by Karla Paniagua
“Meaningful learning process, and constituting its meaning, is an interactional product of the particular way in which the content of the new proposition is related to the content of relevant established ideas in cognitive structure.”
D.P. Ausubel, The Acquisition and Retention of Knowledge: A Cognitive View
According to David Ausubel (Ausubel, D. P., Novak, J. D., & Hanesian, H., 1978), the essence of meaningful learning is that symbolically expressed ideas are related to the student’s prior knowledge in a non-arbitrary and substantive way. In other words, learning does not occur in a vacuum but is intertwined with previously acquired concepts to create new understandings.
I experienced this kind of meaningful learning in my first years as chair of the graduate program in futures studies— the specialization Design of Tomorrow at CENTRO, Mexico City —a program I have led for over a decade. One interesting aspect of this story is that, at the beginning of creating this graduate program, I did not realize I would end up being its director.
We designed the program with a team of passionate and inquisitive researchers and laid the theoretical and methodological foundations to sustain it. However, when I knew I would be taking over as chair of the specialization, the news hit me like a bucket of cold water.
I did not feel ready to take on the leadership role. Although I had long been fascinated by Futures Studies, I had no direct training in the field at the time, which made me feel like a complete outsider. Faced with this pressure, I immersed myself in a self-directed learning process. I read and studied as much as I could ―and still do ― to fulfill my role to the best of my ability.
First Stumbles in Practice
During this exploratory phase, I found some seminal works in the field of futures studies, many of which became key references for my professional practice. However, not all approaches resonated with me immediately. This happened to me with Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis (Inayatullah, 1998), a widely used model that doesn’t require further explanation in the context of this book.
I have a confession to make. My initial reaction to this approach was skepticism: With a bachelor’s in communications (tons of semiotics and discourse analysis!) and a Ph.D. in cultural studies with a strong focus on Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk, 2011), the specific component of Causal Layered Analysis (CLA, Inayatullah, 1998) seemed too similar to the analytical tools I was already familiar with. Instead of that closeness to something I already knew made me happy, it initially made me suspicious of myself. I thought I was misunderstanding.
In this collaboration, I will refer to the Future Triangle, which preludes to CLA.
However, let’s go back to when I had all kinds of suspicions about the similarities. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) both emerge from poststructuralist traditions that challenge the idea of objective, neutral knowledge. They share a foundational assumption that language is constitutive, not merely descriptive — discourse actively shapes social realities, identities, and power relations. However, their purposes, structures, and applications diverge meaningfully while epistemologically aligned.
CDA, developed by scholars like Teun A. van Dijk, Norman Fairclough, and Ruth Wodak (2011), operates at the intersection of linguistics, sociology, and critical theory. It analyzes how power and ideology are embedded in discourse, often in contemporary political, media, or institutional texts. Drawing heavily from Michel Foucault’s insights into discourse and power/knowledge systems, CDA is committed to deconstructing dominant narratives, exposing marginalizations, and understanding how social inequalities are reproduced through language. Its analytical layers span textual structures, discursive practices, and sociocultural contexts, offering a multidimensional view of communicative power.
CLA, developed by Sohail Inayatullah, applies poststructural critique to future studies. Rather than explaining how current discourse sustains power, CLA focuses on how underlying narratives, worldviews, and metaphors shape our imaginaries of the future. The proposal outlines four levels of analysis: (1) the Litany, or surface-level problems and headlines; (2) systemic causes, involving social, economic, and institutional structures; (3) worldview/discourse, which interrogates deeper ideological frames; and (4) myth/metaphor, which reveals archetypal stories and emotional-symbolic logics.
Both approaches are interested in transformation. By revealing specific discursive mechanisms deeply rooted in idiosyncrasy (and in turn reproduced through discourse), we aim to drive change in a particular direction. Both approaches are constructive in their respective natures.
CDA is committed to deconstruction, genealogy, and the critique of dominant definitions of the world and its logics. This approach helps us understand whose voices are privileged and silenced and how dominant truths are naturalized. CLA extends the poststructural project by incorporating tools like alternative futures, epistemic distancing, and reordering knowledge, as Inayatullah articulates in his Poststructural Futures Toolbox (2017). CLA treats the future not as something to be predicted but as something to be unpacked and co-constructed through the interrogation of dominant ways of knowing.
CDA’s methodological approach is anchored in a critical-empirical axis. It frequently analyzes texts to unmask the embedding of ideologies in everyday language use and the different ways the discourses reproduce them. It focuses on the present or recent past and engages in critique with a view to social justice. CLA expands the terrain vertically. It analyzes discourse and situates it within broader historical, mythic, and civilizational contexts. CDA aims to contest the present, while CLA seeks to reimagine the future by transforming the deeper narratives that sustain current systems.
When I first read about Dator’s notion of the official future (Dator, 2017), which is very present in Inayatullah’s work (1998), I interpreted it in the same terms that a critical discourse analyst understands that there is no neutral discourse and that these dominant notions leave out other possible visions that we must recover and, perhaps, encourage.
