Creative Futures

Creative Futures: Re-examining Childhood and Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence examines how artificial intelligence is changing creativity, learning, and educational responsibility across childhood, with a particular focus on early childhood education and care.Bringing together conceptual, empirical, and practice-oriented chapters, the volume asks what remains distinctively human when generative systems can produce fluent text, images, ideas, and other creative outputs. Across four parts, it moves from theories of creativity and creative metacognition to children’s play, AI literacy, and classroom interaction, before turning to teacher education, pedagogical environments, leadership, ethics, and governance. Contributors draw on research and professional contexts in Europe, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The book addresses both possibilities and limits, examining AI-supported ideation and learning alongside questions of agency, authorship, judgement, privacy, bias, professional responsibility, and the developmental needs of children. Rather than treating AI adoption as an end in itself, the volume centres pedagogical purpose and human decision-making.Intended for researchers, teacher educators, postgraduate students, educational leaders, and practitioners, it offers a rigorous account of how childhood and creativity may be re-examined as AI becomes increasingly embedded in educational settings.