Overview

•Talking about the future

• How to do it meaningfully

•Beyond Current Horizons

• What we did & why we did it

•Scenarios

• Trust Yourself

• Loyalty Points

• Only Connect

Section title goes hereWays of talking about the future

Who looks at the future?

•Academics:

• Wells, Bell, Slaughter, Inayatullah, Adam, Schultz

•Corporations

• Shell, Siemens, Goldman Sachs, HP, Nokia,

•Governments

• UK Foresight, National Intelligence Council (US), Strategic Policy Office (Singapore)

•Different interests and approaches

Different approaches

•Weak signals analysis, morphological analysis, causal loop diagrams, backcasting, visioning, expert interview, DELPHI, fifth scenario, seven questions, modelling, systems thinking, horizon scanning, trend extrapolation...

•“Tool trap”

• Focus on method avoids the hard question

• Builds mystique

• Good overview: http://www.foresight.gov.uk/microsites/hsctoolkit/

Futures studies

•Thinking about the future in a structured way

• Multiple futures: recognising free will & uncertainty

• Avoiding predictions and resisting orthodox futures

• Describing three kinds of alternative futures (Amara, 1981):

Possible

Probable

Preferable

• Supporting action in the present

Scenarios

•Stories about the future

•Internally consistent and coherent

•Making alternative futures visible

•Descriptive

• Possibilities an organisation can prepare for

•Normative

• Encouraging action

Critical futures studies

•Traditional futures approaches reflect the context in which they were developed

• Western military or industrial origin

•CFS attempts to deepen and enrich these approaches

• Bringing experience from critical realism and social science

• More sophisticated representations of interactions within society

• Inclusive, not exclusive

CFS techniques

•Ethnographic futures research

• Developing scenarios with a broad sociocultural base

•Participatory futures

• Recognising those affected by decision-making process

•Causal layered analysis

• Examining hidden worldviews behind explicit visions of the future

A distinction

•Claims regarding future states

• Forecasting, modelling

• Economics and technology best describe the world

• Can be mistaken for empirical data

•Claims regarding beliefs about future states

• Part of existing social science expertise

• Recognising people and values

Education futures

•Shared priorities between critical futures studies and education research

•Need to resist inheriting a technologically-determined vision of education

•Tools to help question assumptions

• Is the knowledge economy real?

• Must digital technologies have a place in schools?

• Whose future are we building?

Why consider the future?

Assumed futures shape national debate on curriculum, assessment, practice & investment

Why consider the future?

Assumed futures shape national debate on curriculum, assessment, practice & investment

Education a site for realising learners’ aspirations

Why consider the future?

Assumed futures shape national debate on curriculum, assessment, practice & investment

Education a site for realising learners’ aspirations

Commitment to learners:

we will prepare you for the world

“In the end I like what we did, but I wouldn’t call it schools for the future. I’d call it schools for the very near future. So what was missing from my point of view was having some real ‘blue skies’ thinking and then reining it back into something that you could deliver in the next say, five or ten years.” Alsop Architects, talking about BSF exemplars

“We’re always just fire-fighting and thinking about next week – we need something to help us raise our sights to the longer term question of ‘what is this all for’” England, Children’s Services Director

“I have to plan, I have to make serious and long term decisions that will affect education in my local authority for the next 20 – 50 years – but I haven’t got any tools to help me think that far ahead, I have no idea what the possibilities might be” Local Authority Education Advisor

“What I’m worried about is that we are just taking for granted what ‘the future will be’, we’re not actually asking whether that is likely to happen or not, or what other things might happen, and if we’re not doing that, god knows if we’re actually preparing children in the right way” Award-winning Head teacher, England

“The rhetoric of education is that it is preparing young people for living in the early 21st century. The reality is that it is doing no such thing. If this were otherwise, then educators would be constantly demanding the very best insights, the very latest understandings from the futures community.”

Slaughter, 2002 (http://bit.ly/slaughter)

Section title goes here

http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/

Section title goes here

“The BCH programme aims to build a challenging and long term vision for education in the context of socio-technological change 2025 and beyond”

DCSF TFU 2007

Aims

To generate a resource bank of evidence and insight relating to potential socio-technical futures for 2025.

To build a set of potential scenarios for education in the context of scientific and technological change in 2025 in order to test existing policies.

To ensure that we have identified and prepared for a range of potential social, technological and cultural futures and that we are enabled to develop the tools and strategies to support our children and families, whichever of these comes to reality in 2025.

Motivation

•Helping educators & stakeholders to:

• resist the temptation of future ‘predictions’

• challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about ‘the future’

• understand which factors might cause these potential futures to come to pass

• develop plans and strategies that are sustainable in multiple potential futures

• consider the potential implications of actions now on possible futures

Section title goes hereActivities & outcomes

Building the evidence

•Establishing academic team

• International reputations

• Wide range of domain expertise

•Commissioning original research

• 65+ papers within 5 research areas

• Economics, neuroscience, social science...

