Futures Literacy Project created and designed by Dr. Anisah Abdullah, 陳思思
Background
Our students will be spending much or all of their adult lives in the 21st Century. We are currently experiencing looming shocks exacerbated by the pandemic and climate crisis. Our education practice tends to be concerned with the problems and conditions of the past rather than with the decisions of tomorrow, which will be very difficult to make when the environment we live in is changing drastically. Educating and training our younger generation in alternative problem solving skills for the future is an urgent task.
Teaching about the future places an emphasis on coaching our youth, in the face of the accelerated rate of change in society, by guiding them through an exploration of the looming issues, problems and the possible opportunities, and teaching them the skills they will need in anticipating what lies ahead as they become active participants in shaping and creating a desired future.
Pedagogically, the approach of teaching is grounded on Argyris and Schon, Vygotsky, Bandura, and Mezirow’s amongst other learning theories that individuals learn better with metaphors rather than abstract theories, with peers and socialization rather than alone, with role-models and coaches rather than ‘sages-on-the-stage’, and with reflections and critical thinking rather than the simple regurgitation of transmitted concepts and theories. A learner-centered approach is adopted in engaging students for deeper, critical thinking (Trigwell et al, 1999).
The proposition for the delivery of the four modules of Futures Studies over four semesters of is to curate materials and use games and futures methods of analysis to stimulate curiosity about the future, and shift and broaden world-views and understanding as part of the anticipatory journey of shaping the future.
Why Futures Studies in High School?
Futures Studies respond to a need that is especially felt in our time of great rapid, discontinuous and interrelated change, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recently, we have seen the emergence of multiple threats to the survival of the entire human species – the COVID-19 pandemic; intense floods and droughts happening all at once across different continents; the high rate of social change and the complexity of society perpetuated by advancements in technology (i.e. artificial intelligence, globalisation, 24/7 communications, space travel for leisure). This makes planning for the future and coping with long-range problems enormously more difficult; there are no longer any simple decisions when everything is related and/or connected, and our adaptability is pushed to the limit.
Do we dare think how our future will look in the next 30 years? How are our children being prepared to face these changes? Were they prepare for what is coming? Are our students psychologically able to cope with a changing society? Do they have the skills to anticipate these changes and complexities?
The teaching of futures thinking and Futures Studies are choices that each person or society has to make in the present: whether to think about the future or not; whether to think about the consequences of our actions in the future, and the impact that our view of the future might have on our present action (Godet, 1979); or whether simply to think about the present.
Futures Studies are a way of thinking, a way of constructing our minds, a way of conceptualizing life, our everyday actions, our every decision. This way of thinking leads to the possibility of educating ourselves and others towards the future, towards the fact that the future is part of our whole life as a sort of anticipation of the future itself (Botkin, 1979).
Futures Studies ought to be an important component of education, as this practice:
- helps us move beyond ‘crisis management’ to proactive thinking;
- helps us visualize the images of the future and allows that visualization to affect our decisions in the present;
- helps us exert our will and intentionality on the future;
- helps us realize that there are strategic consequences of our actions and decisions;
- helps us realize that education (which is strongly rooted in the past) requires credible futures alternatives to establish appropriate strategies and directions.
[extracted from Educating for a Sustainable Future: Futures Education. Christopher Jones (1998, p. 231)]
The Course
This course consists of four modules to be delivered over four 18-week-semesters.
Each module comprises components that help progressively develop futures literacy for our youth. The course aims to:
- Develop cognitive skills to understand, challenge/question and cope with complex systems and problems.
- Develop a sense of agency and the ability to look ahead in shaping a better future.
- Introduces games and activities, encouraging imagination and creativity, providing opportunities for team and collaborative learning, and stimulating learner independence using reflection.
Module One – September to December 2021
This first module delivers four main objectives:
- Provide an introduction to Futures Studies
- Create spaces for students to explore the past, present and the future and learn that these are interconnected
- Create spaces for students to explore alternative futures
- Create an awareness that the future is a zone of possibilities rather than a list of preordained events
Module Two – February 2022 to May 2022
The second module covers the following:
- Exploring and understanding trends
- Exploring the impacts and implications of technological trends
- Exploring the impacts and implications of social change
- Exploring the impacts and implications of environmental change
- Creating spaces for students to explore solutions for social issues
Module Three – September 2022 to December 2022
The third module extends understanding of these topics:
- Understanding social change, systems and complexity
- Exploring interrelatedness and interconnectedness of issues
- Creating spaces for students to explore solutions for social issues
Module Four – February 2023 to May 2023
Final Module – Capstone Project : The Museum of the Not-Yet-Possible
In the final module, students create artefacts of solutions for a more sustainable future.
