Three-quarters of educators rate helping students adapt to changing careers as important, but less than half feel confident their pathways deliver on it, new research reveals.
The preliminary research by Instructure comes as hundreds of teachers and education stakeholders recently gathered in Sydney for CanvasCon ANZ 2026, held under the theme ‘Shaping Readiness, Together’.
The two-day event examined how education institutions are responding to AI, shifting student expectations, skills development and the growing push for lifelong learning, drawing participants from universities, schools and vocational education providers across Australia and New Zealand.
What's holding schools back
Among those speaking at the event was Rachel Orston, Chief Customer Officer at Instructure, who addressed the gap between what educators want to achieve for their students and what their institutions are currently equipped to deliver.
“I think it comes down to a gap between ambition and execution,” Orston told The Educator. “Australian educators clearly understand that the world students are entering is changing quickly.”
Three-quarters of the educators Instructure surveyed said helping learners retrain as their careers change is important, but only 44% were quite or extremely confident their institution's current pathways matched their lifelong learning priorities.
“For schools, that doesn't mean we should be trying to predict exactly what jobs today's students will have,” she said. “It means asking whether we're giving them the knowledge, skills and confidence to keep learning as technology and work change around them.”
A good example of this, said Orston, is AI.
“Educators know it is going to be part of students' futures, but many schools are still working out what responsible and effective use looks like in practice,” she said. “That's not necessarily a failure of ambition or willingness.”
Often, educators need clearer direction, appropriate guardrails and the confidence to experiment and learn, Orston said.
“One thing I spoke about at CanvasCon is that readiness isn't about having everything figured out. It's about having a clear intent and then empowering educators to act, experiment, share what works and adapt,” she said.
“The institutions that can turn that ambition into everyday classroom practice will be the ones best placed to prepare students for what's next.”
The skills that outlast the job
While much of the lifelong learning conversation gravitates toward universities, Orston said the K-12 sector has its own version of the challenge, one that has nothing to do with predicting a child's future career.
“For K–12, I don't think a flexible pathway means asking a 12-year-old to predict what job they'll have at 25,” she said. “It's about helping them become the kind of learner who can adapt when a job changes or when an entirely new one appears.”
Orston said that starts with strong foundational knowledge, but it also means giving students opportunities to develop durable skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.
“Increasingly, it also means AI literacy: understanding how to use AI effectively and responsibly, but also when to question it and when human judgement matters more,” she said. “Flexibility also means giving students different ways to explore, learn and demonstrate what they know.”
That could be project-based learning, exposure to industry and different careers, or opportunities to connect classroom learning with real-world problems, Orston explained.
“The goal isn't to narrow their choices earlier; it's to broaden the capabilities they can take with them wherever they go next,” she said. “Technology can support that, but it shouldn't be the destination.”
For Orston, one of the most important things technology can do in a school is protect the time teachers spend with students.
“[Technology] must help educators understand where students are, create more personalised opportunities to learn and spend more time on the human interactions that matter,” she said.
“As a parent of two Canvas students who are about to enter the workforce, I think about this personally as well. We need to prepare the whole student, not simply for their next qualification or their first job, but for a lifetime of learning and change.”
What students want now is harder to give
With visibility across thousands of Canvas users, Orston has watched student expectations evolve well past questions of access, and says schools now face a far tougher question to answer.
“Five years ago, a lot of the conversation around flexibility was, ‘Can I access my learning online?’ Today, students are asking a much bigger question: ‘Does this learning work for me, and is it preparing me for what comes next?’” Orston said.
“Students are accustomed to information being available when they need it, and they have much less patience for unnecessary friction.”
However, Orston said their expectations go deeper than convenience.
“They want to understand what they're learning, why it matters, where they're progressing and how what they are doing today connects with future opportunities,” she said.
“AI has added another dimension. Students are already encountering and experimenting with these tools in their lives, and they know AI will be part of the world they enter after school.”
Orston said young people are looking to educators for guidance on how to use AI effectively, critically and responsibly.
“Simply giving students a list of what they can and can't do isn't enough; we also need to teach them how to make good decisions,” she said. “The challenge is that institutions themselves are still working this out.”
Orston pointed to Instructure’s preliminary Australian research, which found only 28% of respondents were quite or extremely confident their institution had a clear strategy for where AI fits within its lifelong learning pathways.
“That's why I think the learning experience and the digital experience can no longer be treated as separate things,” she said.
“For students, it's all one experience. The opportunity for schools is to use technology to make that experience more connected and personalised, while protecting what matters most: the relationship between the student and the teacher.”