•Developing appropriate methodology

• Synthesising evidence & deriving narrative

(Examples)

•Adolescent brains still developing (Blakemore)

• Implications for school & pastoral care

•Notions of “knowledge economy” inappropriate (Lauder)

• Demand for educated workforce not as advertised

• Implications for HE/FE

•Importance of understanding community (Riley, Nash, Hoff)

• Geography & family reinforced, not challenged, by technology

(also...)

millionfutures.org.uk

powerleague.org.uk

Title

Scenarios

•6 alternative futures for education

• Broad sociotechnological changes

• Implications of these changes for education

• Ways in which education might respond to these changes

•Prompting & catalysing debate

• Intended for a wide audience – policy, academia, system leaders within education

Phase 1

Scenario development approach

“What are the choices open to education in the context of socio-technical change?”

Generations & Lifecourse

Identity, Citizenship, CommunityKnowledge, Creativity & Communication

Work

State/Market/Third Sector

Initial scoping question

Extending horizons – identifying diverse operating trends

5 research areas established

DCSF TFU

Public consultation

Expert interviews

EAG meet Feb 08BCH team desk research

BCH team

Commissioning evidence reviews

Socio-economic

Science & technology

Education

Triage with stakeholders

Trends

Driving forces

Edge cases

Interdependencies

Identify causal relationships Key variables

for structuring scenario building activity

Evaluation against stakeholder priorities

Stakeholders set priorities for final commissioning

iteration

Reviews inform further commissioning

Assess likelihood & impact

Scenario narrative construction workshop

Phase 2 Phase 3

Scenario development approach

Commissioning evidence reviews

Socio-economic

Science & technology

Education

Triage with stakeholders

Trends

Driving forces

Edge cases

Interdependencies

Identify causal relationships Key variables

for structuring scenario building activity

Evaluation against stakeholder priorities

Stakeholders set priorities for final commissioning

iteration

Reviews inform further commissioning

Assess likelihood & impact

Scenario narrative construction workshop

Phase 2 Phase 3

Mapping activities to scenario dev approach

Challenge leads & steering groups

Idea generation and academic workshops

3 day scenario workshop

Citizens’ Jury

Million Futures

ICT Champions

EAG consultation

Citizens’ Jury

ICT Champions

EAG meet October 08

BCH modelling & trend analysis

Challenge leads & steering groups

May – Dec 08

Nov 08 – Feb 09

Beyond Current Horizons

Individualistic world Contested world Communal world

Education meets goals

Education meets goals

Education meets goals

Education doesn’t meet goals

Education doesn’t meet goals

Education doesn’t meet goals

Specific educational goals

Specific educational goals

Specific educational goals

1 2 3 4 5 6

Three worlds

•Trust Yourself

• Individualistic values

•Loyalty Points

• Values contested

•Only Connect

• Communal/civic values

Section title goes hereTrust Yourself

Trust yourself

•Autonomy. Self-reliance. No need for help.

•Solve your own problems; be your own boss;express yourself

•Economic & resource pressures

•Minimal state

• Fragmented & diverse political landscape

•Ad-hoc groups with clear & limited aims

• Working themselves out of existence

Trust yourself

•Are there any common values?

•Why would universities still exist?

•Can altruism still exist?

•Can leisure?

Activity

•5 minutes:

• Who’s learning?

• Who’s researching?

• How would your research work in this world?

•Feedback

Section title goes hereLoyalty Points

Loyalty Points

•Balancing interests. Managing risk. Codifying relationships. Explicit rights & obligations.

•Negotiation of rights to data between service providers & individuals

•Strategic membership of the right associations crucial

• Reputation a vital asset

•Alternative routes for building social capital

• If you can explain what you bring, you’re in

Loyalty points

•Does serendipity still exist?

•Can you share bad news?

•How quickly can you move?

•How quickly can other people?

Activity

•5 minutes:

• Who’s learning?

• Who’s researching?

• How would your research work in this world?

•Feedback

Section title goes hereOnly Connect

Only connect

•Civic commitment. A thriving public sphere. Many hands, many eyes, no single achievements. Interdependence.

•Notion of common goods & democratising technologies.

•State’s priority is the preservation of civil society

•Permeable boundaries & mobile individuals

• Aim is mutual interdependence

•People more than resources or labour

• Personal responsibilities shared more widely

Only connect

•End of disciplines?

•No more credit?

•What happens to private endeavour?

•How do you defend what looks like a selfish enterprise?

Activity

•5 minutes:

• Who’s learning?

• Who’s researching?

• How would your research work in this world?

•Feedback

Thank you

Richard Sandford

richard.sandford@futurelab.org.uk