Futures in Education
AUSTRALIAN FORESIGHT INSTITUTE
MONOGRAPH SERIES
Series Editor: Richard A. Slaughter
Other titles in the Series:
2003
Foresight in Everyday Life
Peter Hayward
From Critique to Cultural Recovery: Critical futures
studies and Causal Layered Analysis
José Ramos
Wider and Deeper: Review and critique of science
and technology foresight in the 1990s
Andrew Wynberg
Reframing Environmental Scanning: A reader on the art of
scanning the environment
Edited by Joseph Voros
2004
The Transformative Cycle
Richard A Slaughter, Luke Naismith and Neil Houghton
Acknowledgment
This monograph forms part of the AFI Research Program into
‘Creating and Sustaining Social Foresight’, which is supported by the Pratt Foundation.
ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN FORESIGHT INSTITUTE
The Australian Foresight Institute (AFI) is situated in Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia. AFI is a specialised research and postgraduate teaching unit. It was
established in 1999 to develop an innovative set of postgraduate programs and research
in the area of applied foresight. Apart from supporting the University in developing its own
forward-looking strategies, its main aims are to:
•
provide a global resource centre for strategic foresight
•
create and deliver world class professional programs
•
carry out original research into the nature and uses of foresight
•
focus on the implementation of foresight in organisations
•
work toward the emergence of social foresight in Australia.
AFI is intensively networked around the world with leading futures/foresight organisations
and practitioners. These include World Future Society and the World Futures Studies
Federation. In 2001, the Director of AFI was elected as President, World Futures Studies
Federation. AFI therefore, has access to leading international expertise in the field.
AFI also offers a nested suite of postgraduate programs. Based on coursework, the programs
are offered through the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at the University.
Overall AFI aims to set new standards internationally and to facilitate the emergence of a
new generation of foresight practitioners in Australia. It offers a challenging, stimulating
and innovative work environment and exceptionally productive programs for its students
who come from many different types of organisations.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jennifer M Gidley
Jennifer Gidley is an Educational Psychologist and Futures Researcher with over thirty
years experience in all educational levels and sectors. She has researched and
published widely on educational transformation, imagination and consciousness
development, and cultural renewal, including co-editing two books: The University in
Transformation (Bergin &Garvey, 2000) and Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions (Praeger, 2002). Email:
[email protected]
Debra Bateman
After teaching at Sacred Heart, Preston for the past nine years, Debra Bateman has
now completed a Master of Education at the Australian Catholic University (ACU),
haven written a thesis titled Looking ahead: a case for Futures Education in Australian
Schools. She is currently undertaking a PhD at ACU, investigating how people construct
their notion of the future, and the role schools have to play. She undertakes
Professional Development in Schools and enjoys introducing the concept of futures.
Debra can be contacted at:
[email protected]
Caroline Smith
Following a career in agriculture and secondary science teaching, Caroline Smith is now
Senior Lecturer in Science Education and Sustainable Futures Education in the Faculty
of Education, Australian Catholic University. Caroline's research and teaching interests
include examining people's understandings and images of the future and their
implications for science education, and promoting Futures Education within the
education community. Caroline is also active in her local community exploring ways to
live more sustainably through permaculture and organic farming.
COVER ART – In Fractal Cycles We Go Round
Designed by Dr Cameron Jones, Chancellery Research Fellow,
School of Mathematical Sciences.
These images were generated as part of The Molecular Media Project, that is concerned
with science-driven art and design. This work is a meditation on space and time, and how
events are partitioned across many different scales: real, imaginary and complex.
Futures in Education:
Principles, practice and potential
Monograph Series 2004
No. 5
Jennifer M Gidley
Debra Batemen
Caroline Smith
Australian Foresight Institute
Swinburne University
First published 2004
Australian Foresight Institute
Swinburne University
John Street Hawthorn
VIC 3122 Australia
ISBN 85590805-X
Text © Australian Foresight Institute.
Cover image © Dr Cameron Jones.
© Australian Foresight Institute.
This monograph is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private
study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968,
no part shall be reproduced by any process without written permission.
Editor: Rowena Morrow
Design: Swinburne University of Technology, Press Art Department
Printed in Melbourne by Swinburne Press
Disclaimer
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Australian
Foresight Institute, Swinburne University of Technology or the Pratt Foundation.
vii
CONTENTS
About the authors
List of Tables
iv
viii
Introduction
1
1 Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels:
A Literature Review and Research Task Analysis
Jennifer M Gidley
5
Introduction
Key Futures Concepts in ‘Futures in Education’
5
6
Futures in School Education – the Research
10
Development of ‘Foresight Fostering’ Educational Approaches
26
Futures in Education – Task Analysis
31
Futures in Education: Research Focus Areas
38
Acknowledgements
43
Notes
44
Bibliography
58
2 Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
Debra Bateman and Caroline Smith
73
Summary
73
Introduction and overview
74
Futures in Education in Australian Schools
75
Summary and implications of case studies
82
Conclusions and recommendations for developing futures literacy
85
Notes and references
87
viii
Appendix One
Comparison of Futures Education statements in Australian State and
Territory curriculum documents
90
Appendix Two
Extra-curricular areas that include Futures Education
91
Appendix Three
Summary of Futures Education in Case Study Schools Curricula
92
Appendix Four
Summary of FE in Case Study Schools Curricula
94
Notes
94
List of Tables
1. Table One: Exploratory Typology of ‘Futures in Education’ with Young People
1. Table Two: Pessimism and Optimism – a Two-dimensional Approach
7
10
1. Table Three: Educational Futures Research – Guidelines for Teaching and
Preparing Young People for the Twenty First Century
27
2. Table One: Curriculum organisers and related key FE questions in
New Basics (Queensland)
79
Introduction
RICHARD A SLAUGHTER
INTRODUCTION
The notion of teaching and learning explicitly about futures in education is not new.
It is well over thirty years since the first school and college classes were held. Since
then many hundreds of school based innovations have subjected these initial ideas
and practices to a variety of iterations and tests. What they collectively tell us is that
young people are passionately interested in their own futures, and that of the society
in which they live. They universally ‘jump at the chance’ to study something with
such intrinsic interest that also intersects with their own life interests in so many ways.
Will I get a job? Will the environment collapse? Will machines overrun us? These are
some of the starting questions that often arise and, moreover, they are reinforced
and answered (not always in useful or accessible ways) in popular culture. A common
result is that young people become discouraged from even considering such
questions; they rapidly fall into the ‘too hard’ basket.
For teachers and schools, on the other hand, teaching about futures can either be
deeply inspiring or profoundly threatening. Many would-be innovations have
foundered on the rocks of ‘there’s no text book’; ‘how can you teach it if it (the
future) doesn’t exist?’; ‘there’s no room in a crowded syllabus’ and ‘where will I get
2
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
long-term professional support?’ The most enduring innovations tend to occur in
locations where such questions are posed and then answered – at least for a time.
School principals, curriculum coordinators and the occasional enlightened local authority
rep can help ensure that such work is properly engaged and supported.
The paradox is this. Over recent decades very many people have seen and experienced
first hand just how inspiring, innovative and profoundly useful futures approaches in
education can be. Yet over time such innovations remain remarkably rare. You can
explain this by factors that account for some of the internal constraints that educators
work under, and there is some mileage in that approach. But I think the main reasons
for this lack of progress lie elsewhere.
Many innovations that I have known of, or been involved in, worked very well at
the school level. But as soon as one moves beyond to the system level everything
changes. Here futures in education initiatives seem to vanish like smoke on a windy
day and are seen no more. A central reason for this is that school systems are governed,
in turn, by two powerful sets of forces that have no interest in education or, indeed,
our collective future. Those forces are politics and economics. The other factor is
that education, politics and economics are themselves mediated through an ideological
framework that has become hegemonic over recent decades.1 This managerialist, market
oriented, growth-addicted approach has actively worked to de-focus and hold back
many useful social innovations, including this one. The result is that teachers in schools
(and let us not forget, teachers and learners in very many other locations) have been
undermined by background forces that all-too-often lie out of sight and unregarded.2
Bringing futures work in education back into focus and to freshly comprehend its
individual and cultural value will not be an easy task. Yet it is a vital step toward a
worthwhile future for humankind.
The two pieces of work presented in this monograph were commissioned or
supported by the Australian Foresight Institute with the assistance of the Pratt
Foundation. They are part of a larger research project into ‘Creating and Sustaining
Social Foresight’. 3 The AFI was established for a number of purposes, and the pursuit
of social foresight is its central over-arching goal.
As other monographs in this series make clear, foresight is a human capacity that allows
human beings to order their priorities, navigate a complex ‘present’ and, furthermore,
actively deal with the ‘not here’ and the ‘not yet’. Yet as we move from the individual
level to that of organisations, and from there to the social level, so applied foresight
becomes increasingly rare. This makes no sense at all in a period of continuing rapid
change (some of which is clearly dysfunctional) and a well-known set of serious global
problems. In order to make sensible decisions ‘we’ (i.e., ‘we’ as individuals, ‘we’ as
Introduction
members of organisations and ‘we’ as members of societies and the world) need to
understand and consciously deal with the emerging near-future world. While no small
task, it is precisely this that is enabled by high quality foresight work.
It is not possible to move directly from a near-complete lack of social foresight to
what might be called an ‘effectively installed operating capacity’. So AFI’s research
program involves four phases, each of which corresponds to a ‘layer of capability’,
as follows.
– Foresight in everyday life.
– Futures concepts and tools.
– Futures methodologies.
– Institutions and applications of foresight.
The work reported here is centrally involved in helping to define what we mean by
‘futures or foresight literacy’ in schools. One of the keys to creating the foundations
of a society-wide foresight capacity is for young people across the board to become
familiar with, and use, a range of futures concepts and tools. This creates the capacity
for a futures discourse. Equipped with the latter ‘the future’ ceases to be an abstraction
and becomes an active social category brimming with human and social implications.
Jennifer Gidley has had long experience of working with young people in the areas
of empowerment and futures. She is also the co-editor of one of the most useful and
well-received books in the field, as well as a number of other publications. 4 Her main
brief was to review ‘what we already know’ about futures in education. She has fulfilled
the brief to distinction including, for example, quite new insights from an ‘Integral
Futures’ perspective. In so doing she has provided us with an up-to-date overview
and reality check regarding this vital work. Drawing on examples and research from
many countries she provides us with new insights, as well as vital questions for further
work. The bibliography she has assembled is the most complete and up-to-date one
currently available.
Caroline Smith and Debra Bateman took a different approach. Their task was to survey
what was actually taking place ‘on the ground’, as it were, in Australian schools. They
began by looking at the all-too-common use of implicit futures perspectives and then
moved on to consider how futures are (or are not) reflected in curriculum framework
documents. Next they considered a number of case studies of specific futures programs
and summarised the results under several clear headings. Finally, and central to the
whole project, they drew out their conclusions and recommendations for developing
futures literacy.
3
4
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Overall, therefore, the two contributions that comprise this monograph provide a
fresh basis to reconsider the value and potential of this vital, yet overlooked, area. It
is also a highly significant contribution to the AFI research program. I hope it will
be read with diligence by all who care about the futures of education, young people
and our world. Futures in education provide young people with essential motivation
and a range of proactive skills. They provide teachers with vital new options and
perspectives. They provide education systems with a chance to transcend mere
managerialism, market forces and a common preoccupation with technology per se.
These are significant gifts to a world that currently still remains locked into a short
term modus operandi that puts all our futures at risk.
REFERENCES
1. Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques
and Visions, PhD thesis, University of Queensland.
Also see Milojevic, I (2004). Educational Futures: Dominant and Contesting
Visions, forthcoming, Routledge Falmer, London.
2. Slaughter, R. (2004). ‘The emergence of futures into the educational
mainstream’, chapter 13 of Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight,
Routledge Falmer, London.
3. For details see the AFI web site http://www.swin.edu.au/afi
4. Gidley, J. and Inayatullah, S. (2002). (eds) Youth Futures, Praeger, Westport,
Connecticut.
Richard A Slaughter
Melbourne
May 2004
1 Futures/Foresight in Education at
Primary and Secondary Levels:
A Literature Review and Research Task Analysis
JENNIFER M GIDLEY
INTRODUCTION
The scope of the ‘futures in education’ research to date includes three major areas:
– the research with young people (mostly in school settings) which explores
their views and visions of the future,
– the actual teaching of futures concepts, tools and processes in school settings,
– the speculative research into transformative educational models and
approaches which have futures/foresight thinking as part of their
worldview
The first of these areas provides a context for how young people see themselves in regard
to ‘the future’ and why ‘futures’ processes are so valuable for them. The second will
include an analysis of the current ‘state of play’ in futures education in schools and also
some examples of ‘good practice’ at the primary and secondary levels. The third area
points to a possible future of futures education which goes beyond ‘futures’ as isolated
lessons or subjects to where foresight is part of the meme rather than an ‘add-on’.
The literature review summarises and discusses the research to date. This is followed
by a task analysis which highlights areas of strength and weakness and point to gaps
in the research corpus. The implications of the existing theory, research and practice
6
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
for developing foresight literacy in the future are then considered. Finally, there is
an exploration of ways of conceptualising research in futures education, including
the identification of some specific research tasks that could be undertaken in the short
to medium term under the auspices of the Australian Foresight Institute.
KEY FUTURES CONCEPTS IN ‘FUTURES IN EDUCATION’
Much of the foundational work on the development of futures concepts has been
accomplished by Richard Slaughter.1 He has continued to develop and extend this
work over the past decade and any serious approach to futures in education needs
to include a study of these sources.2 It is beyond the scope of this literature review
to discuss these in detail. The following list indicates the scope of the territory and
the additional sources mentioned provide direction for further study:
– the futures field, consisting of futures research, Futures Studies and futures
movements3
– prediction, forecasting and foresight4
– past, present and future and the extended (200-year) present5
– non-Western cultural conceptions of time (Western linear compared with
cyclic and spiral)6
– creativity and imagination7
– alternative futures8
– the meta-problem9
– cultural editing and mapping10
– social futures11
– futures fluency (discussed further below).12
What follows will be a brief discussion of some additional key futures concepts that
emerge strongly from the futures work with young people and in schools.
One future or many futures.
It is most common in everyday discourse to speak of ‘the future’ as if there were
only one possible option as to how ‘the future’ might be. The encouragement to
envision a plurality of ‘futures’ is a feature of the empowerment oriented Futures Studies
research discussed below.
‘Probable, possible, preferred and prospective futures’.
As early as 1982, educational futures researchers were identifying different orientations
in the future views of young people. Johan Galtung identified three ways of approaching
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels
the future, which he termed ‘probable futures’, ‘possible futures’ and desirable or ‘preferred’
futures all of which are described below.13 Building on the work of Galtung, Ake Bjerstedt
identified a fourth orientation or goal in preparing for the future, which he called
preparedness to act, based on self-reliance and solidarity.14 This ‘readiness to act’ identified
by Bjerstedt is often referred to as ‘prospective’ futures capacity.
This research raised the possibility that much of the research reporting negative views
of the future may be simply expressing young people’s fears, despair and pessimism
about what they see as the ‘probable future’. Galtung and Bjerstedt’s research argued
for the necessity to provide the opportunity for young people to also explore ‘alternative’
futures (possible, preferred and even prospective). Following in Bjerstedt’s footsteps,
Hutchinson also suggested that research relying primarily on survey data may be
underpinned by positivist, reductionist views serving actually to ‘colonise’ young people’s
views of the future with a pre-set ‘one and only fearful future’ view.15 An exploration
of how these four future orientations may be related to the types of Futures Studies,
and their associated underpinning paradigms is demonstrated in Table One below.
Broad
Probable
Possible
Preferred
Prospective
Trend analysis
Imaginative,
Values position
Will to act,
– global,
creative ideas,
critical,
self-reliance,
ecological
flexibility
ideological
empowerment
Approach
Description
Related
Predictive,
Cultural –
Critical,
Integral,
Types
quantitative,
interpretive,
post-modernist,
transformational,
of Futures
trend is destiny
utopian
ideological
empowering,
Studies
(One future)
(Many futures)
(An ‘other’
(Futuring)
future)
Underpinning
Positivist
Constructivist,
Critical,
Paradigms
empirical,
interpretive,
emancipatory
analytical
hermeneutic
Paradigm shift,
transformational,
activist
Research
Quantitative,
Qualitative,
Text analysis,
Integral,
Methods
forecasting
dialogues
critique of
visioning,
surveys
collaborative
media, cultural
action planning,
trend scenarios
creative visions
artifacts,
action research
visioning
Goal
Generalisation
Opening
Critical
Empowerment,
extrapolation
alternative
awareness,
change,
possibilities
deconstruction
transformation
Table One: Exploratory Typology of ‘Futures in Education’ with Young People16
7
8
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
The fourth approach attempts to move beyond a classical dualistic or even three paradigm
approach to a holistic or integral approach which may increase the chances of empowering
the participants. In a more comprehensive typology of Futures Studies as a whole,
Slaughter has begun to identify an emerging fourth iteration of the field (Integral Futures)
which draws on the Integral research of Ken Wilber and others.17 The relationship
between these frameworks will be discussed in the analysis section below.
Personal vs global futures
When speaking of young people’s views of the future a distinction must be made
between ‘personal futures’ and their future images for their country or the world.
Since the earliest studies of young people’s views of the future, in the seventies, a
dissonance has been found between what young people expect in their own lives and
how they see the future of their country or the planet.18 This dissonance is believed
by many futurists to result from the continual bombardment of young people’s
imaginations by the media’s presentation of negative, fearful collective futures.19
The findings of Johnson’s study of 600,000 American school children typifies the
gap found between the often conventional, even conservative optimistic view of their
personal futures, a rather more negative view of local or national futures, and a decidedly
pessimistic and often frightening view of the future of the world from a majority (sixty
per cent) of children studied.20 These findings are supported by much of the Australian
research described below.21 Hicks claims that the more recent research indicates a
closing of the gap between optimistic personal futures and pessimistic national/global
futures yet his own research with 398 seven - eighteen year olds in the United Kingdom
shows the same dissonance as found in earlier studies.22 The above studies are primarily
within the first category of the typology (Table One), with the exception of the work
of Hicks and Wilson who take a more critical approach.
In a recent study with young people in Finland, Rubin finds the same personal/global
dissonance to exist and takes a critical view of its implications. She describes the optimistic
personal future views of the young people in her study who imagine a ‘happy, prosperous,
safe family life’ as being tied to the 1950’s and 1960’s attitudes which Rubin links
to the ‘modern’ time. She contrasts this with what she calls the ‘postmodern’ impact
on their images of national and global futures, where the future becomes a
‘frightening and shapeless entity’.23 Rubin identifies an extreme dissonance of an
unrealistically optimistic dreaming about personal futures that seem oblivious to the
changes that are occurring, contrasted with global views that are equally unrealistic,
overly pessimistic, consisting of fears, threats and anxieties.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels
When these negative concepts of the future of Finland and of the world are
placed alongside the positive view of a young person’s personal future,
confusion follows, and possibly the feeling that control of one’s personal
life is out of reach, and this can easily lead to growing alienation and
indifference.24
Optimism and pessimism – problematic indicators
Before attempting to review the studies on youth views of the future it is also important
to problematise the frequently used terms of optimism and pessimism about the future.
The complexities of the optimism/pessimism dimension are highlighted in terms of
the images of the future presented in schools. If the images of the future presented
are either overly optimistic or overly pessimist they may lead to disempowerment.25
It is argued by Eckersley and Hutchinson that the negative and colonising images
of the future continually presented to young people through the media and
educational artifacts, such as text books are potentially disempowering.26 This
paradox was first recognised and discussed by Slaughter in the first edition of his Futures
Tools and Techniques:
It is true that pessimism may lead to despair. However, it may also
stimulate a person to search for effective solutions. On the other hand,
optimism may leave an individual’s energy free for constructive projects or
it may encourage bland, unhelpful, business-as-usual attitudes. In both cases
the human response is crucial. Optimism and pessimism can both inhibit
and encourage effective responses.27
In a section of this book entitled ‘Dealing with Fears’, there are numerous strategies
described for supporting young people in these difficult times. These include
‘changing fears to motivation, exploring social innovations, surviving media
manipulation, conceptualising more advanced forms of social and economic life’, e.g.
what would ‘an economics of kindness or wisdom’ look like?28
In Table Two Hutchinson, reflecting on these paradoxes, examines a two-dimensional
approach to optimism and pessimism which explores them in relation to what he calls
an actor-oriented dimension which incorporates inherent views on human agency
(influence optimism) versus structural imperatives (influence pessimism).