All the clues to connect my early learning were there, but it took me longer to realize them. These “missteps” continued when, in the first iteration of the graduate program’s Anthropology course, I chose to teach content based on Clifford Geertz’s work (1973), focusing on his concept of thick description. In this way, I provided students with tools to observe and analyze reality on two levels: the descriptive and the symbolic, encompassing the immediate appearance of phenomena and their underlying meanings.
This approach was handy, but I was operating from a familiar terrain, which reduced my chances of taking on new challenges and thus led my students into new territories.
EFR in a Trend Analysis Sequence
To challenge myself and add more value for the students, I decided to broaden my horizons for the next iteration and explore authors at the intersection of anthropology and futures studies. I came across the work of Arjun Appadurai (2013), who views the future as a cultural fact, as well as the pioneering work of Margaret Mead (2005) and the powerful contributions of Robert Textor (1980), Reed Riner, Jennifer A. Clodius (1995) and, more recently, Jean English-Lueck (2017). This approach led me to a new understanding of the role of anthropology in analyzing trends.
It should be noted that these additions reinforced the approach we already had in the course. I did not abandon the valuable lessons of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967) regarding the symbolic value of human events.
In the context of Textor’s Ethnographic Futures Research (1980), I experienced the meaningful learning referred to at the beginning of this text. I began assembling my previous knowledge with new insights as if they were Tetris pieces that fit perfectly. I discovered that my previous skills as an observer and analyst of human behavior were fundamental to exploring and interpreting patterns of change.
Despite our efforts to improve it, the Trends Lab within the postgraduate program had not produced the expected results in previous years. Encouraged by this new challenge and with a good dose of foolishness, I decided to teach the Trends Lab course as a continuation of the Anthropology course, creating an integrated learning sequence.
Thus, the connection between anticipatory anthropology and trend analysis became visible and fluid. Students first learned to decode human behavior from a cultural perspective, observing upward or downward change patterns. They then focused on narrating these changes understandably and engagingly.
Over four iterations, we successfully consolidated a significant body of work, culminating in the publication of the Dictionary of Signs and Trends, which Francesca Tur (Tendencias TV, Barcelona) and I co-edited ( & Tur, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025). This Dictionary, published annually, is a statement of the profession’s commitment to knowledge about the future. At a time when there is a proliferation of supposed trend reports, often used to promote products and services instead of offering information to develop a certain level of preparedness for possible changes, our students are methodologically rigorous and do not serve a commercial agenda, but rather their curiosity and desire for knowledge.
Figure 1. Dictionary of Signals and Trends, 2025. Source: CENTRO.
And Now, What? Futures Triangle as a Trend-Whisperer Tool
As we established ourselves in trend analysis and the workflow we developed in the Design of Tomorrow specialization was adapted to courses in the graduate programs in Business and Innovation, Food Design, Fashion Marketing, Design for Social Innovation, and Continuing Education, students gained a certain mastery in the art of analyzing change. They began to ask themselves, “What direction should we take with these findings?” This is also a recurring question in organizations that commission trend reports, to which we must explain that these are not a list of tasks to be carried out automatically and immediately, but inputs to speculate about possible futures and anticipate potential opportunities or threats.
As is well known in the practice of futures studies, one of our most significant daily challenges is to resist the impulse to apply findings immediately. Time is pressing, the environment is volatile and problematic, and organizations are desperate for easy-to-apply oracular answers, virtually magical solutions that require no understanding of context or development of new skills to adapt to change. The practice of Futures Studies faces the daily dare (and fallacy) of frictionless living. We are well aware that it does not exist.
In recent years, I have coined the term “trend whisperer tools” or “hinge tools” (, 2025) to refer to various analytical models that serve as central mechanisms for connecting two often disconnected realms: the study of trends and the strategic decision-making processes that shape forward-looking policies, programs, and organizational changes. Much like a physical hinge that opens a door, these tools will enable us to move between abstract explorations of emerging phenomena and concrete pathways for institutional or systemic action. In foresight work, particularly in settings where futures literacy is still developing, these tools function not only as methodological devices but also as pedagogical instruments that cultivate an expanded awareness of time, uncertainty, and agency.
Among the most effective hinge tools we’ve used and adapted is Sohail Inayatullah’s Futures Triangle, a model that needs no further explanation in the context of this book, given the vast literature that points to its possible applications and benefits (Abdullah & Ismandi 2023; Milojević, Inayatullah, & Poocharoen, O., 2024; Sheraz, 2025; Yazici, 2024). This conceptual framework described in Six pillars: futures thinking for transforming (2007), among other sources, has been widely recognized as invaluable in helping individuals and institutions visualize how the tension between the three forces— the pull of the future, the push of the present, and the weight of history —drives change (Dator, 2017).
Have you noticed? I gradually began to appreciate the Futures Triangle and the CLA approach. Thanks to the urging of my students and colleagues, I gradually let go of my doubts. I embraced these tools, connecting them to my prior knowledge and making them meaningful and valuable for my work with students and organizations (again, Ausubel’s Tetris).
