design prompts. You start recognising kindred lights — people whose questions overlap with your own. Collaboration begins not in strategy documents but in shared curiosity.

Perhaps you’re preparing to launch a new program, redesign a curriculum, or rethink how your organisation measures impact. Start with one question: What am I genuinely trying to learn next? The answer becomes your navigation point — a light to return to when waves of change feel overwhelming.

“If I were to describe my direction in one sentence, what would it be? Who might be travelling a similar route?”

5. The light that guides

As daylight dissolves the haze, the lighthouse remains — steady, patient, essential. It reminds you that in every field, we need steady beacons that help us stay oriented amid movement. The Yidan Prize Foundation has become such a beacon for the global education community: a convener that doesn’t predict every tide but helps others find their bearings. It shines not to be the brightest light, but to ensure that learning — in every classroom, system, and community — continues to move toward a fairer, wiser horizon.

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This article originally appeared on Future Ready Childhood 1 December 2025. No endorsement by Future Ready Childhood is implied.