9
10
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Dimensions
Optimism
Pessimism
Broad
Essence-optimism about
Essence-pessimism about
Ontological
the ‘future’
the ‘future’
Assumptions of unitary
Assumptions of civilisational
progress from lower to
decline and devolution
Category
higher forms
Example narratives:
Example narratives:
Enlightenment Project
Eco-catastrophism
Classical Marxism
Left-Nietzchean nihilism
Technocratic Dreaming
‘Colonised’ images of a
Utopian visions
fearful future
Actor-
Influence-optimism
Influence-pessimism
oriented
(Inherent human agency view)
(inherent structural limitations)
Dimension
Assumptions of unfettered
Assumptions of human agency as
freedom of choice that leave
marginal or doomed to
invisible structural violence
ineffectualness
Example narratives:
Example narratives:
Smithian free-market
Teachers/students as
economies ‘New Age’
‘authoritarian dupes or
philosophies. Individual
structural dopes’
empowerment approaches
Corrosive cynicism about the
value of democratic participation
Table Two: Pessimism and Optimism – a Two-dimensional Approach29
FUTURES IN SCHOOL EDUCATION – THE RESEARCH
A brief history of futures in education from a global perspective can be found in
Slaughter’s recent chapter ‘From Rhetoric to Reality’ which points to the first futures
course in schools in the US in 1966, followed by several funded pilot projects. He
then refers to some of the foundational work done in schools in the US by Kristen
Druker in high schools, and Ted Dixen in primary schools, and the work of Paul
Torrence through the Future Problem Solving Program, still operating today.
Another major and continuing contribution to the field has been that of David Hicks
in the UK who continues to offer courses for teachers and has developed a wealth
of curriculum material which will be mentioned again below. The situation in Australia
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels
has included several key innovative futures projects all of which appear to have foundered.
Slaughter argues that in spite of its long history now spanning decades, futures in
education is still marred by many obstacles not the least being that school systems
are still ‘quintessentially industrial era organisations’ which are resistant to change.30
Much of the earlier (pre-1990) ‘futures in education’ research involved, or at least
included, exploring young people’s views and visions of the future. A discussion of
this research also provides a background to the more specific teaching of futures in
schools (and of course there is some overlap between these areas).
Young people’s views and visions of the future
The future of the earth depends on the attitude of the community (both
local and global). At present the earth is going downhill, if nothing changes
there could be trouble. Most likely is that we’ll reach a point and realise
something must change. The question is whether this point will be too late
or not. – ‘Joshua’ – a Year 12 student.31
Research into young people’s views of the future, in Australia in the 1980s and 90s,
indicated deepening negativity and lack of hope and a sense of powerlessness.32 The
issues that loomed large as concerns for young people emerge in the more qualitative
studies as being predominantly the environment, the economy, unemployment, health
issues (drug abuse and AIDS).33 This echoed what was being found in the US and
Europe.34 Youth futures research in the ‘non-West’ seems only to have begun with
Sohail Inayatullah’s studies referred to below.35
Wilson’s major study reflected other findings about the negativity, fear and feelings
of powerlessness. However, he also stressed two other key issues, indicating that although
this was a quantitative survey, his own underpinning paradigm was critical and
empowerment oriented rather than positivist. His recommendations stressed:
– the importance of giving students the opportunity to create alternative
scenarios
– the necessity to work with empowerment of the youth to help them begin
to feel that they can influence change in a positive way.36
The need for more and different forms of research with youth on these issues was
stressed by Gough (1987):
We have to be cautious about taking the survey results at face value. The
children … may be telling themselves and the researchers stories about
alternative futures, including futures they want to avoid. We need alternative
11
12
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
research designs to get out the deeper, underlying attitudes. The results so
far are only scratching the surface.37
Hutchinson’s research although using a survey as part of the data collection, attempts
to take youth futures research into the deeper levels called for by Gough.
In this respect it also fits the fourth category in the typology (Table One) as it is
using mixed methodologies and is empowerment oriented, drawing on the work of
Boulding.38 His survey results were organised into three major perspectives:
– young people’s images of feared futures: an uncompassionate world; a physically
violent world; a divided world; a mechanised world; an environmentally
unsustainable world; and a politically corrupt and deceitful world
– young people’s images of preferred futures: technocratic dreaming (or
technofix solutions) especially from the boys; greening of science and
technology, more common among the girls; imagining intergenerational
equity and making peace with people and planet
– linking images of the world with action-planning.39
Hutchinson’s research supports the need to broaden literacies in schools through prosocial skills and affective/imaginative learning styles. He also found that young people
struggled to find ‘preferred futures’ images yet were more fluid and extensive when
it came to their fears about the future. This difficulty with creating fluid positive images
of ‘preferred futures’ was not present with students educated in a more artistic,
imaginative style, as discussed below.40
There was also a large discrepancy found in much of the research between what young
people expect and their aspirations or ‘preferred’ futures.41 Eckersley’s more recent
research takes a more critical stance than his earlier surveys and indicates a large
discrepancy between what youth expect (‘probable’ future) and would wish to happen
(‘preferred’ futures) in the future.42 Most do not expect life in Australia to be better
in 2010. Young people were asked to nominate which of two positive scenarios for
Australia for 2010 came closer to the type of society they both expected and preferred.
Almost two thirds (sixty three per cent) said they expected ‘a fast-paced, internationally
competitive society, with the emphasis on the individual, wealth generation and enjoying
the good life’. However eight in ten (eighty one per cent) had the following values:
‘a greener, more stable society, where the emphasis is on cooperation, community
and family, more equal distribution of wealth, and greater economic self-sufficiency’.43
In regards to convergences and divergences found in the research, perhaps a point
that needs to be made is that although there were fairly clear age differences and gender
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels
13
differences in most of the research, none of the major studies found any differences
based on socio-economic background.44
Effects of age differences on futures images
In the mid-nineties the Australian Commission for the Future undertook group
discussions in three states with young people aged sixteen to twenty-five years. One
of the more disturbing findings was that at fifteen many youth are optimistic and
positive but by twenty five many have become disillusioned and rudderless.45 The
young people seemed apathetic about the future and felt powerless to change anything.
This research concluded that their
lack of ability to identify beliefs or
In the mid-nineties the Australian Commission
values reflected a generation of
for the Future undertook group discussions in
youth in a spiritual vacuum.46 This
three states with young people aged sixteen to
decrease in optimism with age has
also been found in other studies,
twenty-five years. One of the more disturbing
such as the ACER study into Schools
findings was that at fifteen many youth are
and the Social Development of
optimistic and positive but by twenty five many
Young Australians.47
have become disillusioned and rudderless.
In their major project in the UK with
almost 400 children aged from seven
to eighteen years from eight schools (four primary and four secondary), Hicks and
Holden’s research throws some light on how ‘the optimism of the seven year old is
transformed into the pessimism of the eighteen year old’.48 In summary what they
found in the various ages was:
– Seven year olds. They are the most optimistic that life for people all over
the world will get better; they are ambivalent about whether poverty or
pollution will be alleviated. They are the most optimistic of all age groups,
feeling that life will be better for themselves and for others.
– Eleven year olds. Commitment to improving the environment and to learning
about global issues seems highest at this age. Although they are less
optimistic than the younger children that social conditions will improve,
they nevertheless hold a naïve belief that everyone is concerned about
improving the planet and they would like to be a part of this.
– Fourteen year olds. They are less optimistic than eleven year olds about
world conditions improving and are ambivalent about whether they can
do anything themselves to help make the world a better place.
14
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
– Eighteen year olds. Eighteen year olds are the least positive about conditions
improving either locally or globally... Although some eighteen year olds
gave examples of action they take to effect change, many are sceptical of
the influence they can have. They are aware of a system ‘out there’ which
influences people’s lives but do not see themselves as part of that
process.49
This negativity and cynicism of older adolescents was in contrast to research with
Steiner-educated students who expressed very positive, salient visions of preferred futures
as well as a strong sense of activism in creating them.50 Their images seemed able to
reflect the strong emphasis in this educational approach on the positive, creative processes
of life, including substantial role-modelling of positive human achievement through
stories.51
At the other end of the age spectrum, Jane Page found that very young children already
possess many of the qualities that futurists try to impart through futures education
tools and processes, in her ground breaking work exploring futures education and
early childhood education. Speaking of the four and five year olds that she researched,
Page found:
Their flexibility of thought, their positive and constructive outlook on life,
their sense of the continuity of time, their creativity and imagination, and
their sense of personal connection with time and the future are all qualities
which Futures Studies strives to re-instil in adults and older children.52
Gender issues
Women are better adapted for the change from the industrial society to a
new society…because women are not carriers of the values of the preceding
industrial society. As they were not the builders of the future in the preceding
society, they may become the builders of the future in a different society.
As they were invisible in the industrial society, they may become visible and
constructive in a post-industrial society
Eleanora Masini53
Some rather marked gender differences were found in Hicks and Holden’s research
in the UK. They found that in their preferred futures scenarios, forty per cent of boys
were attracted to a future dominated by technology, compared to only nineteen per
cent of girls. This applied to all age categories of children in their study except for
seven year olds where the proportions were slightly reversed.54 Hutchinson also found
that boys’ images of the ‘preferred future’ fell largely into images of ‘passive hope’
with technology being the ‘magical helper’. The girls were more able to envisage a
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels
‘greening of science’.55 Interestingly, gender differences in preferred futures visions
were not found in a study with Steiner-educated adolescents. Both males and females
were somewhat anti-technology as a solution to future problems and more focused
on human agency-based social, ecological and spiritual futures. There was also no
gender difference found in the richness and fluidity of their creative images of positive
preferred futures. I believe these findings are a result of the conscious effort found
in Steiner education to overcome the limitations of narrow gender stereotyping.56
Hicks and Holden also found that girls of all ages express more interest than boys
in their own future, the futures of the community and the world. They found that
twice as many secondary school girls feel that they can do something to make a
difference. On the other hand, they found that eighteen year old boys are the most
cynical.57 The researchers point out that this finding runs somewhat counter to the
arguments of feminist writers who still maintain that girls are disadvantaged by the
educational system. Supporting Hicks and Holden’s point, recent research in
Australia suggests that many boys are not thriving in the existing education system
with only sixty one per cent currently completing secondary schooling.58 The youth
suicide statistics in Australia further indicate that boys and young men are the most
disempowered by hopelessness about current cultural conditions.59 The potential for
reversing this disturbing phenomenon through futures visioning processes is discussed
below under ‘psychological implications’, where it is shown that positive futures visioning
can lower feelings of hopelessness, especially in boys.60
Cultural diversity of views and visions
If the wealthier East Asian nations are a sign of the future, then a shift to a
communicative-inclusive or partnership future is a possibility, since these nations’ youth
are already tiring of development.61
In addition to the major research discussed above which is primarily from Australia,
the US and the UK, studies have also been undertaken into youth views and visions
of the future in a range of other countries and cultures. The most comprehensive
coverage of this material can be found in the recent book, which includes research
in Japan, Finland, Singapore, Hungary, Norway, Germany, Taiwan and Pakistan, as
well as youth essays from Australia, Pakistan and the Philippines.62 Further to this, a
study of the future views and values of Spanish youth was undertaken by Enric Bas.63
In his overall research with non-Western youth futures, Inayatullah suggests that the
non-West is mirroring the West. He found that in Pakistan, the fatigue was not with
development (as in the West) but with feudalism and state control, resulting in a desire
to escape to high-income areas (Middle Eastern or OECD countries). Those who
can not escape have to make the ‘best of it’, which tends to mean high heroin addiction.64
15
16
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
He also found that although the ‘official discourse is religion, the unofficial is escape
from religion and the chase for all things Western (T-Shirts, cigarettes, and rock music).
Ivana Milojevic’s recent doctoral research on Futures of Education makes a vital
contribution to the exploration of educational futures beyond the mainstream cultural
discourse. Apart from broadening the concept of a single utopian vs dystopian duality,
she embraces the movement towards heterotopias and eutopias, which include a number
of dissenting futures. These alternative educational futures include feminist, indigenous
and spiritual.65
‘Futures in education’ – research and practice
Any act of teaching and learning occurs primarily to achieve ends in the future: personal,
professional and social. The whole educational enterprise is intended to contribute
towards the further development of the society as a whole. These are true futures
concerns.66
Much of the initiative to keep futures in education on the Futures Studies agenda
has been driven by Richard Slaughter. What he meant by futures in education was
quite comprehensive, going far beyond a few isolated lessons. The ideal picture of
futures in education from Slaughter’s perspective would be:
– Introduce futures concepts and tools throughout the curriculum.
– Integrate futures thinking into teacher training and professional
development.
– Relate curriculum frameworks to their wider, long-term context.
– Use futures methods on strategic planning for schools and school systems.
– Revise the concept of educational leadership to include a proactive
element.67
Hand in hand with Slaughter’s ongoing conceptual contribution, has been the consistent
application of this work in practice by David Hicks in the UK. His work really provides
the benchmark for the practical application of futures work in schools. He has also
developed numerous resources for the actual practice of futures in education.68
Slaughter also pointed to the different potential levels of implementation of futures
in education, for example:
– Pre-school
• An emphasis on teacher preparation, curriculum development. For
more comprehensive research on this level see Jane Page’s book.69
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 17
– Primary
• A perspective in teacher preparation and curriculum design: simple
futures tools, exercises and concepts. In particular David Hicks’
resources for teachers are most valuable.70
– Secondary
• Disciplinary perspective and subject: introduction to the knowledge
base, futures discourse, methods, social applications. There are
numerous resources that could be drawn on here.71
– Tertiary
• Scholarly discipline: advanced discourse, research, discipline-building,
social implementation.72
The following list indicates the scope of the tools and methodologies that are available
for teaching futures in schools and the additional sources mentioned provide
direction for further study:
– Timelines are probably the simplest and yet one of the most effective
futures tools for use with children.73
– Futures wheels are also stimulating and effective.74
– Visioning of preferred futures is one of the foremost futures tools
among futurists working with children and adolescents. A useful
discussion of the background to futures visioning can be found in
Jones based on the formative work of Jungk, Boulding and Zeigler.75
For more information specifically on visioning work with children see
Hicks and Holden, 76 and adolescents, refer to Hutchinson and
Gidley.77
– Scenario-building is also commonly used with children and adolescents,
often with the aid of pictures of a range of alternatives.78
– Backcasting (Future history) is a crucial part of visioning and scenario
work as it links the processes back to the present and to an action
component.79
– T-Cycle, previously referred to as the change cycle.80
– Creative methods such as promoting imagination, brainstorming,
drawing, jokes, cartoons and symbols, council of all beings, science
fiction, social inventions.81
– Sources of hope are also a resource for teachers and futures researchers
developed by Hicks.82
18 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
– Specific tools most suitable for the nine to fourteen age range can be
found in Hicks.83
– Some tools for use in early childhood education are also being
developed by Jane Page.84
Curriculum innovations, including Futures Studies lessons and units
As a result of this foundational work there have been numerous cases of futures in
education being applied across the globe, in particular in the UK, the US and Australia.
David Hicks’ work in curriculum innovation in the UK has been prolific and can be
studied through his collection of written works much of which is directly aimed at
teachers for use in the classroom.85 The more recent development of his work has
taken futures into the new curriculum area of citizenship education – a national focus
in the UK curriculum. One of the major futures oriented projects in the US has been
Paul Torrence’s Future Problem Solving Program, still operating today. By the midnineties an estimated 200,000 students in all fifty states were using the program’s
material.86 The influence of this program has also extended to other countries including
Australia where it is operating at Deakin University. A critique of this project would
be that it strongly extols a ‘technofuture’. The work of Cole Jackson in a major K
to 12 schools project in Florida, grew into the technologically based ‘Creating Preferred
Futures Project’ discussed under technology below. In addition, there is the Futures
Institute, Rio Salado College, Arizona. The work being undertaken there initiated
by Thomas Lombardo seems to take the broadest and most integrated approach to
futures education in the US. Lombardo’s work seems to go well beyond the limitations
of much of the futures work in the US (with its strong business/corporate futures
orientation), and beyond the limitations of narrowly defined techno-futures, to embrace
social, ecological, cultural and spiritual futures.87
Although a number of futures based curriculum innovations have been introduced
in schools in Australia and New Zealand, most have faltered through lack of systemic
support for teachers in their schools. The most significant and initially most successful
was developed in Queensland, by Kathleen Rundell and Richard Slaughter for the
Board of Senior Secondary School Studies. They developed an innovative four-semester
program in futures for years eleven and twelve.88 Although early evaluations
confirmed this to be a highly effective model for senior secondary students, it has
only been used in a limited way and was dropped after its pilot phase, perhaps waiting
to be rediscovered?
At a presentation in 2003 to teachers at an Australian Foresight Institute Forum,
Caroline Smith gave an overview of ‘futures-oriented’ innovations in Australian
education. (See following paper in this monograph). These included:
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 19
– Some NSW schools engaged in scenario planning (but purely economic
focus)
– Some sustainable futures projects in WA
– The new SA syllabus with its five ‘essential learnings’ (one of these being
‘futures’)
– Similar developments in Tasmania with ‘essential learnings’ (including
futures)
– Several Catholic schools integrating futures thinking into other curriculum
areas.89
The appropriation of futures terminology – a fashion in mainstream
education.
A common symptom of the token use of futures concepts is the uncritical
reiteration of clichés and stereotypes.90
The use of the word ‘future’
Caroline Smith also noted that the use of the word
or ‘futures’ is beginning to
‘future’ or ‘futures’ is beginning to become more common
become more common in
in educational discourse. However, she expressed concerns
educational discourse.
that it seems that much of this may be just a superficial
appropriation of the futures terminology without recourse
to the research and knowledge base of Futures Studies. This ‘fashion statement’ futures
gives the illusion that futures issues are being addressed by educators, when in fact
it is only the most cursory tokenism. These same concerns were expressed over ten
years ago by Noel Gough in a critical examination of ways in which futures were
conceptualised at that time in the language of Australian education.91 Gough spoke
of three main ways that futures had entered educational discourse:
– Tacit futures – by this he refers to the ‘temporal asymmetry’ of educational
discourse whereby ‘the temporal categories of past and present receive far
more frequent and explicit attention’ (even in documents purporting to
be about ‘Future Directions in …Education’).
– Token futures – referring to ‘the invocation of futures concepts and
terminology for purposes which are chiefly rhetorical or where they are
part of a rationalisation of choices, decisions or judgements which may,
in fact, have been made on other grounds.’ He cites Victorian curriculum
documents which use ‘Education for the Future’ in their titles but whose
only references to the future are in fact ‘cliché-ridden superfluities’…
‘a kind of tokenism – a rhetorical boost to economic rationalism’.
20 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
– Taken-for-granted futures. The major recurring themes that Gough noted
to be part of the futures discourse of this time (even within the futures
movement itself) were exemplified by a major information kit compiled
by the Australia’s Commission for the Future. Titled, Future Options,
Gough’s critique is that it didn’t inform Australians about all possible options
but only those options presented by scientific and technological
development. Gough demonstrated how much of the other rhetoric at
that time concerning futures in Australian education ‘took for granted’
the prospect (and the desirability) of an education-led economic recovery.92
As futurists of the early Twenty First Century we must question whether any of this
has changed very much. While there seems to be a new interest in futures in education
in Australia, unless this interested is married to the vast body of research and knowledge
that the futures field has been developing for decades, it will be of little if any
transformative value for education of the future.
Empowerment issues
At the moment things seem to be getting steadily worse and we all know a
change is needed. We – everybody – have the opportunity to determine the
direction that the change takes us in. The more we take part in the change
the more benefits there will be for society and the world. – ‘Maree’, Year 12.93
The research on young people’s future views and visions, discussed earlier, shows that
young people sense a spiritual vacuum in their society (though only some are able
to articulate it). They are deeply concerned about what they see as a lack of values
and ethics in politics and the corporate business world.94 Young people are idealistic
when given a chance to express themselves. They want a clean, green world with ethics
and meaning, a world where everyone is treated fairly. They want work that is meaningful
and where they are treated with respect and valued. Yet they expect the future to be
full of their fears. How can this be transformed? It has been shown that young people’s
sense of disempowerment and pessimism about global issues can be addressed by innovative
educational styles and processes, discussed below, to increase their sense of agency.
