As an investment in the future capabilities of learners, formal education is by its nature a prospective enterprise. Anyone who has spent time in an educational setting has pondered various futures, ranging from the short-term (such as what will be taught in the next moment) to the distant future (such as the competencies that current students will need one day and ways in which the educational process might one day be reformed). Speaking loosely, the term prospective cognition means thinking about the future, and a general purpose of this special issue is to draw attention to issues in education and enculturation that have explicitly prospective features.