Extensive literature documents the great usefulness of the Future Triangle for initiating conversations that will later feed CLA, so I will not dwell on it here. I would like to emphasize the Triangle as part of the process we develop in the Anticipatory Anthropology and Trends Laboratory courses.
In different workshops, we have observed that work teams have no problem identifying the force of the future and the weight of history. However, they struggle to identify the trends shaping the present, probably because our understanding of what a trend is has been distorted by all the advertising documents presented as trend reports and because the hype circulating on social media is also identified with this term without really being a trend.
For this reason, we adapt the Triangle by providing participants with a collection of trends we have previously researched through documentary and field research, using the working model we adapted and improved. In this way, teams have a set of trends tailored to their context from which to select those they believe are driving the present, always leaving room for them to contribute trends not included in the collection.
We first tested this approach at the Ibero-American Civil Society Meeting hosted by the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (CEMEFI) at the CENTRO campus in 2024. There, we facilitated a conversation about the plausible future of Latin American philanthropy using the Future Triangle, providing a collection of trends we had previously researched to address the pressures of the present.
These customized sets are not just an inventory of trends; they are analytical scaffolds that help participants develop more informed and nuanced interpretations of the present. They also serve as conversation starters, bringing to the surface assumptions and blind spots that might otherwise go unchallenged. In this sense, hinge tools such as the Futures Triangle become dialogic and reflective resources that shift thinking from reactive planning to anticipatory envisioning.
Figure 2. Ibero-American Civil Society Meeting hosted by the Mexican Center for Philanthropy (CEMEFI). Source: CENTRO
Subsequently, in a series of training workshops for teachers from all over Mexico, conducted in collaboration with Santander Universia, we tested another adaptation of the Triangle, this time using two collections of trends (specify which ones). In these cases, the analysis of the push from the present was also resolved straightforwardly. However, we understand that source bias is introduced here, as the trend collections document changes detected in other cultural contexts.
In 2025, a new version of this pipeline will be tested in a series of courses we will conduct for teachers nationwide. This time, we will combine the Futures Triangle with Verne Wheelwright’s (2006) dimensions of personal futures for individual plausible futures and Norton and Kaplan’s (2004) dimensions for organizational plausible futures.
Figure 3. A new layout for trend analysis, Futures Triangle, and personal/organizational strategy pipeline are needed. Source: CENTRO.
These workshops will be conducted digitally, with all the benefits and challenges that come with it. What new results will we discover? What new difficulties will we encounter? How can we systematize this information so that these large datasets form patterns that can be described and interpreted? How will we relate this exercise to CLA, CDA, and other analytical models facilitating reflection and decision-making? These are the questions we are asking ourselves as I write this.
The journey of cultivating a specific coefficient of anticipation for individuals and organizations was a methodological concern and a cultural one. In the organizations we’ve worked with, the expectation of immediate applicability often overrides the slower, more introspective processes of meaning-making essential to future literacy. The temptation to treat futures tools as plug-and-play, overlooking the epistemological shift they require, is massive. Our enthusiasm for creating tools that make the language of futures studies easier to understand contributes to this problem to some extent: finding the sweet spot feels like a giant kraken.
For these reasons, we recognize the need for an anticipatory ethic internal recalibration that allows organizations to slow down for a moment and deal with ambiguity, to tolerate not knowing all the answers, and to reframe trend analysis not as a form of predictive control but as a generative practice of questioning. The anticipation coefficient becomes a cultivated sensibility that grows as we engage in discussions and navigate awkward silences in the dialogic space where knowledge meets curiosity and imagination.
In Ausubel’s words, meaningful learning and foresight occur precisely in the interaction between the known and the newly encountered.
References
Abdullah, N. A., & Ismadi, A. N. (2023). Exploring images of women cyclists’ futures using the Futures Triangle. Journal of Futures Studies, 27(3), 25–42. https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/2023-2/exploring-images-of-the-future-of-women-cyclists-using-the-futures-triangle/
Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. Verso Books.
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Dator, J. (2017). Introducción a los estudios de futuros. Cuadernos del CIEC, CENTRO. https://www.CENTRO.edu.mx/PDF/CIEC/cuadernos/CuadernoCIEC_47_Jim-Dator.pdf
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Paniagua, K. (2025). Trend Whisperer Tools . Medium. https://cirila-thompson.medium.com/trend-whisperer-tools-4da76f92b904
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van Dijk, T. A. (Ed.). (2011). Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Wheelwright, V. (2009). Futures for everyone. Journal of Futures Studies. 13. 91-104.
Yazici, M. (2024). Tiptoeing into the future or jumping ahead. Journal of Futures Studies. https://jfsdigital.org/2024/09/11/tiptoeing-into-the-future-or-jumping-ahead/
Author:
Karla Paniagua
Head of Futures Studies. CENTRO, Mexico City