The youth futures research often refers to young people’s negativity towards the future
and disempowerment as if the two were inextricably tied together. Yet some
international studies have suggested that social and political activism can both lessen
feelings of powerless in the face of global problems and also increase enthusiasm about
personal prospects for the future.95
An Australian study with students educated in the Steiner education system found
that the students’ negative expectations about the ‘probable future’ did not seem to
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 21
disempower them, in contrast with the findings of most other futures research.96 In
spite of identifying many of the same global problems of environmental destruction,
social injustice and threats of war, that concern mainstream youth, most of the Steiner
students seemed undaunted in terms of their own will to do something to create their
‘preferred future’. Their preparedness to act to solve the problems suggests they were
empowered by their style of education.97 This
research and its implications will be further
Futures Studies techniques can be
discussed below under Integral Education. It
extremely valuable in countering
would be interesting to know whether similar
the fears that many young people
findings would occur in research with students
have about the future.
educated in non-Steiner ‘alternative’ schools (such
as Montessori, Ananda Marga Gurukul, Christian
community, etc).
Empowerment and futures education
Youth are part of the solution; they must have an education that empowers
them to feel this. … Many students in the study, changed their attitudes to
issues of ecology and the future as they began to see the connection between
their attitudes and their actions.98
Futures Studies techniques can be extremely valuable in countering the fears that many
young people have about the future. A number of Australian studies have engaged
young people in working through their fears and beginning to activate their
imaginations to envision their ‘preferred futures’.99 The findings all indicate that this
type of ‘futures in education’ can be very rewarding and even empowering for the
participants.
In the Re-Imagining Your Neighborhood (RYN) project students were encouraged
to imagine what a healthy neighborhood could look and feel like. They then identified
what was needed to create this neighborhood by talking with local government,
conducting interviews, community art, tree plantings and the design of public spaces.
The findings indicate that RYN was effective in helping students develop a greater
sense of hope and possibility.100
In another futures study, in a rural Queensland school, a block of social science lessons
was used to introduce futures work. The students were asked to develop an
individual and then a collective vision of a preferable 2030. The process involved
exploring everyone’s individual vision and then deciding on those that had everyone’s
support. The developed visions give a picture of these young people’s broad values
and aspirations. Similar to the findings of other futures research, they want a world
22 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
with ‘less pollution, violence … and weapons, greater protection for endangered species
and wilderness areas, greater equality between all humans and more emphasis on health’.101
However, the next and most crucial stage of the research involved students brainstorming
actions that could be done as a class, now and in the future. This part of the project
empowers the students – without it futures research with young people may have a
depressing effect, because they can’t see how their dreams can become reality.
Another recent Australian youth futures visioning project,
partnered by the Futures Foundation, was also found to
have a positive outcome for the youth involved. After some
a cognitive process, but also
initial difficulties, the youth were able to move from their
moves the hearts and souls
local and somewhat cynical focus on ‘lack of entertainment
of those who enter into it.
and shortage of places to hang around’. Their aspirations
developed into thinking of their community as one
where citizens could ‘think, plan, dream and play’. After four workshops their final
vision was one which portrayed in some detail ‘a welcoming society, a sustaining
environment, and an enterprising economy’.102
Futures education is not just
Psychological implications of futures processes
It seems rather obvious to say that the first step is to acknowledge the fact
that learning about global issues and alternative futures involves emotions
and soul searching.103
Although futures work with young people has been going on for decades there has
only been limited research into the psychological implications, both positive and negative,
of these processes. Martha Rogers appears to have been the first futures researcher
to enter this territory.104 Her research, which although not technically about futures
in school education, has been included here because of the absence of other research
and the importance of the issues involved. Based on the findings from her research
with both adults and graduate students she stressed the importance of recognising
that futures education is not just a cognitive process, but also moves the hearts and
souls of those who enter into it. She reported that many students in the initial stages
of learning about futures underwent considerable cognitive dissonance, confusion
and discomfort. This led to the stirring of emotions which for some became a ‘roller
coaster’ ranging from anger, depression, guilt and fear, to elation. She also noted that
these emotions were a part of a grief response to losing their previously held personal
worldviews, often followed by a new heart-felt caring for the world and others. The
next stage Rogers noted was that there was a soul awakening where the person’s whole
being became engaged in a search for new meaning and purpose. At each of these
stages some self-helping skills were needed to bring back balance in order to move
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 23
on. Finally, she noted that finding a path to action was a crucial stage in bringing
about a return to calm and certainty. Once students had embarked on a path to action,
they reported feelings of personal power and renewed hope.105
A recent study in a rural Australian high school provided some ground-work for the
development of a new theoretical approach to primary prevention of suicide in
adolescents by using futures processes to target hopelessness. The study made links
between the extensive psychological literature which has linked hopelessness with
depression and suicide risk for decades, and the youth futures research which correlates
rising youth suicide rates with growing fears and negativity of young people towards
the future. The research explored the possibility that the futures processes might reduce
clinical levels of hopelessness in young people.106 A four session intervention
program, called ‘Creating Positive Futures’, targeted the negative images of the future
among the students and attempted to promote more positive images. The program
succeeded, since the young people’s images of the future did become significantly
more positive after the intervention. There was also a marked improvement in the
hopelessness scores of the males. Although only a pilot study, this has important
implications given that suicide among young males is four times that of young women
and also that adolescent boys are perceived as being a difficult group to influence.
However, a note of caution needs to be sounded here in that some of the girls actually
became more hopeless, and also some of the students who were already clinically
depressed became more depressed initially and needed individual debriefing sessions.
More research is needed to further test these findings.
Technology and futures in education
Futures in education is sometimes understood to mean futuristic schools (which in
turn is usually understood to mean high-tech input into education). In a study of
technology-based learning in the US, Sandra Ramos Miller identified three types of
schools that had incorporated technology in a way that was instrumental in changing
the old paradigms of instruction. She discussed:
– wealthy, technology-rich ‘cutting edge’ schools
– what she called ‘forward-looking’ schools, with limited financial support,
trying to transform themselves for the future
– ‘trailblazing schools’, highly resourced, and high-tech, such as the ‘Apple
classrooms of tomorrow’.
Overall, she argued that introducing technology into schools is a catalyst for
change.107
24 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Extending the futures and technology idea even further, an actual online futures project
for young people has been initiated by Cole Jackson in the US. The ‘Creating Preferred
Futures Project’108 is an interdisciplinary, Web-based concept that links students from
around the globe in an interactive futures education forum.109 It is the only online
futures education program of its kind in the world specifically geared to K-12 students.
Recent research suggests, however, that some caution needs to be exercised in rushing
into the high tech end of school education for children. There is as yet little research
done on the long-term effects of over exposure to television and computers, but new
research is quite alarming. A number of studies in the US have begun to question
the benefits and even explore potential psychological and even physical damage to
children, from long exposure to screen images.110 Further to this, a current study
being undertaken at Sydney University in Australia, by Professor Paul Mitchell and
Dr Kathryn Rose, is finding links between the recent rapid increases in the vision
disorder myopia, and the over-use of screen input (from television and computers).
Perhaps these are also areas of potential research for educational futurists.
Multi-cultural educational futures issues
Some of the foremost work in educational futures on what he calls ‘deep
multiculturalism’ has been undertaken by Sohail Inayatullah. Although most of his
work has been done at the tertiary level, it is included here because of the lack of
research and practice into these issues at the school level.111 Likewise Ivana Milojevic’s
research into women’s and indigenous educational futures makes a major contribution
to this area.112 Other significant futurists whose work needs to be studied if educators
are to seriously enter the terrain of the ‘cultural other’ with full authenticity are the
works of Ashis Nandi, Zia Sardar, and Susanthe Goonatilake.113 Also David Wright’s
research on Japanese youth, and that of Alfred Oerlers on young people in Singapore,
gives some additional insights into non-Western ways of viewing educational
futures.114 Finally, some fresh perspectives from non-Western youth themselves can
be found in the essays by Bilal Aslam from Pakistan and Michael Guanco from the
Philippines. 115
Futures fluency
Imagination is by necessity a foundation of futures research: there are no
future facts. What information we do have about the future comes from
our records of the past, our observations of the present, and our imaginative
ability to ask, ‘What if’?116
The work of Wendy Shultz in the area of ‘futures fluency’ is also of vital interest in
enriching futures in education programs. Futures fluency is defined as ‘proficiency
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 25
and delight in creative, critical and constructive uses of rigorously imaginative
speculation’.117 Shultz speaks of five cornerstone activities and discusses the relevant
futures tools that underpin each of them:
– Identifying and monitoring change which is best developed through
emerging issues analysis (also known as environmental scanning).
– Critiquing the impacts of change, which relies on the futures tool known
as impact analysis.
– Imagining alternative futures which involves incasting (the deductive
forecasting of alternative possible futures).
– Envisioning preferred futures or ideals which involves visioning (an
imaginative, idealistic or normative process which aids people in explicitly
articulating their preferred future).
– Planning and implementing/achievement phase involves backcasting which
bridges the gap between events in a possible future (usually a preferred
future) and the extended present.118
Finally, after the five stages are complete, there is a return to the beginning, to identify,
review and monitor any change that has occurred. Although Shultz’s work has mostly
been in the adult/corporate sector the concept of futures fluency and the methods
used to enhance it could equally be used in school settings.
Futures analysis of problems in education
A relatively under-utilised area of futures in education research is the use of futures
methodologies to analyse educational (and other social, cultural or psychological)
problems or issues. Sohail Inayatullah has built on the work of other futurists to develop
the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) as a multi-layered methodology for analysing complex
social, political and cultural issues.119 He is currently completing the editing of a collection
of essays demonstrating the multiple uses of CLA as a methodological tool for both
diagnostic analysis and solution-based action.120 Using the CLA methodology I recently
analysed the issue of youth suicide among young people.121 This methodology has
also been used in research by other youth and educational futurists.122 For futurists
wanting to include both a diversity of worldviews (by broadening the horizontal element)
and a vertical layering of reality (inherent in many spiritual paths) CLA can embrace
them all.123 It provides a way of moving beyond both the empirical analysis (with its
fragmented, culturally narrow oversimplifications) and the relativism of the poststructuralist analysis (which avoids taking a moral stand on issues).
26 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
In an attempt to take an even broader sweep at integrating not just the horizontal
and vertical dimensions of life, Slaughter has begun to examine the place in Futures
Studies for an approach that includes all quadrants and all levels. Based on the
voluminous and numinous work of Ken Wilber,124 who developed the all quadrants,
all levels (AQAL) approach to analysing and solving complex Twenty First Century
problems, Slaughter is developing an Integral Futures methodology and practice.125
There is still much scope for extension in the Futures Studies field to continue to
embrace deeper and wider levels of existence as will be further shown in the task analysis
to follow, which also draws on the AQAL model.
DEVELOPMENT OF ‘FORESIGHT FOSTERING’ EDUCATIONAL APPROACHES
Perhaps we ought to consider the notion that the purpose of education be
reconceptualised as the facilitation of people’s search for meaning, wholeness,
transcendence and an understanding of our individual roles in the human
evolutionary journey.126
Critical speculation about education for the future
Over the past decade a number of key educational futurists have developed a critical
approach to what they see as the pedagogical implications of the disturbing responses
of western youth to their futures. Critical speculation about alternative forms of
education make some clear recommendations about better preparing youth for a rapidly
changing and uncertain future, while also considering the needs of future generations.
These futures researchers recommend more holistic, integrated teaching methods using
imagination, visualisation, pro-social skills and specific futures methodologies.127
In a comprehensive conceptual review of current global dimensions of change and
consciousness shifts required to prepare young people for the Twenty First Century,
Australian educational futures researchers Hedley Beare and Richard Slaughter list a
number of educational features (See Table Three) that they recommend schools
incorporate to better prepare young people for the future.128
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 27
Table Three: Educational Futures Research – Guidelines for Teaching and Preparing Young
People for the Twenty First Century
*
1. Appropriate Imagery – choosing metaphors with care and imagination
*
2. Teach for Wholeness and Balance – holistic paradigm
*
3. Teach Identification, Connectedness, Integration – epistemological interconnectedness
*
4. Develop Individual Values – value the individual
*
5. Teach Visualisation – development of the picturing imagination
6. Cultivate Visions of the Future – cultivate images and visions of futures
*
7. Empowerment through active hope – distinguish between faith and hope
*
8. Tell Stories – use story telling and mythology as powerful teaching tool
*
9. Teach and Learn how to Celebrate – celebrate festivals
10. Teach Futures Tools – encourage and use futures tools and methods
Source: Beare and Slaughter.129
* The asterisked points all refer to important features of Steiner Education.
As yet the suggestions and guidelines put forward by Beare and Slaughter have not
been applied by educational futures researchers in an integrated fashion in an educational
setting which could then be studied. However, these ten educational features listed
in Table Three above are remarkably consistent with the Steiner approach with at
least eight of the ten points being key features of Steiner education. So in effect, the
guidelines suggested by Beare and Slaughter, with the exception of the specific futures
methods and tools, are already being implemented in Steiner schools around the world.
Not surprisingly, this speculation of futures researchers was born out in research with
Steiner-educated students, where it was found that this holistic, artistic, imaginative
approach to education did facilitate a more confident, proactive and hopeful futures
outlook in young people.130 More detailed findings are discussed below.
Integral approaches to education
"Integral" means "inclusive, balanced, comprehensive"…The integral
approach does not advocate one particular value system over another, but
simply helps leaders assemble the most comprehensive overview available,
so that they can more adequately and sanely address the pressing issues now
facing all of us.131
In parallel with the growing concerns of educational futurists about the need to
transform school education in the ways discussed above, a broader movement is sweeping
28 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
through the ‘growing tip’ of world ideas. The use of the term ‘integral’ or
‘integrative’ has become quite common in the cutting edge approaches to many
disciplines, starting with social sciences (psychology, education) but ostensibly now
moving into the ‘hard sciences’ as well.132 Several centres of integral studies have emerged
just in the last decade or so in the
US, the highest profile of these
The Integral movement with its various currents
being Ken Wilber’s Integral
and facets carries within it the potential for the
Institute.133
most transformative development in human
The basis of the idea in its varied
consciousness since the European Enlightenment.
forms is that the complexity of the
Its implications for educational futures (and
present times, globally, require
futures in education) cannot be overlooked.
higher-order forms of thinking
that go beyond the narrow
specialisations of reductionist, rational thinking. The Integral approach includes multiples
ways of knowing, being and acting in the world.
The application of Integral thinking to the futures discipline is in its infancy.134 It is
essential that Futures Studies as a field keeps up with (and indeed ahead of) the currents
of ‘new thinking’ in the world, or it will not be able to live up to its name. The Integral
movement with its various currents and facets carries within it the potential for the
most transformative development in human consciousness since the European
Enlightenment. Its implications for educational futures (and futures in education)
cannot be overlooked. In terms of school education, the importance of going beyond
the intellectually based factory model of schooling to more integral, artistic and spiritually
based approaches was already foreseen a century ago by Rudolf Steiner (and others)
in Europe135 and by Sri Aurobindo Ghose in India (who actually coined the term
‘integral education’).136 While it is beyond the scope of this literature review to further
investigate the educational approach of Sri Aurobindo, the research with Steinereducated students discussed below is the only known research demonstrating how
an integral approach to education actually fosters foresight.
Research findings from an existing integral approach to education
Part of the soul work of learning is the development of images of desired
futures; images that may be expressed in music, art, words or other
aesthetic venues.137
Since Steiner education is one of the few (if not only) fully integral educational approach
in the Western educational arena, research findings can throw light on what a more
integral approach to mainstream education can hope to achieve. In a study of senior
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 29
secondary students in the three largest Steiner schools in Australia, it was found that
Steiner students were able to develop richer and more detailed images of their ‘preferred
futures’ than mainstream students.138 About three-quarters of the Steiner students
were able to envision positive changes with regard to the environment and human
development and almost two-thirds were able to imagine positive changes in the socioeconomic area. In much of the other research young people had general ideas about
positive things they would like to see happen, but were unable to translate them into
concrete detail. As discussed earlier it was also found that the Steiner educated students
were not disempowered, like many young people, by their realistically negative views
of the ‘probable’ future, but rather had a strong sense of activism that they could
change things for the better.139
In addition, when the Steiner students came to envisioning futures without war, the
content of their visions primarily related to improvements in human relationships and
communication, through dialogue and conflict resolution, rather than a ‘passive peace’
image. Furthermore, seventy five per cent of the Steiner students came up with many
ideas on what aspects of human development (including their own personal
development) needed to be changed so that their aspirations for the future could be
fulfilled. These included more activism, changes in values, spirituality, future care and
better education.140 Finally, this study appears to be the only one with young people
where social futures has emerged so strongly as a way to solve problems, as
compared with the more commonly occurring ‘technofix’ solutions.
Sustainability in education and active citizenship
Education, including formal education, public awareness and training, should
be recognised as a process by which human beings and societies can reach
their fullest potential. Education is critical for promoting sustainable
development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment
and development issues. … To be effective, environment and development
education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological
and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual)
development; should be integrated in all disciplines; and should employ formal
and non-formal methods and effective means of communication.
Agenda 21, Earth Summit141
Another important movement that has gathered momentum over the past decade is
the ‘Education for Sustainability’ or ‘Sustainable Education’ movement. Related to
this and often incorporated under its banner is the ‘citizenship education’ focus. This
sustainability in education movement was primarily initiated as a response by
educators to the Earth Summit (The UN Conference on Environment and
30 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992.) Initially it was referred to as
‘education for a sustainable future’ and now goes under a variety of, mostly similar,
names. Although it is a new evolving concept, it is also embedded in indigenous
approaches to education.
This movement has also been fruitful in joining together existing groups of
educational innovators (environmental educators such as David Orr, Stephen Sterling
and John Fien)142 and educational futurists (such as David Hicks, Frank Hutchinson
and others)143. In a wonderful collaborative achievement, under the auspices of
UNESCO, John Fien from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, produced
a very important professional development resource for teachers. It includes twenty
five modules, the first five of which (Curriculum Rationale) include:
– Exploring global realities
– Understanding sustainable development
– A futures perspective in the curriculum
– Reorienting education for a sustainable future
– Accepting the challenge
This multi-media CD-ROM titled Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future,
deserves to be more widely known and used.144
Included among many other treasures in this resource, is what could perhaps best
be seen as a rallying cry to teachers, from Peter Garrett, lead singer from Midnight
Oil (shortened):
The task for the teacher at this moment is the same as it has always been,
only now it seems more urgent, more important. We seem to be in tidal
wave times and the issues that bedevil and threaten us are understood but
do not seem capable of being solved. So the task of helping us understand
a little more about ourselves is critical. We need to glimpse how we came
to be in our present state. We need to dive into the big questions about
the nature of humans and their condition. And, most importantly, we need
to explore the kind of common ground we might jointly seek to cultivate
in order to sustain creation.
Thus, teachers face the most formidable of challenges: reconciling hope and
history, making sense of the nonsense. Delving into the world of traffic jams
and oxygen masks, space stations and tent cities, the teacher might offer us
some signposts, or create wondrous lessons that inspire us and teach us about
ourselves
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 31
… The pop star, the prophet of emotions, provides a facile but constantly
rhythmic heartbeat for their dreams and inspirations. Family, church and
community have receded as the setters of values, replaced by the dreamweavers of the new age of consumption…
The fast-forward generation is being shaped by audio-visual stimuli, not by
literature. ‘Fast-forward’ means not only moving ahead quickly, but also
skipping past things that are too complex, too depressing or too boring ...
I propose nothing new, only that teachers should expose the myths of progress
and prosperity that are holding up the house of cards. They must bring into
focus a vision which does not gloss over the facts behind the nightmare but
which manages to engender enthusiasm about the potential of the human
spirit despite the bleak circumstances. At the moment the young, especially,
have no faith in the future, and so are unwilling to deal with the present except
to try and make it as bearable as possible. ... we need teachers to remind us
of our potential to exercise reason, make choices and sacrifices but above all,
to participate in the great struggle of hope, renewal and a shared home.145
In addition to this multi-faceted resource, environmental educationist and consultant
Stephen Sterling has written several volumes, his most recent would be a valuable
pre-service teaching text.146 Finally, many of the key features of the sustainable education
approach have been incorporated into the work of David Hicks and Cathie Holden.
They have extended the sustainable education territory and their futures work into
the citizenship education focus in the national curriculum of the UK.147
FUTURES IN EDUCATION – TASK ANALYSIS
Conceptualising ‘futures in education’ – past, present and future
There are a number of ways in which we could analyse the progress of futures in
education over the past four decades. First I will briefly examine how the major
contributions could be analysed according to my own typology presented in Table
One. I will demonstrate as we go along how this framework links with Slaughter’s
discussion of the four main phases of futures work as a whole.148 Then, based on
Slaughter’s emerging Integral Futures model, I will attempt to analyse the state of
play in futures in education today according to the all quadrants, all levels (AQAL)
Integral scheme developed by Ken Wilber.149
Since much of the early futures in education work was concerned with survey studies
of young people’s probable views of the future, it sits within the empirical tradition
referred to by Slaughter as having been strongly developed within the US. The next
32 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
wave of futures in education work incorporates the bulk of the work to this day. Much
of the teaching about futures (concepts, methodologies and tools) included in futures
courses and syllabi is related to moving beyond the idea of the ‘probable future’ to
include consideration of the ‘possible’ (imaginative, creative, alternative) and the
‘preferred’ (critical, ideological, values based). The latter relates to Slaughter’s second
phase of the futures field, which he sees as originating in Europe and evolving into
the critical futures tradition. Hicks’ work is strongly grounded in this approach. The
‘possible futures’ area in my typology is also strongly featured in Hicks and other
educational futurists’ work. One of the limitations of this aspect is that most of the
futures in education work has been undertaken in the US, the UK and Australia, and
is thereby very biased by its ‘Anglo-Saxon Westernness’. So, even though working
with ‘possible futures’ is meant to be a very open, creative, imaginative, flexible process,
much of the work as yet is limited by Western paradigm metaphors.
Ivana Milojevic’s research makes a major contribution here, particularly in its
consideration of indigenous educational futures.150 This relates to Slaughter’s third
wave of futures work, which he describes as still developing and as being ‘more diffuse,
international, and multicultural’.151 An attempt has been made to address the gap in
the literature on this multi-cultural area of futures in education, in the book Youth
Futures152. However, this was mainly focussed on the youth views and visions aspect
of futures with less focus on teaching futures. Some of Inayatullah’s work begins to
touch on this area of how to teach futures in education using concepts and tools and
metaphors which are viable in a range of alternative cultural settings.153 Much more
needs to be done in this area.
The empowerment-oriented educational futures work (prospective futures) is the fourth
area in my typology. In mainstream futures literature it is rarely considered an area
in its own right. While Slaughter’s voice was the strongest in developing the futures
field beyond the empirical – to include the critical, Inayatullah’s voice is probably
the strongest in developing the futures field into its third iteration which he calls the
cultural.154 In the typology (Table One) I developed in 1997, I was influenced by
the work of Bjerstedt, who introduced Berger’s term ‘prospective’ into the futures
work with young people. I was also influenced by Wildman’s use of the term ‘futuring’
which involved adding a proactive, activist component to the futures field which he
had critiqued as being too theoretical.155 At the same time I was aware of the research
work of Hutchinson, drawing on Boulding, and other Australian researchers who were
beginning to focus on the empowerment aspect of futures research.
In my own research I have continued to pursue this interest in futures in education
as an empowerment process.156 It seems to me that emphasis on this aspect may be
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 33
the special contribution of Australia to the futures in education field. In my view this
is the area where futures in education and youth futures research overlap, particularly
if they are undertaken by empowerment oriented teachers/researchers. It is interesting
to note that Inayatullah’s most recent
This placing of ‘Integral Futures’ as the fifth
work also includes a fourth ‘action
research’ dimension to his futures
iteration of Futures Studies more soundly
framework.157 How does this actionconnects it with other frameworks which use
based empowerment oriented
the idea of ‘integral’ thinking, including the
component in my typology relate to
seminal work of cultural historian Jean
Slaughter’s fourth phase of futures, the
Integral Futures model? While there
Gebser who coined the term.
are some integral aspects to the
empowerment oriented model they are not the same. It seems to me that the Futures
Studies field needs to develop very rapidly now in order to keep up with developments
in other fields that are growing exponentially. I propose that there are actually two
new perspectives that ‘old school futurists’ need to take on board:
– the empowerment-oriented, action research component which has been
lying dormant since the mid-nineties and only just taking off
– the Integral Futures model which is newly emerging.
In this framework, the empowerment/action research futures would be the fourth
iteration and Integral Futures would be the fifth. This placing of ‘Integral Futures’
as the fifth iteration of Futures Studies more soundly connects it with other
frameworks which use the idea of ‘integral’ thinking, including the seminal work of
cultural historian Jean Gebser who coined the term.158 In his framework, human
consciousness has developed historically through five structures of consciousness –
the archaic, magical, mythic, mental-rational and integral (being developed at the present
time). Epistemologically, this also ties in with the current work of neo-Piagetian
developmental psychologists Kieran Egan and Robert Kegan.159 Robert Kegan’s models
of fourth and fifth order (integral) consciousness are based on the Integral Psychology
frameworks of Wilber.160
An ‘all quadrants, all levels’ (AQAL) analysis of futures in education
To be successful, integral futures practitioners will seek to understand the
nature, structure and limitations of their own futures.161
While Ken Wilber’s Integral system of analysis and problem solving (referred to as
AQAL)162 can be critiqued as being too complex to be useful, it can be used in a
34 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
relatively simple form to try to get an overview of all possible aspects of a problem
or issue. In its simplest form the four quadrants represent the inner and outer dimensions
of individual and collective perspectives:
– Upper Left – Inner aspect of individual (intentional, psychological)
– Upper Right – Outer aspect of individual (behavioural, physical)
– Lower Left – Inner aspect of collective (meaning systems, culture)
– Lower Right – Outer aspect of collective (social systems, society)
It is, however, also important to recognise that there are developmental levels within
each of these quadrants (ie in the UL there is individual cognitive and psychological
development; in the LL there is cultural evolution; in the UR there is the more scientific
view of physical evolution, and in the LR there is the development of society and
civilizational history). Part of the integral nature of the theory underlying Wilber’s
system is that there is a correspondence at the different levels between the quadrants.
Wilber argues that this needs to harmonise if the whole system is to remain in balance:
‘An increase in exterior or social development can only be sustained with a
corresponding increase in interior development of consciousness and culture’.163 Wilber
also claims (along with many other integral theorists) that at the present time there
is emerging a major transition in culture and consciousness (the Left-Hand quadrants),
related to what has been referred to as the emergence of an integral age, as discussed
in the previous section. And yet many key social institutions such as schools and many
workplaces (and the key stakeholders in them) are not transforming sufficiently to
keep a balance within the system as a whole.
The question remains for this paper – how does futures in education in schools fit
into this picture and how will it keep up?
The most obvious thing that emerges for me when I examine the futures in education
work to date, is that most of it has been working within the upper two quadrants.
It is primarily about introducing concepts and tools which will increase an individual’s
knowledge base (UL) and ideally their behaviour as well (UR). Although much of
the work is done in classes and small groups, it is still primarily focussed on the
development of the individual. Indeed, the continuing problems with getting
sufficient support from school systems to keep initiatives going may stem primarily
from the lack of work to date within the collective quadrants – cultural (LL) and
social (LR) systems. How this could be done will be part of the research focus below.
In addition, the Upper Left quadrant (inner and developmental aspect of individual)
lends itself to much greater extension by the futures in education field. Analysis will
begin with this quadrant.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 35
1. Although much of the work in teaching futures is concerned with the Upper Left
quadrant – the domain of the psychological, virtually no research has been done
into what psychological processes we are dealing with when we are teaching futures.
Apart from Martha Rogers drawing our attention to the fact that futures work
involves the heart and soul, and my own small pilot study which looked at the
impact of futures visioning on clinical hopelessness and depression, there has been
nothing that has consciously linked futures processes and psychological processes.
Yet the two are obviously intimately related. In this sense even the best futures
work has been largely unconscious of its own processes and thereby ignoring the
development of its own UL quadrant. Peter Hayward’s current research is crucial
in beginning to explore this terrain.164
While the empowerment-oriented research is clearly involved in bringing what is
learned from futures lessons (UL) into some unity with the individual’s outer
behaviour and actions (UR), we have not really studied how this comes about.
2. Still in the Upper Left quadrant there is the question of ways of knowing. The
emphasis in all school education (and also to a large degree in ‘futures in education’)
has been with developing the cognitive faculties. This is only one way of knowing.
Latest developments in psychology indicate that there are multiple ways of knowing
and that all are important to a balanced education.165 So, more attention to different
lines or ways of knowing (artistic, contemplative, practical, etc) will be another
area of potential development for futures in education.
3. There is also a need to consider the developmental aspect of an Integral vision.
Within the Upper Left quadrant, for instance, a lot of the leading edge
developmental psychology and consciousness research indicates that human nature
as a whole (and thereby many individuals) is moving beyond the intellectual, rational,
mental mode of operating into a new trans-rational, integral (and more spiritual)
way of thinking and perceiving, as discussed earlier. The implications of this are
enormous for education as a whole and futures in education specifically. Within
this developmental aspect it is also interesting to distinguish between what Wilber
calls the ‘leading edge’ of humanity and the ‘centre of gravity’ of humanity.166 ‘With
less than two per cent of the population at second-tier thinking, second-tier
consciousness is relatively rare because it is now the ‘leading edge’ of collective
human evolution’.167 As futurists we need to ask ourselves where we sit within such
a framework.
4. Another aspect of the whole integral picture is the issue of different lines or streams
flowing through each quadrant. In respect of the cultural quadrant, which is fairly
underrepresented in futures work anyway, it is even more remiss when it comes
36 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
to considering whose culture is being represented in the material we are using.
For example, what do we – educational futurists in Australia – know about how
our indigenous children and youth frame the future? What metaphors would they
use? Are the materials we use suitable or do we need new ones? Apart from Milojevic’s
and Inayatullah’s work, and a few other studies which look at young people’s future
visions in a range of countries, there is very limited futures in education work that
has been recorded in non-Western settings.168
5. A further point in regards to the cultural quadrant relates to the lack of
development of actual cultural resources or artefacts from within the futures field.
Although significant work has been
done by futures educators within the
If futures in education is ever to have a bigger
broader educational arena (LL) the
impact on young people than ‘just another
purpose and achievement of much of this
social science lesson’, we need to enter the
work has actually been more to impact
youth culture arena through music and film.
the cognitive development of individuals
(UL) within the educational setting
than to directly impact the cultural sphere itself (LL). How many movies, songs,
plays, art shows have arisen from the Futures Studies field? While it is true that
there are plenty of science fiction movies and books, most of this is dystopian material.
From the perspective of normative, culturally positive futures, the cultural vacuum
here must fall back on the futures field itself to fill.
If futures in education is ever to have a bigger impact on young people than ‘just
another social science lesson’, we need to enter the youth culture arena through
music and film and we need to inspire young people to help with that. If we want
to include ‘high tech’ culture, then the computer game model may be an ideal
way of introducing futures concepts. We cannot hope to achieve cultural
transformation with an approach that avoids direct cultural input.
6. Another area that has been largely ignored in futures research is social futures. This
is really the more inner, culturally based aspect of social futures, concerned with
how people relate to each other, how we connect with each other (LL). Galtung
pointed out some years ago that when we hear the term future we seem only able
to think of technological futures. There is much scope for development in this
quadrant. This could go hand in hand also with more emphasis on developing an
ethically-based, values-focused cultural component to education.
7. In addition, (and of course there are bound to be more), there is the Lower Right
(LR) quadrant which again has been largely overlooked in much of the futures in
education work. To what extent have educational futurists working in schools
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 37
attempted to work with ‘the nature and dynamics of the relevant societal structure
and systems?’169 including the school and education system itself (eg. analysis of
classroom dynamics, school internal politics etc.)
And if we keep the four quadrants in mind, this will also include as Slaughter points
out:
– the specific ways that the various stakeholders construct meaning and
significance (UL)
– culturally derived perspectives, rules and systems of meaning (LL)
– people’s concrete skills, behaviours and actions (UR)
Perhaps it has not been for want of trying that this has not occurred. However, the
beauty of an Integral model (such as this) is that it makes the gaps more obvious. If
this latter omission could be addressed, it may become possible to encourage schools
and education departments to make use of existing futures resources (knowledge base,
personnel) to enrich their current ‘fashion-statement’
futures interests.
The beauty of an Integral model
(such as this) is that it makes
Finally, even in the most innovative of areas of
the gaps more obvious.
educational change and transformation on the planet
today, there is a tendency toward division rather than
inclusion. There are different schools of ‘progressive’ educational thought which are
not necessarily even informed about each other let alone joining forces. In other words
it can be a bit like ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the most foresight fostering
of them all?’ Is it futures education? Steiner education? Sustainable education? In our
little camps we would like to each stake our claims. What is it that holds us to the
divisiveness of the fragmented view?
What is meant by ‘truly integral conJean Gebser would see it as being the deficient
170
part of the mental mode of thinking. In
sciousness’ is still at an early stage of
many ways we, even futurists, are caught in
human understanding but certainly
our own chicken and egg conundrum. Even
something with which futures educators
as we try to think ourselves forward, our own
need to concern themselves.
intellects trip us up. The rational intellect is
not a good bridge-builder. Until we have
developed truly integral consciousness we will be forever limiting our own (individual
and cultural – inner and outer) ‘forward views’. The challenge for us all is how do
we move beyond this conundrum? What is meant by ‘truly integral consciousness’
is still at an early stage of human understanding but certainly something with which
futures educators need to concern themselves. From the struggle of futurists to stretch
38 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
our own foresight capacities to understand where human consciousness is going in
the future, will arise insights into how to transform education so it better prepares
youth to create a more truly integral future. Hopefully the following section will be
‘food for foresight’ or at least show some starting points to begin the journey.
Implications for the development of foresight literacy
There are a number of implications for the development of foresight literacy. The
above analysis indicates that when you take an integral view of a field of work such
as futures in education it starts to become clearer as to why it has not had the impact
or the holding power that futures researchers have expected. Because most of the
work has been focused on a limited number of quadrants and also a limited range
of levels and streams within these, no matter how good the work is it will have limited
overall impact on the education system as a whole, let alone society and culture. Because
of this foresight literacy as a field or branch of education has been held back.
Based on the themes that have arisen from the literature review, the gaps that are
evident, and perspectives from the meta-analysis, a number of research focus areas,
including specific questions as to how they may be researched, will now be
highlighted. Where possible relevant linkages and/or possible funding sources have
been cited.
FUTURES IN EDUCATION: RESEARCH FOCUS AREAS
Specific research questions/options to progress the goals of futures
education
1. Psychological dimensions of futures in education
virtually no research has been done into what psychological processes
we are dealing with when we are teaching futures
There are several topics here that could be developed into research questions, clustering
under some key areas:
Futures Processes and Empowerment
i. Can it be established through research that futures processes actually
empower young people?
ii. Empowerment issues could be further researched. Why are Steiner students
more empowered towards creating their preferred futures than mainstream
youth?
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 39
iii.Are young people educated in non-Steiner alternative schools also more
positive and empowered?
iv. Psychological implications of futures processes on clinical depression and
hopelessness in young people needs to be further explored. The pilot project
described above could be replicated on a larger scale.
Gender issues in futures views
v. Why do Australian boys seem more susceptible than girls to the kind of
clinical levels of hopelessness that lead to risk-taking and suicide and can
positive futures visioning actually help to reverse this?
vi. Additional gender-based questions could include ‘why are boys more passive
and technologically oriented in their preferred futures images?’
Impact of age in relation to pessimism
vii. Further research is also needed on the implications of the correlation
between age of children/adolescents and increasing pessimism.
What is foresight from a psychological perspective?
viii. Further general psychological research is also needed into futures
thinking/foresight.
2. Diverse ways of knowing
The emphasis in all school education (and also to a large degree in
‘futures in education’) has been with developing the cognitive faculties.
Although futures processes do engage other ways of knowing apart from the cognitive
(eg imagining, visioning, etc), the primary mode is still mainly cognitive. We need
to research what other ways of knowing could be included in futures in education
work and how they could be introduced (eg contemplative, musical, dramatic). Some
of this could be accessed through diverse cultural ways of knowing.
i. What are the lines of development other than cognitive?
ii. How can futures in education help to keep non-cognitive lines open
(through the development of imagination, visioning etc)?
iii.How could music be used a futures tool?
iv. Is there a place for contemplative practices in futures in education?
v. What are the implications of David Tacey’s ‘Spirituality Revolution’ on
futures in education?171
vi. Is there a place for more poetry, dance, theatre in futures in education?
40 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
3. Developing integral consciousness
a lot of the leading edge developmental psychology and consciousness
research indicates that human nature as a whole (and thereby many
individuals) is moving beyond the intellectual, rational, mental mode of
operating into a new trans-rational, integral (and more spiritual) way of
thinking and perceiving
Taking the above point even further, a truly Integral Futures in education approach
needs to be more than just a cognitive framework. Developing integral consciousness
means working on several developmental lines at once. If we are to take seriously the
notion that human development needs to move beyond rational consciousness to integral
consciousness, we need to research how this can be fostered.
i. What can be learned from educational systems such as Steiner’s approach
or Aurobindo’s integral education? How can this inform futures in
education approaches?
ii. If imagination (or vision-logic) is one of the steps towards integral
consciousness how can imagination be fostered by futures in education?
iii.What existing research is available on the cultivation of imagination in
education?172
iv. What other existing organisations or networks are working towards an
integral education approach with or without a futures perspective?173
v. Is there a place for a Spiral Dynamics analysis of educational processes
and how might this inform futures in education practices?
4. Socio-cultural diversity
In respect of the cultural quadrant, which is fairly underrepresented in
futures work anyway, it is even more remiss when it comes to
considering whose culture is being represented in the material we are
using.
Possible areas for research:
i. How can AFI create networks with existing organisations who are doing
‘futures-oriented’ work which would greatly benefit from ‘serious futures
expertise’?174
ii. What kind of research could inform futures in education processes so that
they could be more inclusive of non-Western cultural values (indigenous
perspectives/futures, NESB perspectives/futures)?
iii.Exploring alternatives to hegemonic conceptions of education.175
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 41
5. Cultural resources
If futures in education is ever to have a bigger impact on young people
than ‘just another social science lesson’, we need to enter the youth
culture arena through music and film and we need to inspire young
people to help with that.
Futures research with young people and teachers indicates that it is always a struggle
to find cultural material (films, literature, music etc) that presents the future in a positive
way as a counter balance to the negative and bleak picture generally presented by
mainstream mass media. Futurists working in the educational field may inspire teachers
who can then inspire young people about transformational possibilities for the future.
i. There is a need for a resource bank to be developed of what cultural material
(movies, literature, music, computer games) already exists which presents
positive futures.176
ii. Who will write the futures fiction of the future and does it have to be
‘science fiction’?177
iii.How can young people be encouraged to write their own ‘alternative
futures fiction’?
iv. Is it possible to explore a popular form of expression of futures that appeals
to student populations, for example through a competition?
6. Human/social futures
Galtung pointed out some years ago that when we hear the term future
we seem only able to think of technological futures (and largely ignore
social futures).
Most of the futures research indicates that people in general and young people in
particular have great difficulty envisioning social futures, as opposed to technological
futures. The Steiner education research was an exception to this generalisation and
therefore could through some light on this.
i. Why do technology futures figure so strongly in youth futures research?
ii. What images of the human being in the future are being presented through
the media?
iii.How can the stages of moral development of Kohlberg and Gilligan throw
light on our framing of social futures?
iv. How can our understanding of social innovation counteract our ‘overtechnologised’ futures?
42 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
v.
How is it that Steiner students had such a strong emphasis on social
futures?
vi. What needs to be developed in education through futures in education
work that will widen and deepen young people’s capacity to imagine
different and better social futures?
vii. What are the emerging issues relating to over-use of technology in
education? Scope existing research on the over-use of technology among
children and its influence on the increase in behavioural (eg ADHD),
social problems in schools.
viii. How might the recent research at Sydney University on increasing
biological myopia, linked to high screen usage in young people, also
reflect a more socio-cultural or ‘metaphoric myopia’?
7. Tackling the social systems
To what extent have educational futurists working in schools attempted
to work with ‘the nature and dynamics of the relevant societal structure
and systems’, including the school and education system itself? (eg.
analysis of classroom dynamics, school internal politics etc.)
i. School systems in some states in Australia contain futures in their
frameworks. How can these starting points be developed and applied more
systematically across these systems?
ii. Given that considering the ‘future’ is a current fashion in education, how
can education systems be informed of the value of the knowledge base
of Futures Studies for use as a resource?
iii.Can the futures field provide strategies to better support teachers who
wish to use innovative approaches, and specifically futures processes?
iv. Who are the key power brokers in initiatives to develop a national
curriculum? How can they be informed of Futures Studies resources?
v. How are futures methodologies currently being used in school systems
and how could they be better used?
vi. How can futures better market itself?
8. Cultural foresight – some speculative ‘big picture’ research ideas
If there were to be a global shift in the ‘foreseeable future’ from the
dominant Western worldview based on the rational materialistic mode
of thinking to a (or many)worldview/s based on a more spiritually
inspired integral consciousness, what would global culture look like?
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 43
i. Could a futures curriculum, informed by developmental understandings,
be developed for use from Pre-school to PhD?
ii. What kind of speculative research could be undertaken into the cultural
implications of a change in the dominant worldview from the rational to
the transrational/integral/imaginal/visionary? We want to work towards
this but as ‘leading edge’ futurists we need to vision how we might like
this to look in a thousand years if we want it to arise.
iii.How can futures in education foster the co-existence of a tapestry of
different cultures on a global scale?
iv. Does the capability of foresight arise from cultural evolution? Is a ‘scientific’
worldview antithetical to foresight?178
v. Are there any existing cross-cultural visionary worldviews based in an
integral paradigm?
vi. In a spiritually inspired transrationally conscious, transparent, integral future,
how would we write? How would we speak? Would we talk only
through machines or would we sing to each other? What would gender
look like? What would education, medicine, architecture, spirituality look
like? etc. Could these stories be compiled into a ‘futures fiction’ book?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the influence of several futurists in shaping my futures
research directions: Paul Wildman, especially in terms of his approach to activist futures
(futuring) and in supportively launching me into academic writing and also Sohail
Inayatullah and Richard Slaughter in both inspiring and mentoring me into a deeper
relationship with the futures field. I also acknowledge the editorial assistance of Gary
Hampson, in particular for conceptual input in relation to the AQAL analysis based
on Ken Wilber’s work.
44 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Futures Concepts.’ Futures April, pp289-314, Slaughter, R.
(1996). Futures Concepts and Powerful Ideas. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre.
Slaughter, R., Ed. (1996). The Knowledge Base of Futures, Studies, Vols. 1-3. Melbourne,
Futures Study Centre, Slaughter, R. and S. Inayatullah (2000). The Knowledge Base of
Futures Studies, CD-ROM. Brisbane, Foresight International. 1-4.
Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Futures Concepts.’ Futures April, pp89-314.
Slaughter, R. (1990). ‘The Foresight Principle.’ Ibid.(October), pp801-819, Slaughter,
R. (1994). From Fatalism to Foresight – Educating for the Early 21st Century: A
framework for considering young people’s needs and responsibilities over the next 20
years. Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Administration, p50.
Boulding, E. (1990). Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent
World, Syracuse University Press, Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Futures Concepts.’ Futures
April, pp289-314.
Galtung, J. and S. Inayatullah (1998). Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. westport, CT,
Praeger, Inayatullah, S. (2000). Alternative Futures: Methodology, Society, Macrohistory
and the Long-Term Future. Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai.
Boulding, E. (1988). ‘Image and Action in Peace Building.’ Journal of Social Issues
44(2), pp17-37, Gidley, J. (1996). ‘Wings to the future: Imagination and education.’
New Renaissance 6(3),pp9-11, Jenson, R. (1996). ‘The dream society.’ The Futurist,
pp9-13, Gidley, J. (1998). The Power of Imagination: Report on research with Steiner
educated adolescents. Educare News. February, p14, Gidley, J. (1998). Youth Futures:
Transcending Violence through the Artistic Imagination. Futures Studies: Methods,
Emerging Issues and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and
P. Wildman. Brisbane, Prosperity Press, Gidley, J. (2001). The Dancer at the Edge of
Knowledge: Imagination as a Transdisciplinary Force. The 2nd International Philosophy,
Science and Theology Festival, Grafton, NSW, Australia.
Galtung, J. (1988). Buddhism: A Quest for Unity and Peace. Honolulu, Dae Won Sa
Buddhist Temple of Hawaii, Nandy, A. (1992). Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays
in the Politics of Awareness. Delhi, Oxford University Press, Sardar, Z. (1994).
‘Conquests, Chaos and Complexity: The Other in Modern and Postmodern Science.’
Futures 26(6),pp665-682, Inayatullah, S. (1995). ‘Futures Visions for South-east Asia:
some early warning signals.’ Futures 27(6), pp681-688, Inayatullah, S. (2000).
Alternative Futures: Methodology, Society, Macrohistory and the Long-Term Future.
Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai, Nandy, A. (2000). Recovery of Indigenous
Knowledge and Dissenting Futures of Universities. The University in Transformation:
Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University. S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley. Westport,
Connecticut, Bergin and Garvey, p270, Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple
Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative
Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 45
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Berman, M. (1981). The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell University Press, Berry, T.
(1988). The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books, Beare, H. and R.
Slaughter (1993). Education for the Twenty-first Century. London, Routledge, Eckersley,
R. (1993). ‘The West’s deepening cultural crisis.’ The Futurist,pp8-20, Inayatullah, S.
(1993). Frames of Reference, the Breakdown of the Self, and the Search for
Reintegration: Some Perspectives on the Futures on Asian Cultures. The Futures of Asian
Cultures. E. a. A. Masini, Y. Bangkok, UNESCO, pp 95-131: Ch7, Slaughter, R. (1993).
‘Looking for the Real ‘Megatrends’.’ Futures October, pp827-849, Rifkin, J. (1995). The
End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era,
Tarcher/Putnam, Gardner, H. (1996). ‘Probing more Deeply into the Theory of
Multiple Intelligences.’ NASSP Bulletin 80(583), pp1-7, Saul, J. R. (1997). The
Unconscious Civilization. Ringwood, Australia, Penguin Books, Gidley, J. (2001).
‘Globalisation and its Impact on Youth.’ Journal of Futures Studies 6(1), pp89-106.
Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Futures Concepts.’ Futures April, pp289-314, Hutchinson, F.
(2002). Cultural Mapping and Our Children’s Future: Decolonising Ways of Learning
and Research. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley
and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger: 53-64.
Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13, Gidley, J. (2002).
Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised Futures. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut,
Praeger.
Schultz, W. (1998). Defining Futures Fluency. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues
and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P. Wildman.
Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
Galtung, J. (1982). Schooling, Education and the Future. Malmo, Sweden, Department of
Education and Psychology Research, Lund University.
Bjerstedt, A. (1982). Future Consciousness and the School. Malmo, School of Education,
University of Lund, Sweden.
Hutchinson, F. (1992). Futures consciousness and the school: Explorations of broad and
narrow literacies for the twenty-first century with particular reference to Australian young
people. Armidale NSW, University of New England: 410.
Adapted from Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of their Futures:
Prospectivity and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents. Education, Work and
Training. Lismore, Southern Cross University.
Wilber, K. (1996). A Brief History of Everything. Melbourne, Hill of Content, Wilber, K.
(2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston, Shambhala,
Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
Toffler, A. (1974). Learning for Tomorrow: the Role of the Future in Education. New
York, Vintage Books, Johnson, L. (1987). ‘Children’s visions of the future.’ The
Futurist, pp36-40, Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13.
46 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
19
Eckersley, R. (1993). ‘The West’s deepening cultural crisis.’ The Futurist: 8-20,
Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures. London, Routledge, Gidley, J.
(2000). Cultural Renewal: Revitalising Youth Futures. New Renaissance. 9, pp14-16.
20 Johnson, L. (1987). ‘Children’s visions of the future.’ The Futurist, pp36-40.
21 McGregor, P. (1989). Visions of the future. Studying the Future: The Introductory
Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the Future, Bicentennial Futures
Education Project, pp30-35, Wilson, N. (1989). The state of the planet and young
people’s minds. Studying the Future: An Introductory Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne,
Commission for the Future, Bicentennial Futures Education Project, pp36-41, Eckersley,
R. (1996). Having our Say about the Future: Young People’s Dreams and Expectations
for Australia in 2010 and the Role of Science and Technology, Australian Science and
Technology Council.
22 Hicks, D. (1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge for environmental educators.’
Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9.
23 Rubin, A. (1996). Unfolding Tomorrow: Adolescents’ Images of the Future as the Strategies
for Coping with Transition. Cultural Alienation, Losarvi, Finland, unpublished.
24 Ibid.
25 McGregor, P. (1989). Visions of the future. Studying the Future: The Introductory
Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the Future, Bicentennial Futures
Education Project, pp30-35.
26 Hutchinson, F. (1994). Educating beyond Fatalism and Impoverished Social Imagination:
are we actively listening to young people’s voice on the future?, School of education, Malmo,
Sweden, Eckersley, R. (1995). ‘Values and visions: Youth and the failure of modern
Western culture.’ Youth Studies Australia 14(1), pp13-21.
27 Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre.
28 Ibid.
29 Adapted from Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass,
Hutchinson, F. (1992). Futures consciousness and the school: Explorations of broad and
narrow literacies for the twenty-first century with particular reference to Australian young
people. Armidale NSW, University of New England, p410.
30 Slaughter, R. (2002). From Rhetoric to Reality: the Emergence of Futures into the
Educational Mainstream. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative
Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Praeger, pp175-186.
31 Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of their Futures: Prospectivity
and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents. Education, Work and Training.
Lismore, Southern Cross University.
32 Eckersley, R. (1988). Casualties of change: The predicament of youth in Australia. An
analysis of the social and psychological pressures faced by young people in Australia.
Melbourne, Australia’s Commission for the Future, Wilson, N. (1989). The state of the
planet and young people’s minds. Studying the Future: An Introductory Reader. R.
Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the Future, Bicentennial Futures Education
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 47
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Project, pp36-41, Eckersley, R. (1992). Youth and the challenge to change. Bringing
youth and society together in the new millennium. Apocalypse No! Series. Melbourne,
Australia’s Commission for the Future, Eckersley, R. (1995). ‘Values and visions: Youth
and the failure of modern Western culture.’ Youth Studies Australia 14(1), pp13-21,
Hannan, B., S. Ferguson, et al. (1995). Charting a Course: Students’ Views of their
Future. Canberra, Schools Council, National Board of Employment, Education and
Training.
Hutchinson, F. (1992). ‘Making peace with people and planet: some important lessons
from the Gandhian tradition in educating for the 21st Century.’ Peace, Environment and
Education 3(3), pp3-14, Hannan, B., S. Ferguson, et al. (1995). Charting a Course:
Students’ Views of their Future. Canberra, Schools Council, National Board of
Employment, Education and Training, Eckersley, R. (1996). Having our Say about the
Future: Young People’s Dreams and Expectations for Australia in 2010 and the Role of
Science and Technology, Australian Science and Technology Council.
Johnson, L. (1987). ‘Children’s visions of the future.’ The Futurist: 36-40, Hicks, D.
(1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge for environmental educators.’
Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9, Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the
Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13.
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Wilson, N. (1989). The state of the planet and young people’s minds. Studying the
Future: An Introductory Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the Future,
Bicentennial Futures Education Project, pp36-41.
Gough, N. (1987). Alternative futures in environmental education. 3rd national
environmental education seminars and workshops, Environmental education – past,
present and future, Canberra, AGPS.
Boulding, E (988)
Hutchinson, F. (1994). Educating beyond Fatalism and Impoverished Social Imagination:
are we actively listening to young people’s voice on the future?, School of Education,
Malmo, Sweden.
Gidley, J. (2002). Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Hutchinson, F. (1992). ‘Making peace with people and planet: some important lessons
from the Gandhian tradition in educating for the 21st Century.’ Peace, Environment and
Education 3(3), pp3-14, Hicks, D. (1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge for
environmental educators.’ Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9, Gidley, J.
(1998). Youth Futures: Transcending Violence through the Artistic Imagination. Futures
Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S.
Inayatullah and P. Wildman. Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
48 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
42
Eckersley, R. (1996). Having our Say about the Future: Young People’s Dreams and
Expectations for Australia in 2010 and the Role of Science and Technology, Australian
Science and Technology Council.
43 Ibid.
44 Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for
Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books, Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent
Futures. London, Routledge, Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of
their Futures: Prospectivity and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents.
Education, Work and Training. Lismore, Southern Cross University.
45 ACF (1996). Youth Futures Program, Australian Commission for The Future, p14.
46 Ibid.
47 ACER (1998). ‘Schools and the Social Development of Young Australians.’ Youth Studies
Australia.
48 Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for
Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books.
49 Ibid pp100-104.
50 Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’ Futures
30(5), pp395-408, Gidley, J. (2002). Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised
Futures. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and
S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
51 Gidley, J. (1996). ‘Wings to the future: Imagination and education.’ New Renaissance
6(3), pp9-11.
52 Page, J. (2000). Reframing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Educational Imperatives for
the Future. London, Routledge.
53 Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK.
54 Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for
Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books.
55 Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures. London, Routledge.
56 Gidley, J. (1998). Youth Futures: Transcending Violence through the Artistic
Imagination. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilizational Visions. A
Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P. Wildman. Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
57 Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for
Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books.
58 Gidley, J. (2003). Young People’s Values and Aspirations in Australia in 2002/3. Sydney,
ECEF (Enterprise Careers Education Foundation).
59 Eckersley, R. (2002). Future visions, Social Realities and Private Lives: Young People and
their Personal Well-being. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative
Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp31-42.
60 Gidley, J. (2000). Positive and Negative Future Images and their Links with
Hopelessness in Adolescents. Psychology. Bathurst, Charles Sturt: 49, Gidley, J. (2001).
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 49
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by Promoting Positive Future
Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling 11(1), pp51-64.
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Gidley, J. and S. Inayatullah (2002). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Novaky, E. (2000). The Youth for a Less Selfish Future: Papers of the Budapest Futures
Course. Budapest, Budapest University.
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques and
Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland. Also, Milojevic, I.
(2004). Educational Futures: Dominant and Contesting Visions, forthcoming, Routledge
Falmer, London.
Slaughter, R. (1998). The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
Slaughter, R. (1994). From Fatalism to Foresight – Educating for the Early 21st
Century: A framework for considering young people’s needs and responsibilities over the
next 20 years. Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Administration, p50.
Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13, Hicks, D. (2001).
Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World Wildlife Fund-UK,
Hicks, D. (2002). Lessons for the Future. London, Routledge.
Page, J. (2000). Reframing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Educational Imperatives for
the Future. London, Routledge.
Hicks, D. (1994). Educating for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. UK,
Godalming, World Wide Fund for Nature, Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’
Futures 28(1), pp1-13, Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical
Classroom Guide. Surrey, World Wildlife Fund-UK.
Slaughter, R. (1989). What is Futures Education? Studying the Future: an Introductory
Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the future, Bicentennial futures
education project, pp 10-20, Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques.
Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre, Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’
Futures 28(1), pp1-13, Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures.
London, Routledge, Hicks, D. (1998). Identifying Sources of Hope in Post-modern
Times. World Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter.
London, Kogan Page, Slaughter, R. and S. Inayatullah (2000). The Knowledge Base of
Futures Studies, CD-ROM. Brisbane, Foresight International. 1-4, Gidley, J. (2001). ‘An
Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by Promoting Positive Future
Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling 11(1), pp51-64, Hart, S.
50 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
(2002). Rural Visions of the Future: Futures in a Social Science Class. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport,
Connecticut, Praeger, Head, S. (2002). I Don’t Care about the Future (if I Can’t
Influence it). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley
and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, Jackson, C. (2002). Learning with
an Active Voice. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J.
Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger.
Inayatullah, S. and P. Wildman (1998). Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and
Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. Brisbane, Prosperity Press, Slaughter, R.
(1998). The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies. World Yearbook of Education 1998:
Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page, Gidley, J. (2000).
Unveiling the Human Face of University Futures. The University in Transformation:
Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University. S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley. Westport,
Connecticut, Bergin and Garvey, pp270, Inayatullah, S. and J. Gidley, Eds. (2000). The
University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University.
Westport, Connecticut, Bergin and Garvey, Dator, J. (2002). Advancing Futures: Futures
Studies in Higher Education. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre,
Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK.
Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre,
Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK.
Jones, C. (1998). The Need to Envision Sustainable Futures. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
p235.
Hicks, D. (1994). Educating for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. UK,
Godalming, World Wide Fund for Nature, Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of
the Future: Why we Need to Teach for Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books, Hicks, D.
(1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13, Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship
for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World Wildlife Fund-UK.
Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures. London, Routledge, Gidley, J.
(2001). ‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by Promoting Positive
Future Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling 11(1), pp51-64.
Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre,
Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK.
Jones, C. (1998). The Need to Envision Sustainable Futures. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies Centre.
See also Slaughter, R. et al (2004). The Transformative Cycle. AFI Monograph No. 5.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 51
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Ibid, Gidley, J. (1996). ‘Wings to the future: Imagination and education.’ New
Renaissance 6(3), pp9-11, Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical
Classroom Guide. Surrey, World Wildlife Fund-UK.
Hicks, D. (1998). Identifying Sources of Hope in Post-modern Times. World Yearbook
of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
pp227-8.
Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK.
Page, J. (2000). Reframing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Educational Imperatives for
the Future. London, Routledge.
Hicks, D. (1994). Educating for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. UK,
Godalming, World Wide Fund for Nature, Hicks, D. (1994). Preparing for the Future:
Notes and Queries for Concerned Educators. London, Adamantine Press, Hicks, D.
(1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge for environmental educators.’
Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9, Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the
Future.’ Futures 28(1, pp1-13, Hicks, D. (1998). Identifying Sources of Hope in Postmodern Times. World Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R.
Slaughter. London, Kogan Page, Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A
Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World Wildlife Fund-UK, Hicks, D. (2001). ‘Reexamining the future: the challenge for citizenship education.’ Educational Review 53(3),
pp57-60.
Slaughter, R. (2002). From Rhetoric to Reality: the Emergence of Futures into the
Educational Mainstream. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative
Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Praeger, pp175-186.
Lombardo, T. (2001). Doorways to the Future: Methods, Theories and Themes, 1st Books,
Lombardo, T. (2003). Odyssey of the Future. Tempe, Arizona, Futures Institute, Rio
Salado College.
Slaughter, R. (2002). From Rhetoric to Reality: the Emergence of Futures into the
Educational Mainstream. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative
Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Praeger, pp175-186.
Smith, C. (2003). Futures Studies in the Secondary and Tertiary Sectors: An Overview.
Futures in Education Forum, Australian Foresight Institute.
Gough, N. (1990). ‘Futures in Australian Education: Tacit, Token and Taken for
Granted Futures.’ Futures April, pp298-310.
Ibid.
Ibid, pp301-6
Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of their Futures: Prospectivity
and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents. Education, Work and Training.
Lismore, Southern Cross University.
Gidley, J. (2003). Young People’s Values and Aspirations in Australia in 2002/3. Sydney,
ECEF (Enterprise Careers Education Foundation).
52 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
95
Kleiber, D., W. Major, et al. (1993). ‘Youths’ Outlook on the Future IV: A Third PastPresent Comparison.’ Youth and Society 24(4), pp349-362, Rubin, A. (1996).
Unfolding Tomorrow: Adolescents’ Images of the Future as the Strategies for Coping with
Transition. Cultural Alienation, Losarvi, Finland, unpublished.
96 Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of their Futures: Prospectivity
and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents. Education, Work and Training.
Lismore, Southern Cross University.
97 Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’ Futures
30(5), pp395-408.
98 Hart, S. (2002). Rural Visions of the Future: Futures in a Social Science Class. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
99 Gidley, J. (2001). ‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by Promoting
Positive Future Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling 11(1), pp5164, Hart, S. (2002). Rural Visions of the Future: Futures in a Social Science Class. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, Head, S. (2002). I Don’t Care about the Future (if I
Can’t Influence it). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J.
Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, Stewart, C. (2002). ReImagining your Neighbourhood: A Model of Futures Education. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport,
CT, Praeger, pp187-196.
100 Stewart, C. (2002). Re-Imagining your Neighbourhood: A Model of Futures
Education. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley
and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp187-196.
101 Hart, S. Ibid.Rural Visions of the Future: Futures in a Social Science Class. Westport,
Connecticut.
102 Lee Martin, J. (2002). Jigsaw Project. Wyong, Futures Foundation.
103 Rogers, M. (1998). Student Responses to Learning about the Future. World Yearbook
of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan
Page.
104 Rogers, M. and A. Tough (1992). ‘What happens when students face the Future.’
Futures Research Quarterly Winter, pp 9-18.
105 Rogers, M. (1998). Student Responses to Learning about the Future. World Yearbook
of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan
Page.
106 Gidley, J. (2001). ‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by
Promoting Positive Future Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling
11(1), pp51-64.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 53
107
Miller, S. R. (1998). Technology-based Learning in US Elementary Schools. World
Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London,
Kogan Page.
108 (http://www.planet-tech.com/preferred_future)
109 Jackson, C. (2002). Learning with an Active Voice. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger.
110 Healey, J. (1998). Failure to Connect: How computers affect our children’s minds – and
what we can do about it. New York, Touchstone, Grossman, D., G. Degaetano, et al.
(1999). Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill: a Call to Action against TV, Movie and Video
Violence. NY, Random House, Benoit, M. (2000). The Dot.Com Kids and the Demise
of Frustration Tolerance. The Future of Childhood. C. Clouder, S. Jenkinson and M.
Large. Gloucestershire, Hawthorn Press, Grossman, D. (2000). Teaching Kids to Kill.
The Future of Childhood. C. Clouder, S. Jenkinson and M. Large. Gloucestershire,
Hawthorn Press, Large, M. (2000). Out of the Box. The Future of Childhood.
C. Clouder, S. Jenkinson and M. Large. Gloucestershire, Hawthorn Press.
111 Inayatullah, S. (1995). ‘Futures Visions for South-east Asia: some early warning signals.’
Futures 27(6), pp681-688, Inayatullah, S. (2000). Alternative Futures: Methodology,
Society, Macrohistory and the Long-Term Future. Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai,
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
112 Milojevic, I. (2000). Globalisation, Gender and World Futures, (unpublished), p13,
Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques and
Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland, Milojevic, I.
(2003). ‘Hegemonic and marginalised educational utopias in the contemporary western
world.’ Policy Futures in Education 1(3).
113 Nandy, A. (1992). Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness.
Delhi, Oxford University Press, Goonatilake, S. (1993). ‘The New Technologies and the
‘End of History’.’ Futures Research Quarterly Summer: 71-93, Sardar, Z. (1994).
‘Conquests, Chaos and Complexity: The Other in Modern and Postmodern Science.’
Futures 26(6), pp665-682, Nandy, A. (2000). Recovery of Indigenous Knowledge and
Dissenting Futures of Universities. The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives
on the Futures of the University. S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley. Westport, Connecticut,
Bergin and Garvey, p270.
114 Oehlers, A. (2002). Imagining the Future: Youth in Singapore. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, CT, Praeger, Wright, D. (2002). Japanese Youth: Rewriting Futures in the
‘No Taboos’ Postbubble Millennium. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger.
54 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
115
Aslam, B. (2002). Voice of the Future from Pakistan. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT,
Praeger, Guanco, M. (2002). Shared Futures from the Philippines. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, CT, Praeger.
116 Schultz, W. (1998). Defining Futures Fluency. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues
and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P. Wildman.
Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 Inayatullah, S. (2000). Alternative Futures: Methodology, Society, Macrohistory and the
Long-Term Future. Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai.
120 Inayatullah, S., Ed. (forthcoming). The Causal Layered Analysis (ClA) Reader
Epistemology and Methodology in Praxis.
121 Gidley, J. (2003). Giving Hope back to our Young People: Creating a New Spiritual
Mythology for Western Culture. Suicide Prevention Australia 10th National Conference,
Brisbane, 14th June 2003.
122 Bussey, M. (2002). From Youth Futures to Futures for All. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, pp6578, Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques and
Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland, Wright, D.
(2002). Japanese Youth: Rewriting Futures in the ‘No Taboos’ Postbubble Millennium.
Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S.
Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger.
123 Ramos, J. M. (2003). From Critique to Cultural Recovery: Critical Futures Studies and
Causal Layered Analysis. Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
124 Wilber, K. (1996). A Brief History of Everything. Melbourne, Hill of Content, Wilber,
K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston,
Shambhala.
125 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
126 Rogers, M. (1998). Student Responses to Learning about the Future. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
127 Bjerstedt, A. (1982). Future Consciousness and the School. Malmo, School of Education,
University of Lund, Sweden, Galtung, J. (1982). Schooling, Education and the Future.
Malmo, Sweden, Department of Education and Psychology Research, Lund University,
Slaughter, R. (1989). What is Futures Education? Studying the Future: an Introductory
Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the future, Bicentennial futures
education project, pp10-20, Beare, H. and R. Slaughter (1993). Education for the
Twenty-first Century. London, Routledge, Tough, A. (1993). ‘What future generations
need from us.’ Futures December, pp1041-1050, Slaughter, R. (1994). ‘Why Should
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 55
We Care for Future Generations Now.’ Futures 26(10), pp1077-1085, Hicks, D. and C.
Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for Tomorrow. London,
Trentham Books, Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures. London,
Routledge.
128 Beare, H. and R. Slaughter (1993). Education for the Twenty-first Century. London,
Routledge.
129 Ibid.
130 Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’ Futures
30(5), pp395-408, Gidley, J. (1998). Youth Futures: Transcending Violence through
the Artistic Imagination. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilizational
Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P. Wildman. Brisbane, Prosperity
Press, Gidley, J. (2002). Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
131 Wilber, K. (2003). The Integral Approach, Integral Institute.
132 http://www.integralscience.org/
133 www.integralinstitute.org
134 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute, Voros, J. (2003). Integral Futures – a Brief
Outline, Australian Foresight Institute.
135 Steiner, R. (1965). The Education of the Child: Lectures, 1909. London, Rudolf Steiner
Press, Steiner, R. (1982). The Kingdom of Childhood: Lectures, 1924. New York,
Anthroposophic Press.
136 Aurobindo Ghose, S. (1930). The Graded Worlds. The Riddle of This World.
S. Aurobindo Ghose. Pondicherry, India, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Aurobindo Ghose, S.
(1990 (1914)). The Life Divine. Pondicherry, India, Lotus Light.
137 Rogers, M. (1998). Student Responses to Learning about the Future. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
138 Gidley, J. (2002). Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
139 Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’ Futures
30(5), pp395-408.
140 Ibid.
141 Fien, J. (2002). Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future, UNESCO. Chapter 36
142 Fien, J. (1998). Environmental Education for a New Century. World Yearbook 1998:
Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page, Orr, D. (2001).
The Nature of Design. Oxford, Oxford University Press, Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainable
Education. Schumacher Briefings. Bristol.
56 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
143
Hutchinson, F. (1992). ‘Making peace with people and planet: some important lessons
from the Gandhian tradition in educating for the 21st Century.’ Peace, Environment
and Education 3(3), pp3-14, Hicks, D. (1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge
for environmental educators.’ Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9.
144 Fien, J. (2002). Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future, UNESCO.
145 Garrett, P. (1990). Toppling the House of Cards. Looking Beyond Yesterday.
D. Headon. Melbourne, Oxford University Press.
146 Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainable Education. Schumacher Briefings. Bristol.
147 Hicks, D. (2001). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. Surrey, World
Wildlife Fund-UK, Holden, C. (2002). Citizens of the New Century: Perspectives from
the United Kingdom. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions.
J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp131-142.
148 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
149 Wilber, K. (1996). A Brief History of Everything. Melbourne, Hill of Content, Wilber,
K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston,
Shambhala.
150 Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques and
Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland.
151 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
152 Gidley, J. and S. Inayatullah (2002). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
153 Inayatullah, S. (1995). ‘Futures Visions for South-east Asia: some early warning signals.’
Futures 27(6), pp681-688, Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives
on Youth Futures. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions.
J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
154 Inayatullah, S. (1990). ‘Deconstructing and reconstructing the future: Predictive,
cultural and critical epistemologies.’ Futures 22(2), pp115-141, Ramos, J. M. (2003).
From Critique to Cultural Recovery: Critical Futures Studies and Causal Layered
Analysis. Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
155 Wildman, P. (1995). Futures Studies: Methods, Issues and Visions. S. Inayatullah.
Southern Cross University, Wildman, P. and S. Inayatullah (1996). ‘Ways of Knowing,
Culture, Communication and the Pedagogies of the Future.’ Futures 28(8), pp723-740.
156 Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’ Futures
30(5), pp395-408, Gidley, J. (2001). ‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in
Adolescents by Promoting Positive Future Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and
Counselling 11(1), pp51-64.
157 Gidley, J. (forthcoming). The Metaphors of Globalisation: A multi-layered analysis of
global youth culture. The Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Reader Epistemology and
Methodology in Praxis. S. Inayatullah.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 57
158
Gebser, J. (1991). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: the Mental Demands of Modern Life, Egan, K.
(1997). The Educated Mind. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
160 Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: the Mental Demands of Modern Life, Wilber, K.
(2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston, Shambhala.
161 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
162 Wilber, K. (1996). A Brief History of Everything. Melbourne, Hill of Content, Wilber, K.
(2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Boston, Shambhala.
163 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
164 Hayward, P. (2002). ‘Resolving the Moral Impediments to Foresight Action.’ Foresight
5(1), pp4-10, Hayward, P. (2003). Foresight in Everyday Life. AFI Monograph 1.
Melbourne, pp42.
165 Gardner, H. (1996). ‘Probing more Deeply into the Theory of Multiple Intelligences.’
NASSP Bulletin 80(583), pp1-7.
166 Hampson, G. (2003). Personal Communication: Discussions on Wilber’s Second-Tier
Thinking. Lismore.
167 Wilber, K. (2000). A Theory of Everything. Boulder, Shambhala.
168 Inayatullah, S. (1995). ‘Futures Visions for South-east Asia: some early warning signals.’
Futures 27(6), pp681-688, Inayatullah, S. (2000). Alternative Futures: Methodology,
Society, Macrohistory and the Long-Term Future. Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai,
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist
and Post-Western Critiques and Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of
Queensland, Milojevic, I. (2003). ‘Hegemonic and marginalised educational utopias in
the contemporary western world.’ Policy Futures in Education 1(3).
169 Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice.
Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
170 Gebser, J. (1991). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
171 Tacey, D. (2003). The Spirituality Revolution: the emergence of contemporary spirituality.
Sydney, Harper Collins.
172 As an example, Kieran Egan’s Imaginative Education Research Group in Vancouver.
www.ierg.net
173 Holistic Education Network in Tasmania are doing ‘preferred futures’ work in schools as
part of the Tasmania Education Department ‘essential learnings’ component in the state
curriculum.
174 There are people already doing things around leadership, empowerment, even ‘preferred
futures’ with indigenous and Non-English Speaking Background youth (NESB). For
example, the Transcultural Mental Health Centre in NSW Bashir, M. and D. Bennett,
159
58 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Eds. (2000). Deeper Dimensions: Culture, Youth and Mental Health. Culture and Mental
Health: Current Issues in Transcultural Mental Health. Parramatta, Transcultural Mental
Health Centre.; Marian de Souza from the Australian Catholic University is doing some
rather ‘futures-oriented’ research with youth from a variety of cultures on their ‘spiritual
identities’;
The Shift Foundation (Melbourne) is a new group which sees itself as a second-tier
organisation (in a Wilber sense) looking at global leadership initially with indigenous
youth but intending to go international. http://www.shiftfoundation.org
175 Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques and
Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland.
176 See Josh Calder’s site futurists at the movies www.futuristmovies.com
177 Gardner Dozois manages the internet science fiction database ‘Year’s best science
fiction’.
178 Hayward, P. (2003). Foresight in Everyday Life. AFI Monograph Series. Melbourne,
p42.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACER (1998). ‘Schools and the Social Development of Young Australians.’ Youth
Studies Australia.
ACF (1996). Youth Futures Program, Australian Commission for The Future,
p14.
Albery, N. & Yule, V. Eds. (1989). Encyclopaedia of Social Inventions, Institute for
Social Inventions, London.
Beare, H. (1996). The Beginnings of a New Australian Story. The Global
Scenarios, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Economic Planning
Advisory Commission.
Beare, H. (2001). Creating the Future School, Routledge Falmer, London.
Aslam, B. (2002). Voice of the Future from Pakistan. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT,
Praeger.
Aurobindo Ghose, S. (1930). The Graded Worlds. The Riddle of This World.
S. Aurobindo Ghose. Pondicherry, India, Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
Aurobindo Ghose, S. (1990 (1914)). The Life Divine. Pondicherry, India, Lotus
Light.
Bashir, M. and D. Bennett, Eds. (2000). Deeper Dimensions: Culture, Youth and
Mental Health. Culture and Mental Health: Current Issues in Transcultural
Mental Health. Parramatta, Transcultural Mental Health Centre.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 59
Beare, H. and R. Slaughter (1993). Education for the Twenty-first Century.
London, Routledge.
Benoit, M. (2000). The Dot.Com Kids and the Demise of Frustration Tolerance.
The Future of Childhood. C. Clouder, S. Jenkinson and M. Large.
Gloucestershire, Hawthorn Press.
Berman, M. (1981). The Reenchantment of the World, Cornell University Press.
Berry, T. (1988). The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco, Sierra Club Books.
Bjerstedt, A. (1979). ‘Preparation for the Future as an Educational Goal’,
Educational and Psychological Transactions .
Bjerstedt, A. (1982). Future Consciousness and the School. Malmo, School of
Education, University of Lund, Sweden.
Botkin, J. et al. (1979). No Limits to Learning, Pergamon.
Boulding, E. (1978). ‘The Dynamics of Imagining Futures.’ World Future Society
Bulletin (Sept/Oct), pp1-8.
Boulding, E. (1988). ‘Image and Action in Peace Building.’ Journal of Social
Issues 44(2), pp17-37.
Boulding, E. (1990). Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an
Interdependent World, Syracuse University Press.
Broudy, H. S. (1987). The Role of Imagery in Learning. Los Angeles, The Getty
Centre for Education in the Arts.
Brown, L. et al. The State of the World 1990- (series) NY Allen & Unwin.
Brown, L. et al. (1994). Vital Signs, W.W. Norton & Co., New York.
Brown M. (ed). (1996). Our World, Our Rights: Teaching about rights and
responsibilities in the primary school. Amnesty International.
Burns, S. and Lamont, G. (1996). Values and Visions: A Handbook for Spiritual
Development and Global Awareness. Hodder and Stoughton.
Bussey, M. (2000). ‘Critical Spirituality: Neo-Humanism as Method,’ Journal of
Futures Studies, 5, 2, pp21-35.
Bussey, M. (2001). ‘Sustainable Education: Imperatives for a Viable Future,’
Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems. Oxford: EOLSS Publishers.
Bussey, M. (2002). From Youth Futures to Futures for All. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
60 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Westport, CT, pp65-78.
Calleja, J and Perucca, A (eds.). 1999). Peace Education: Contexts and Values
UNESCO in association with the International Peace Research Association,
Leece.
Clouder, C., S. Jenkinson, et al. (2000). The Future of Childhood. Gloucestershire,
Hawthorn Press.
Dator, J. (2002). Advancing Futures: Futures Studies in Higher Education.
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Didsbury, H. (ed). (1986). Prep 21 Course Guide, (Washington: World Future
Society).
Eckersley, R. (1988). Casualties of change: The predicament of youth in Australia.
An analysis of the social and psychological pressures faced by young people in
Australia. Melbourne, Australia’s Commission for the Future.
Eckersley, R. (1992). Youth and the challenge to change. Bringing youth and
society together in the new millennium. Apocalypse No! Series. Melbourne,
Australia’s Commission for the Future.
Eckersley, R. (1993). ‘The West’s deepening cultural crisis.’ The Futurist: 8-20.
Eckersley, R. (1995). ‘Values and visions: Youth and the failure of modern
Western culture.’ Youth Studies Australia 14(1): 13-21.
Eckersley, R. (1996). Having our Say about the Future: Young People’s Dreams
and Expectations for Australia in 2010 and the Role of Science and Technology,
Australian Science and Technology Council.
Eckersley, R. (2002). Future visions, Social Realities and Private Lives: Young
People and their Personal Well-being. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger,
pp31-42.
Egan, K. (1997). The Educated Mind. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Eisler, R. (2000). Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in
the 21st Century. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.)
Eisler, R. (2001). ‘Partnership Education in the 21st Century.’ Journal of Futures
Studies 5(3), pp143-156.
Eisner, E. (1985). The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of
School Programs. New York, Macmillan.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 61
Elkind, D. (1981). The Hurried Child. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley.
Fien, J. (1998). Environmental Education for a New Century. World Yearbook
1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
Fien, J. (2002). Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future, UNESCO.
Fitch, R. & Svengalis, C. (1979). Futures Unlimited: Teaching About Worlds to
Come. Washington D.C. National Council for the Social Studies, Bulletin 59.
Fletcher, G. (1979). ‘Key Concepts in the Futures Perspective.’ World Future
Society Bulletin (Jan-Feb), pp25-32.
Fontan, P. (1997). ‘Youth and Future Values,’ Papers de Prospectiva 6, p37.
Fragniere, G. (1976). Education Without Frontiers, Duckworth, London.
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Galtung, J. (1979). ‘ On the Last 2,500 years in Western History, and some
remarks on the Coming 500,’ The New Cambridge Modern History, Companion
Volume, ed. Peter Burke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Galtung, J.
(1982). Schooling, Education and the Future. Malmo, Sweden, Department of
Education and Psychology Research, Lund University.
Galtung, J. (1988). Buddhism: A Quest for Unity and Peace. Honolulu, Dae Won
Sa Buddhist Temple of Hawaii.
Galtung, J. and S. Inayatullah (1998). Macrohistory and Macrohistorians.
Westport, CT, Praeger.
Gappert, G. (1989). Futures Studies in Higher Education, University of Akron.
Gardner, H. (1996). ‘Probing more Deeply into the Theory of Multiple
Intelligences.’ NASSP Bulletin 80(583), pp1-7.
Garrett, M. (1989). Some Advice to National 21st Century Study Teams, Futures
Research Quarterly, 5, 2, pp5-24.
Garrett, P. (1990). Toppling the House of Cards. Looking Beyond Yesterday.
D. Headon. Melbourne, Oxford University Press.
Garrett, M. (1990). ‘National 21st Century Studies: Model for an Effective
Approach’, Futures, 22, 4, pp339-354.
Gatto, J. T. (1992). Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory
Schooling. Philadelphia, New Society.
Gebser, J. (1991). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
62 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Gidley, J. (1996). ‘Wings to the future: Imagination and education.’ New
Renaissance 6(3), pp9-11.
Gidley, J. (1997). Imagination and Will in Youth Visions of their Futures:
Prospectivity and Empowerment in Steiner Educated Adolescents. Education,
Work and Training. Lismore, Southern Cross University.
Gidley, J. (1998). Adolescent Dreams (and Nightmares) about the Future:
Indicators of Mental Health and Ill-Health. Making Waves: Country to Coast
Expertise, Innovation and Diversity, NSW Rural Mental Health Conference,
Ballina, 24-27 February 1998.
Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Prospective Youth Visions through Imaginative Education.’
Futures 30 (5), pp395-408.
Gidley, J. (1998). ‘Youth Futures: Transcending Violence through the Artistic
Imagination’. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilizational
Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P. Wildman. Brisbane,
Prosperity Press.
Gidley, J. (2000). ‘Cultural Renewal: Revitalising Youth Futures’. New
Renaissance. 9: 14-16.
Gidley, J. (2000). ‘Unveiling the Human Face of University Futures’. The
University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University.
S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley. Westport, Connecticut, Bergin and Garvey, p270.
Gidley, J. (2001). The Dancer at the Edge of Knowledge: Imagination as a
Transdisciplinary Force. The 2nd International Philosophy, Science and
Theology Festival, Grafton, NSW, Australia.
Gidley, J. (2001). ‘Globalisation and its Impact on Youth.’ Journal of Futures
Studies 6(1), pp89-106.
Gidley, J. (2001). ‘An Intervention Targeting Hopelessness in Adolescents by
Promoting Positive Future Images.’ Australian Journal of Guidance and
Counselling 11(1), pp51-64.
Gidley, J. (2002). Holistic Education and Visions of Rehumanised Futures. Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S.
Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Gidley, J. (2003). Giving Hope back to our Young People: Creating a New Spiritual
Mythology for Western Culture. Suicide Prevention Australia 10th National
Conference, Brisbane, 14th June 2003.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 63
Gidley, J. (2003). Young People’s Values and Aspirations in Australia in 2002/3.
Sydney, ECEF (Enterprise Careers Education Foundation).
Gidley, J. (forthcoming). The Metaphors of Globalisation: A multi-layered analysis
of global youth culture. The Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Reader
Epistemology and Methodology in Praxis. S. Inayatullah.
Gidley, J. and S. Inayatullah (2002). Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Glines, D. (1980). Educational Futures. Millville MN: Anvil Press.
Godet, M. (1998). Worldwide Challenges and Crises in Education Systems,
Futures, 20, 3, pp241-251.
Goonatilake, S. (1993). ‘The New Technologies and the ‘End of History’.’
Futures Research Quarterly Summer, pp71-93.
Gough, N. (1987). Alternative futures in environmental education. 3rd national
environmental education seminars and workshops, Environmental education –
past, present and future, Canberra, AGPS.
Gough, N. (1989). Seven principles for exploring futures in the curriculum.
Studying the Future: An Introductory Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne,
Commission for the Future, Bicentennial Futures Education Project, pp51-59.
Gough, N. (1990). Project IF and Other Stories, Melbourne, Victoria College,
Rusden.
Gough, N. (1990). ‘Futures in Australian Education: Tacit, Token and Taken for
Granted Futures.’ Futures April, pp298-310.
Grant, L. (1998). Foresight and National Decisions, University Press of America.
Grossman, D. (2000). Teaching Kids to Kill. The Future of Childhood. C. Clouder,
S. Jenkinson and M. Large. Gloucestershire, Hawthorn Press.
Grossman, D., G. Degaetano, et al. (1999). Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill: a Call
to Action against TV, Movie and Video Violence. NY, Random House.
Guanco, M. (2002). Shared Futures from the Philippines. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, CT, Praeger.
Hamilton, C. (2003). Growth Fetish. Allen & Unwin, Sydney.
Hampson, G. (2003). Personal Communication: Discussions on Wilber’s SecondTier Thinking. Lismore.
64 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Hannan, B., S. Ferguson, et al. (1995). Charting a Course: Students’ Views of
their Future. Canberra, Schools Council, National Board of Employment,
Education and Training.
Harman, W. (1988). Global Mind Change. New York, Warner Books.
Hart, S. (2002). Rural Visions of the Future: Futures in a Social Science Class.
Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S.
Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Hayward, P. (2002). ‘Resolving the Moral Impediments to Foresight Action.’
Foresight 5(1), pp4-10.
Hayward, P. (2003). Foresight in Everyday Life. AFI Monograph Series.
Melbourne, p42.
Head, S. (2002). I Don’t Care about the Future (if I Can’t Influence it). Youth
Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S.
Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Healey, J. (1998). Failure to Connect: How computers affect our children’s minds –
and what we can do about it. New York, Touchstone.
Hicks, D. (1994). Educating for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide. UK,
Godalming, World Wide Fund for Nature.
Hicks, D. (1994). Preparing for the Future: Notes and Queries for Concerned
Educators. London, Adamantine Press.
Hicks, D. (1995). ‘Envisioning the future: The challenge for environmental
educators.’ Environmental Education Research 1(3), pp1-9.
Hicks, D. (1996). ‘A Lesson for the Future.’ Futures 28(1), pp1-13.
Hicks, D. (1998). Identifying Sources of Hope in Post-modern Times. World
Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter.
London, Kogan Page.
Hicks, D. (2002). Citizenship for the Future: A Practical Classroom Guide.
Godalming, Surrey, World Wildlife Fund for Nature UK.
Hicks, D. (2001). ‘Re-examining the future: the challenge for citizenship
education.’ Educational Review 53(3), pp57-60.
Hicks, D. (2002). Lessons for the Future. London, Routledge.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 65
Hicks, D. and C. Holden (1995). Visions of the Future: Why we Need to Teach for
Tomorrow. London, Trentham Books.
Hicks, D. and Slaughter, R. (eds.). (1998). World Yearbook of Education 1998:
Futures Education. London: Kogan Page.
Holden, C. (1989). Teaching About the Future With Younger Children, in
Slaughter, R. (ed) Studying the Future, ABA/CFF, Melbourne.
Holden, C. (2002). Citizens of the New Century: Perspectives from the United
Kingdom. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J.
Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp131-142.
Holden, C. and Clough, N. (1998). Children as Citizens: Education for
Participation. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Hutchinson, F. (1992). Futures consciousness and the school: Explorations of
broad and narrow literacies for the twenty-first century with particular reference
to Australian young people. Armidale NSW, University of New England, p410.
Hutchinson, F. (1992). ‘Making peace with people and planet: some important
lessons from the Gandhian tradition in educating for the 21st Century.’ Peace,
Environment and Education 3(3), pp3-14.
Hutchinson, F. (1994). Educating beyond Fatalism and Impoverished Social
Imagination: are we actively listening to young people’s voice on the future?,
School of education, Malmo, Sweden.
Hutchinson, F. (1996). Educating Beyond Violent Futures. London, Routledge.
Hutchinson, F. (2002). Cultural Mapping and Our Children’s Future:
Decolonising Ways of Learning and Research. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT,
Praeger, pp53-64.
Illich, I. (1975). Deschooling Society. London, Calder and Boyers.
Inayatullah, S. (1990). ‘Deconstructing and reconstructing the future: Predictive,
cultural and critical epistemologies.’ Futures 22(2), pp115-141.
Inayatullah, S. (1993). Frames of Reference, the Breakdown of the Self, and the
Search for Reintegration: Some Perspectives on the Futures on Asian Cultures.
The Futures of Asian Cultures. E. A. Masini, Y. Bangkok, UNESCO, pp95-131:
Ch7.
Inayatullah, S. (1995). ‘Futures Visions for South-east Asia: some early warning
signals.’ Futures 27(6), pp681-688.
66 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Inayatullah, S. (2000). Alternative Futures: Methodology, Society, Macrohistory
and the Long-Term Future. Tamkang Chair Lecture Series. Taipai.
Inayatullah, S. (2000). Questioning the Future, Taipei: Tamkang University.
Inayatullah, S. (2002). Youth Dissent: Multiple Perspectives on Youth Futures.
Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and
S. Inayatullah. Westport, Connecticut, Praeger.
Inayatullah, S., Ed. (forthcoming). The Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Reader
Epistemology and Methodology in Praxis.
Inayatullah, S. and J. Gidley, Eds. (2000). The University in Transformation:
Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University. Westport, Connecticut,
Bergin and Garvey.
Inayatullah, S. and P. Wildman (1998). Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues
and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
Jackson, C. (2002). Learning with an Active Voice. Youth Futures: Comparative
Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT,
Praeger.
Jain, M., Ed. (2000). Unfolding Learning Societies: Challenges and Opportunities.
Udaipur, Shikshantar: The People’s Institute for Rethinking Education and
Development.
Jennings, L. and Cornish, S. Eds. (1980). Education and the Future. Washington:
World Future Society.
Jenson, R. (1996). ‘The dream society.’ The Futurist, pp9-13.
Johnson, L. (1987). ‘Children’s visions of the future.’ The Futurist, pp36-40.
Jones, C. (1998). The Need to Envision Sustainable Futures. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan
Page.
Judge, A. (1994). Union of International Associations, Encyclopedia of World
Problems and Human Potential, 2nd edition, Munchen, K.G. Saur.
Jungk, R. and Mullert, N. (1989). Futures Workshops. London: Institute for Social
Inventions.
Kauffman, D. (1976). Teaching the Future. Palm Springs: ETC Pubs.
Kegan, R. (1994). In Over Our Heads: the Mental Demands of Modern Life.
Kierstead, F. et al. (1979). Educational Futures: Sourcebook 1. Washington: World
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 67
Future Society.
Kleiber, D., W. Major, et al. (1993). ‘Youths’ Outlook on the Future IV: A Third
Past-Present Comparison.’ Youth and Society 24(4), pp349-362.
Large, M. (2000). Out of the Box. The Future of Childhood. C. Clouder, S.
Jenkinson and M. Large. Gloucestershire, Hawthorn Press.
Lee Martin, J. (2002). Jigsaw Project. Wyong, Futures Foundation.
Lepani, B. (1996). Designing Education and City Futures for the 21st Century.
LETA Conference, 29th September -4th October, Adelaide.
Lombardo, T. (2001). Doorways to the Future: Methods, Theories and Themes,
1st Books.
Lombardo, T. (2003). Odyssey of the Future. Tempe, Arizona, Futures Institute,
Rio Salado College.
Macy, J. (1983). Despair & Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. USA: New Society
Publishers.
Male, M. (1999). Framing Youth: 10 Myths about the Next Generation.
Marien, M. and Ziegler, W. (1972). The Potential of Educational Futures. New
York: Charles A. Jones.
Markley, M. (1983). Preparing for the Professional Futures Field, Futures 15, 1,
pp47-64.
Masini, E. Ed. (1983). Visions of Desirable Societies, New York, Pergamon.
Masini, E. (1989). The Future of Futures Studies: A European View, Futures, 21,
2, pp152-160.
Masini, E. (1993). Why Future Studies? London, Grey Seal.
McGregor, P. (1989). Visions of the future. Studying the Future: The Introductory
Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the Future, Bicentennial
Futures Education Project, pp30-35.
Meadows, D. et al. (1992). Beyond the Limits, Earthscan, London.
Milbrath, L. (1990). Envisioning a Sustainable Society, SUNY Press, New York.
Miller, S. R. (1998). Technology-based Learning in US Elementary Schools.
World Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R.
Slaughter. London, Kogan Page.
Milojevic, I. (2000). Globalisation, Gender and World Futures, (unpublished), p13.
68 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Milojevic, I. (2002). Futures of Education: Feminist and Post-Western Critiques
and Visions. PhD Thesis. Education. Brisbane, University of Queensland.
Milojevic, I. (2003). ‘Hegemonic and marginalised educational utopias in the
contemporary western world.’ Policy Futures in Education 1(3).
Milojevic, I (2004). Educational Futures: Dominant and Contesting Visions,
forthcoming, Routledge Falmer, London.
Moorcroft, S. Ed. (1993). Visions for the 21st Century, Adamantine Press, London.
Moses, E. (2000). The $100 Billion Allowance: Accessing the Global Teen Market,
John Wiley and Sons, NY.
Nandy, A. (1992). Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of
Awareness, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
Nandy, A. (2000). Recovery of Indigenous Knowledge and Dissenting Futures of
Universities. The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures
of the University. S. Inayatullah and J. Gidley, Bergin and Garvey, Westport,
Connecticut, p270.
New Renaissance, (1998). Special Issue on ‘Education for Transformation.’ 8, 3.
New Renaissance, (1996). Special Issue on ‘Holistic Education.’ 6, 3.
Novaky, E. (2000). The Youth for a Less Selfish Future: Papers of the Budapest
Futures Course, Budapest University, Budapest.
Oehlers, A. (2002). Imagining the Future: Youth in Singapore. Youth Futures:
Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah.
Westport, CT, Praeger.
Orr, D. (2001). The Nature of Design. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Page, J. (2000). Reframing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Educational
Imperatives for the Future. London, Routledge.
Polak, F. (1973). The Image of the Future. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.
Ramos, J. M. (2003). From Critique to Cultural Recovery: Critical Futures
Studies and Causal Layered Analysis. Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
Redd, K. and Harkins, M. Eds. (1980). Education: A Time for Decisions.
Washington: World Future Society.
Rennie, M. (1996). The Art of the Long View. The Global Scenarios, Macquarie
Graduate School of Management, Economic Planning Advisory Commission.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 69
Rifkin, J. (1995). The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the
Dawn of the Post-Market Era, Tarcher/Putnam.
Rogers, M. (1998). Student Responses to Learning about the Future. World
Yearbook of Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter.
London, Kogan Page.
Rogers, M. and A. Tough (1992). ‘What happens when students face the Future.’
Futures Research Quarterly Winter, pp9-18.
Rubin, A. (1996). Unfolding Tomorrow: Adolescents’ Images of the Future as the
Strategies for Coping with Transition. Cultural Alienation, Losarvi, Finland,
unpublished.
Sardar, Z. (1994). ‘Conquests, Chaos and Complexity: The Other in Modern and
Postmodern Science.’ Futures 26(6), pp665-682.
Sardar, Z. Ed. (1999). Rescuing all of our Futures. Twickenham, Adamantine.
Sardello, R. (1995). Love and the Soul: Creating a Future for Earth. New York,
Harper Collins.
Sarkar, P. R. (1998). Discourses on Neohumanist Education. Calcutta:
A.M.Publications.
Saul, J. R. (1997). The Unconscious Civilization. Ringwood, Australia, Penguin
Books.
Schell, J. (1982). The Fate of the Earth, Picador, London, 1982.
Schiller, F. (1977). The Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters (1795).
New York, Ungar.
Schultz, W. (1998). Defining Futures Fluency. Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging
Issues and Civilizational Visions. A Multi-Media CD ROM. S. Inayatullah and P.
Wildman. Brisbane, Prosperity Press.
Schwartz, E. (1999). The Millennial Child: Transforming Education in the 21st
Century. New York, Anthroposophic Press.
Scott, D. and Awbrey. (1993). Transforming Scholarship, Change. July-August.
Scott, D. (2000). Spirituality in an Integrative Age. Education as Transformation:
Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and a New Vision for Higher Education. V.
Kazanjian, H. Jr. and P. Laurence. New York, Peter Lang Publishing.
70 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Seth, S. (1989). Future Scan and Anticipatory Management, Centre for
Anticipatory Management, New Delhi.
Slaughter, R. (1989). What is Futures Education? Studying the Future: an
Introductory Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for the future,
Bicentennial futures education project, pp10-20.
Slaughter, R. (1990). ‘The Foresight Principle.’ Futures (October), pp801-819.
Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Futures Concepts.’ Futures April, pp289-314.
Slaughter, R. (1993). ‘Looking for the Real ‘Megatrends’.’ Futures October,
pp827-849.
Slaughter, R. (1994). From Fatalism to Foresight – Educating for the Early 21st
Century: A framework for considering young people’s needs and responsibilities
over the next 20 years. Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational
Administration, p50.
Slaughter, R. (1994). ‘Why Should We Care for Future Generations Now.’
Futures 26(10), pp1077-1085.
Slaughter, R. (1995). Futures Tools and Techniques. Melbourne, Futures Studies
Centre.
Slaughter, R. (1995). The Foresight Principle: Cultural Recovery in the 21st
Century, Adamantine Press, London/Praeger, USA.
Slaughter, R. (1996). Futures Concepts and Powerful Ideas. Melbourne, Futures
Studies Centre.
Slaughter, R., Ed. (1996). The Knowledge Base of Futures, Studies, Vols. 1-3.
Melbourne, Futures Study Center.
Slaughter, R. (1998). The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies. World Yearbook of
Education 1998: Futures Education. D. Hicks and R. Slaughter. London, Kogan
Page.
Slaughter, R. (2002). From Rhetoric to Reality: the Emergence of Futures into
the Educational Mainstream. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, Praeger: 175186.
Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures – a New Model for Futures Enquiry and
Practice. Melbourne, Australian Foresight Institute.
Futures/Foresight in Education at Primary and Secondary Levels 71
Slaughter, R. and S. Inayatullah (2000). The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies,
CD-ROM. Brisbane, Foresight International. 1-4.
Smith, C. (2003). Futures Studies in the Secondary and Tertiary Sectors: An
Overview. Futures in Education Forum, Australian Foresight Institute.
Steiner, R. (1965). The Education of the Child: Lectures, 1909. London, Rudolf
Steiner Press.
Steiner, R. (1967). The Younger Generation: Education and Spiritual Impulses in
the 20th Century (Lectures, 1922). New York, Anthroposophic Press.
Steiner, R. (1981). The Renewal of Education through the Science of the Spirit:
Lectures, 1920. Sussex, Kolisko Archive.
Steiner, R. (1982). The Kingdom of Childhood: Lectures, 1924. New York,
Anthroposophic Press.
Steiner, R. (1990). Toward Imagination: Culture and the Individual. New York,
Anthroposophic Press.
Sterling, S. (2001). Sustainable Education. Schumacher Briefings. Bristol.
Stewart, C. (2002). Re-Imagining your Neighbourhood: A Model of Futures
Education. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and Transformative Visions. J.
Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger, pp187-196.
Stotland, E. (1969). The Psychology of Hope. San Fransisco, Jossey-Bass.
Tacey, D. (2003). The Spirituality Revolution: the emergence of contemporary
spirituality. Sydney, Harper Collins.
Tarnas, R. (1991). The Passions of the Western Mind. New York, Random House.
Toffler, A. (1974). Learning for Tomorrow: the Role of the Future in Education.
New York, Vintage Books.
Tough, A. (1991). Critical Questions About the Future. Boston: University Press of
America.
Tough, A. (1993). ‘What future generations need from us.’ Futures Dec, pp10411050.
Voros, J. (2003). Integral Futures – a Brief Outline, Australian Foresight Institute.
Whaley, C. (1991). Enhancing Thinking and Creativity With Futures Studies,
Trillium Press, New York.
Wilber, K. (1990). Eye to Eye: the Quest for the New Paradigm. Boston, Shambhala.
72 FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Boston:
Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (1996). A Brief History of Everything. Melbourne, Hill of Content.
Wilber, K. (2000). Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy.
Boston, Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2000). A Theory of Everything. Boulder, Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (2003). The Integral Approach, Integral Institute.
Wildman, P. (1995). Futures Studies: Methods, Issues and Visions. S. Inayatullah.
Southern Cross University.
Wildman, P., J. Gidley, et al. (1997). ‘Visions as Power: Promises and Perils of
Envisioning Desired Futures with Marginalised Youth.’ Journal of Applied Social
Behaviour 3(2), pp15-24.
Wildman, P. and S. Inayatullah (1996). ‘Ways of Knowing, Culture,
Communication and the Pedagogies of the Future.’ Futures 28(8), pp723-740.
Wilson, N. (1989). The state of the planet and young people’s minds. Studying
the Future: An Introductory Reader. R. Slaughter. Melbourne, Commission for
the Future, Bicentennial Futures Education Project, pp36-41.
Wright, D. (2002). Japanese Youth: Rewriting Futures in the ‘No Taboos’
Postbubble Millennium. Youth Futures: Comparative Research and
Transformative Visions. J. Gidley and S. Inayatullah. Westport, CT, Praeger.
Ziegler, W. (1991). ‘Envisioning the future.’ Futures, pp516-527.
2 Futures Education in Australian Primary
and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
DEBRA BATEMAN AND CAROLINE SMITH
It is abundantly clear that education
SUMMARY
has a crucial role to play in the
development of social foresight
It is abundantly clear that education has a crucial
through the medium of a strong
role to play in the development of social foresight
through the medium of a strong Futures
Futures Education (FE) approach.
Education (FE) approach. By embedding Futures
thinking, tools, concepts and language as a given in students’ and teachers’ patterns
of thinking, present and future generations are given powerful thinking and
development tools to imagine, create and understand the future differently. FE opens
up the imagination about what is possible and worth working towards. It resists and
offers alternatives to the narrowing of the collective imagination. As such it provides
a durable foundation for social foresight.
Yet in Australian Primary and Secondary schools explicit Futures Education, using
the language, concepts and tools of Futures Studies, is currently in its infancy. It appears
that few Curriculum Consultants have knowledge of FE, instead seeing ‘futures’ as
implicit within particular areas of the curriculum.
While some new curriculum documents recognise the need for education for the future,
indicating that futures thinking has entered some Departments of Education, not all
74
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
offer explicit ways of achieving this based in the knowledge base of Futures Studies.
Rather, the notion of the future is not problematised and remains implicit within
curriculum areas such a global education, civics and sustainability education. Those
curricula that do recognise an explicit Futures Education perspective provide an exciting
basis for adoption of Futures Education in schools.
Both Primary and Secondary schools are included in the small number adopting explicit
Futures in their programs. They have done so in a variety of ways, within specific
learning areas and as integrated approaches that in some cases have involved schoolcommunity links. Teachers of FE enthusiastically endorse its adoption in schools,
believing that a FE approach is empowering for both themselves and their students
in that it offers creative and open-ended ways of considering the future. The most
commonly adopted Futures tool in schools is the notion of Possible, Probable and
Preferable Futures (called the ‘3P’s in one school).
With the impetus of new curriculum documents the stage is set for FE to be widely
adopted within Australian education. A number of enabling mechanisms, however,
need to be made available and these should be driven in part by those innovative
teachers already practising FE. These mechanisms include teachers mentoring others,
support of school leadership, the creation of a professional body for FE, teacher
professional learning through conferences, school cluster development, creative
partnerships with tertiary and community institutions, pre- and in-service teacher
professional education and the development of teacher and student resource material.
As regards teacher education, with few exceptions, tertiary Faculties of Education
have been slow to adopt FE in their teacher preparation courses. Initiatives need to
be taken to promote FE and to enable teacher educators to develop FE units within
their courses, possibly in creative partnerships with practising FE teachers in schools.
The report concludes by offering nine concrete actions or recommendations for
promoting FE in schools.
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
Students learn that future paths, whether considered personally, locally or
globally, are not fixed but are the result of actions and decisions taken now
… putting a futures perspective....is an exciting perspective which appeals
to both staff and students. It allows for creativity, critical thinking, analysis
and synthesis of ideas: at the same time it is exploratory, proposing possible,
probable and preferable futures.1
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
The Australian Foresight Institute has received support from the Pratt Foundation
to initiate and develop a series of processes that will enable the development of social
foresight (futures thinking and praxis) across a range of social and economic sectors.
A key part of this agenda is the development of Futures literacy within the education
sector. In order to achieve this, the status of current Futures Education in Australia
needed to be documented. This report sets out to do this as well as to point to ways
forward for the continued development of Futures Education in the sector, from which
social foresight may emerge more strongly than at present.
This report begins with an audit of current State and Territory curriculum documents
to determine if and how Futures Education (FE) is implicit or explicitly referred to.
It includes brief information of particular Curriculum Consultant knowledge. The
next section of the original report (which is not reproduced here) provided an overview
of knowledge, programs and practices within five selected schools (three secondary
and two primary) identified by key informants in the FE community as having FE
to varying degrees within their programs. This was not a general survey of a broad
range of schools but rather a documentation of current practice in FE where it was
known to exist. Information was sought from teachers and students in the selected
schools. This was collected by individual interviews of staff members and focus groups
conducted with groups of students who were engaged in FE. Prior to this guide
interview questions were circulated for expert review via the World Futures Studies
Federation email discussion list, and revised where necessary. The data collected from
the case study schools necessarily varied in quality and depth depending upon the
availability of teachers and students to take part in the study. Part Two draws together
key themes and conclusions from the study. Par t Three provides
actions/recommendations that may assist the further implementation of social
foresight through FE in schools.
FUTURES IN EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS
Curriculum consultants
Four senior curriculum consultants were interviewed about their understanding of
FE. None had extensive knowledge of Futures Studies, but were aware of its existence
and were keen to engage in professional learning in the area. The consultants were
well aware that Futures was entering new curricula. Some consultants saw Futures
in terms of creating a sustainable future and were directing their energies to enable
schools to adopt this perspective.
75
76
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Curriculum Documents
The view that one of the key roles of schools is to develop and prepare young people
for ‘the future’ is a given, and rhetoric around this theme has long been a feature of
curriculum. In response to the Education Act (1996), all states and territories in Australia
have developed curricula based on eight Key Learning Areas derived from National
Curriculum Statements and Profiles (1996). These are The Arts; English; Mathematics;
Technology; Health and Physical Education; Science; Studies of Society and
Environment (SOSE) and Languages other than English (LOTE). In addition, four
of the states describe overarching frameworks that reflect their particular priorities:
– Queensland: New Basics
– Tasmania, South Australia: Essential Learnings.
– Northern Territory: EsseNTial Learnings.
– Australian Capital Territory: Within Reach of us All 2
Within these curricula and their frameworks, education about the future appears in
various guises that can be regarded as either implicit or explicit. Implicit FE is taken
to mean the plethora of statements and curriculum outcomes that refer to the future,
but frame it as taken for granted, uninformed by the FE literature as evidenced by
the lack of explicit Futures literacy comprised of language, concepts and tools. Typical
curriculum statements would be ‘developing citizens of the future’ (ACT) and ‘personal
and civic development of the person’ (ACT, NT).
Explicit FE on the other hand, is still the missing dimension in education3 as an
overarching framework for curriculum work. Explicit FE is that which attempts to
develop Futures literacy, drawing widely upon Futures Studies literature for processes
and content, and expressed in curriculum statements and outcomes that clearly
problematise the future. A number of Australian curriculum documents have
incorporated an explicit FE perspective in innovative and creative ways, possibly making
Australia a potential leader in FE in schools. In particular, an important point of
departure from implicit futures is use of the cluster of thinking tools around possible,
probable and preferable futures and consideration of the deep structures using an
approach, such as Causal Layered Analysis, which encourages exploration of issues
at the level of paradigms and worldviews.
Implicit Futures in Curriculum
Within the Key Learning Area; Science, SOSE, Environmental Education and
Technology tend to be the main curriculum vehicles for an implicit futures focus.
Much of this understanding is developed in relation to a topic of work. While offering
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
a range of important concepts and skills, the taken-for-granted future is often considered
in terms of vocational orientation, civic responsibility and lifelong learning. Such
approaches tend to be reactive in terms of the future, and more often than not will
serve to enforce the status quo though an uncritical adoption of a taken-for granted
future with a past unexamined in terms of worldview.
Implicit futures concepts include:
– Sustainability
– Technological futures
– Change and continuity
– Civic responsibility
– Globalisation
– Vocation and careers knowledge – the future of work
– Personal development
The descriptors of learning include:
– Life long learning
– Holistic learning
– Problem solving
– Cognitive skill development
– Preparation for a complex world
– Flexible learning
– Just in time learning
Curricula from Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia include implicit FE.
Victoria’s Curriculum and Standards Framework is the oldest of current documents,
and is being reviewed currently. The New South Wales Department of Education
and Training has a very strong focus on sustainability, and has extended this in a novel
way to include all practices and decisions undertaken by the Department.4
The ACT’s Within reach of us all, the Northern Territory’s EsseNTial Learnings and
Queensland’s New Basics all refer to the promotion of lifelong learning and the holistic
development of citizens and people of the future. The ACT document specifically
highlights six learning outcomes for developing such citizenry as mature, active and
informed community, national and international citizens. These are that:
77
78
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
– Students develop the values and social capacity to exercise judgement and
take responsibility.
– Students’ critical thinking, problem solving and lifelong learning skills are
expanded.
– Students have information communication skills for learning and work.
– Enterprise education opportunities for all students are increased.
– Students experience effective transition pathways to work.5
While the Northern Territory’s EsseNTial Learnings does not embrace an explicit FE
perspective, it does have some useful futures elements in place. The document focuses
on ‘connected lifelong learning, are essential in preparing students for complex future
life roles’ and in personal development from the perspective of four domains of the
learner:
– The Inner Learner
– The Creative Learner
– The Collaborative Learner
– The Constructive Learner
The ‘Inner Learner’ develops ‘an awareness of how past and present shape one’s future,
resilience and a strong sense of wellbeing’.6 The ‘Constructive Learner’ focuses on
the development of skills, which enable learners to contribute thoughtfully to their
local and global communities. While these could be considered as elements that would
form part of an explicit FE, the main focus is the psychological well being of the learner.
Explicit Futures in Curriculum
The curriculum documents of Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland all describe
an explicit FE approach that seeks to develop futures thinking, skills and conceptual
understandings in a number of ways. Each of these curricula uses ‘curriculum organisers’;
clusters of connected ideas linked to skills which enable development of futures concepts.
These concepts relate to:
– personal futures
– social responsibility
– global futures
In personal futures, life pathways and social futures learning centres around students’
life skills, such as cooperation, collaboration and considering possible worlds of work.
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
Through this it is anticipated that students will develop a sense of initiative and enterprise.
Multiple literacies (multiliteracy) are used to encourage students to develop a range
of communication skills, based on Gardner’s multiple intelligences.
In developing social responsibility, students consider what it means to interact with
others within inter-cultural perspectives. Here are some exciting developments in FE
as students are encouraged to develop an awareness of local and global economies
through CLA approaches. Students may consider the environment and technology
as in an implicit FE approach, but they now include a variety of developmental models
based on probable, possible and preferable futures scenarios (see Appendix One).
Queensland – New Basics Project
New Basics was the first Australian curriculum document to include FE, and as such
it must be regarded as a FE pioneer, leading the way for others. The project encompasses
a cyclical triad that includes New Basics (what is taught); Productive Pedagogies (how
it is taught) and Rich Tasks (how students demonstrate learning). It attempts to develop
a multidisciplinary approach to previously separate Key Learning Areas through
curriculum organisers, and again contains some elements of FE. Table One relates
New Basics curriculum organisers to questions that include a futures perspective:
Curriulum organisers
Key FE questions
Life Pathways and Social Futures
Who am I and where am I going?
Multiliteracies and communications
How do I make sense of and
media
communicate with the world?
Active citizenship
What are my rights and responsibilities
in communities, cultures and economies?
Environments and technologies
How do I describe, analyse and shape
the world around me?
Table One: Curriculum organisers and related key FE questions in New Basics (Queensland)
Tasmania – Essential Learnings
Essential Learnings is a creative, innovative and well-considered document. It notes that:
communities see the curriculum as a means for creating the sort of future
they want. Learners’ sense of optimism is dependent on a belief in their capacity
to shape the future and to pursue worthwhile individual and community
goals.7
79
80
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
The five curriculum organisers which form the framework for the Essential Learnings
are:
1. Thinking
2. Communicating
3. Social Responsibility
4. Personal Futures
5. World Futures
Across each of the Essential Learnings are woven the themes:
– Thinking and Communication
– Ethical Action
– Interdependence
– Futures
So Futures here is considered as both a specialised curriculum area as well as a theme
across the Key Learning Areas. Within Futures students consider both Personal and
World Futures. Personal Futures aims to provide young people with educational
experiences that will enable them to engage successfully with current and future change
with optimism and resilience. The key elements that enable these aims to be achieved
are:
– Building and maintaining relationships
– Maintaining well being
– Being ethical, and
– Creating and pursuing goals.
The capacity to live fulfilling lives and shape futures, according to Essential Learnings,
is based on the development of a strong sense of identity, maintenance of well-being,
development of autonomy and a sense of life purpose and direction.8
World Futures involves investigating systems in the natural and constructed world
and their interrelationships. Student learning focuses on the challenge of taking
responsibility for long-term sustainability of global ecological systems. Key elements
of the World Futures curriculum organiser involve:
– Investigating the natural and constructed world
– Understanding systems
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
– Designing and evaluating technological solutions
– Creating sustainable futures.
– Social Responsibility brings in FE through creating preferred futures9
South Australia – South Australian Curriculum Standards and
Accountability (SACSA) and Essential Learnings
The SACSA document identifies as its foundation local and global change and the
need to shape futures in these changing times: ‘as educators, our challenge is to construct
a curriculum response which meets the emerging and rapidly changing demands of
a knowledge economy and society’.10
Driving SACSA are five foci for student learning:
1. Essential Learnings
2. Coherence
3. Enterprise and vocational education
4. Equity
5. Standards.
It is within the focus of ‘Essential Learnings’ that Futures is explicitly developed alongside
identity, interdependence, thinking and communication. These ‘Essential Learnings’
are referred to as the resources ‘which are drawn upon throughout life and enables
people to productively engage with changing times as thoughtful, active, responsive
and committed local, national and global citizens’.11
The Futures learning area focuses on developing flexibility in responding to change,
and in developing connections between past and present (the notion of the extended
present) in order to conceive a variety of scenarios and solutions for preferred futures.
Like the Tasmanian document, this curriculum aims to nurture students’ sense of
optimism about their ability to contribute to shaping preferred futures. Based on
constructivist pedagogy, the South Australian curriculum encourages students to critically
reflect on, and take action in shaping preferred futures.
Appendix One provides a comparison of the State and Territory curriculum
documents in their statements regarding FE. Appendix Two illustrates extracurricular areas where FE may also be located.
81
82
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS OF CASE STUDIES
Futures Education in Australian Curricula
The report raises a number of considerations regarding FE in Australian primary and
secondary education. Historically the education sector has been slow to respond to
changing world conditions, so it is certainly encouraging to note that the forward
view is at last finding a place within State and
Territory Curricula. Clearly curriculum
Clearly curriculum developers have
developers have come to a realisation that
come to a realisation that consideration
consideration of future options and alternatives
of future options and alternatives is
is vitally necessary in today’s world. While
vitally necessary in today’s world.
beyond the scope of this report to explore the
reasons for this change in perspective, it
would appear that Twentieth Century issues of globalisation, sustainable development
and the technoscience revolution are influencing educationalists in forming responses
to education for the Twenty First Century. The influence of Futurists particularly
the writings and seminar presentations by Richard Slaughter and Sohail Inayatullah
(in Australia) and David Hicks (in the UK) has been a key element in consciousness
raising. The curricula described above embody a recognition that education in the
Century necessarily needs to depart from the more subject based approaches that
have their origin in the knowledge divisions of the Nineteenth Century. While these
curricula are certainly innovative in design, they differ in their understanding of what
an education for the future might look like. In some curricula the forward view is
implicit, located within themes such as global education, sustainability/environmental
education, civics and so forth, though often cross-matrixed with personal and global
futures. Here the future is taken for granted, a projection of the present and
unproblematic.
Serious development of futures literacy in school students depends on the adoption
of a fully explicit FE. Queensland’s New Basics is apparently the first curriculum
document to include a Futures perspective and serves as a foundation for explicit FE
curricula. The best examples of this are those of Tasmania and South Australia, where
curriculum developers have clearly been influenced by the language, concepts and
tools of Futures Studies. Without these, futures literacy will necessarily remain
underdeveloped.
While only a small number were approached, it would appear that knowledge of Futures
Studies among sector curriculum consultants is limited. Those that have an interest
in ‘the future’ tend to see it as meaning sustainability education, ie education for creating
a sustainable future. While clearly a key consideration within Futures Studies,
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
sustainability education does not necessarily explicitly problematise the future, or explore
alternative futures at the level of worldview. Others educationalists consider the future
in specifics, such as the future of work, the future of technology of the implications
of a given future as in Future Problem Solving. The overarching organisers offered
by FE are absent, suggesting lack of knowledge of this literature.12
Futures Education in Australian Schools
Previous studies have indicated that explicit FE is almost unknown across Australian
schools. The only Futures-related project has been the Futures Problem Solving. Useful
as it is, this tends to reflect a closed view of the future in that it provides a given
future problem to be discussed, rather than an open-ended imaginative futures approach.
As Grant Ley at St. John’s Grammar School noted: [Future Problem Solving] ‘was
a narrowing rather than divergent exercise’. This survey undertook to examine practices
within those few schools known to us to have engaged with explicit FE in some way.
Futures Education in School Curricula
Within both secondary and primary schools, FE as an overarching framework, can
be adopted in a variety of ways. These tend to reflect the influence of interested teachers
and possibilities within the curriculum structures of the school. FE in secondary school
curricula is offered variously as:
– a dimension within existing subject areas
– a stand alone subject
– an overarching framework for an integrated curriculum approach.
In the Primary sector with its emphasis on integrated curriculum, FE is easily adopted
within an integrated approach. Whatever the approach, one tool stands out as being
the most useful for education – possible, probable and preferable futures (or the ‘3Ps’
as it has become known at St. John’s Grammar School). The ‘3Ps’ readily enables
an open ended, flexible and challenging approach to Futures that is eminently accessible
to students as young as year five and teachers alike. It is both simple and profound,
immediately opening up the notion that there is not only one future and thus allowing
an extraordinary level of exploration and deep thinking to take place. Overall, the
Futures tools and concepts used in education represent the ‘soft’ end of Futures,
consistent with constructivist pedagogies that encourage construction of meaning
through questioning, exploring and valuing of students’ ideas.
While all the approaches described above represent exciting and innovative approaches
to FE, integrating approaches such as the Peace Education of St. Margaret’s School,
83
84
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Doom Gloom and Bloom at Kimberley Park Primary School and Making Places at
Woodbridge State High School probably represent the most exciting and profound
way in which FE can be used. While they differ in scope and specific purpose, these
approaches have the potential to enable a futures perspective to be embedded into
the lives of students so invoking Futures thinking becomes automatic.
Embedding FE in schools
Like any other innovation, the long term success of FE in schools depends on an
embedding process so that the innovation does not depend on the enthusiasm and
energy of a few individuals, only to disappear when key staff leave or become burnt
out. A number of factors are crucial for the successful embedding of FE. These are:
– Leadership
The leadership of a key staff member(s) who can introduce FE to staff
is crucial to begin implementation of FE, as is support of the school
leadership.
– Teacher Enthusiasm
To maintain a successful FE program, teachers themselves need to be
enthusiastic.
– Teacher Knowledge
Supports and maintains teacher enthusiasm. Teacher professional
learning is crucial to the development of a strong FE program. Here
the ideal is the St. John’s programme where 12 teachers undertook
professional studies at the Masters level. This is unusual and unlikely to
be replicated elsewhere easily. However both teacher content and teaching
tools knowledge can be increased through other means such as
professional development days, tertiary education, conferences and
professional support bodies (see recommendations below).
– Wider Parent / Community Education
Parent and community education is also important to provide a support
base for students’ work both at school and within the wider community.
Students themselves can provide this education through public
performance, art, simulations, working with local community groups
and so on.
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
85
Teacher’s Views of FE
For many teachers involved in FE, exposure to the field may precede implementation
of FE in schools by up to several years. Without exception, all teachers working with
FE expressed enthusiasm, seeing FE as providing a powerful way of empowering students
to consider personal and collective futures, and talking about ‘Big Ideas’. One teacher
felt that the conceptual base of FE was challenging and more suited to able students.
Others did not share this view. For many
teachers, FE provides for themselves and their
Without exception, all teachers working
students hitherto unimagined choices as well
with FE expressed enthusiasm, seeing
as a language for considering futures. By
FE as providing a powerful way of
using FE teachers themselves have developed
empowering students to consider
a deeper understanding of Futures as well as
extended their teaching repertoires.
personal and collective futures, and
talking about ‘Big Ideas’.
Students’ Views of FE
Students of all abilities appeared to enjoy the perspectives offered by FE to a varying
extent. Some students regarded FE as empowering them to have a say in their
communities. Others, however, believed that they remained essentially powerless at
the global level although FE assisted them to understand the global scene better. That
FE potentially empowers students to engage in local actions gives students a voice
that they may not have had previously. This, a highly desired outcome of FE, may
depend on the degree to which students are allowed to interact and to be taken seriously
by their communities. Success here requires a high degree of pre-planning and
collaboration. Once collaborative projects are in place, however, they can be refined
and built upon and become an integrated part of the school program. FE also enables
a holistic view, allowing for previously unrelated events or concepts to be seen as
connected. The issue of gender/equity and FE in schools needs further research. It
seems that some girls may view the whole notion of the future as a masculinist project.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DEVELOPING FUTURES
LITERACY
The need for social foresight is urgent, and as noted above, new curricula are beginning
to provide for a FE approach through the development of Futures literacy. For the
education sector to become a powerful and central player in the emergence of social
foresight, the following actions are recommended:
1. Schools already engaged in FE need to become leaders in the mentoring of others,
to consolidate their own learning as well as assisting others. This could occur through
network/cluster development that would need the support in tangible ways (time,
86
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
funding) of a committed school leadership. Schools are already leaders in
implementing FE and should lead the way in promoting FE education given the
paucity of FE in university based teacher education courses.
2. The excellent work described in this report already taking place in schools needs
to be widely disseminated. There is an urgent need for a ‘Futures in Education’
conference where FE practitioners can present their work to others. An interest
in conference participation has been expressed by a number of the teachers taking
part in this study. Institutions engaged in FE may provide a leadership and enabling
role here.
3. The creation of Nationwide and State professional bodies of FE, modelled on
successful existing professional bodies would enable ongoing professional learning
to take place through journals, conferences, networking, professional development
and so on. Such a body could encourage participation in Futures through events
similar to Future Problem solving, perhaps modelled on UN forums or local councils,
but with a focus on problematising the future.
4. Collaboration between schools and local community is a powerful way of
empowering students to feel hopeful and engaged in creating their futures. The
Making Places model could well be adopted and extended to include collaboration
between schools and a range of community/government/business arenas.
5. Universities that offer teacher education need to play a much more proactive role
in exposing pore-service and post-graduate teacher to FE. This is in its infancy.
6. Creative partnerships between schools and Universities could provide a fast track
to FE education for teachers. The model adopted by St. John’s Grammar School
in collaboration with the University of South Australia and Australian Catholic
University could well be developed between school practising FE and tertiary
intuitions offering Futures Studies. AFI could well become a leader in this regard.
7. There are few accessible FE resources for schools’ use other than the excellent
Education for the Future13 and Slaughter’s two volumes Futures Concepts and
Powerful Ideas and Futures Tools and Techniques.14 Most FE writing remains in the
realm of academia, reflecting the lack of value placed by tertiary institution on staff
producing school texts and other resources.
8. At the global level, the World Futures Studies Federation education project under
the leadership of Professor David Hicks could invite FE teachers to be part of a
continuing conversation on FE. A list similar to that operated by WFSF could enable
this to take place globally.
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
9. Futurists themselves need to engage more closely with schools. A futurist-in-residence
program and leading students and teachers in workshops and seminars are some
of the ways this could take place.
The guiding framework for this report has been the development of social foresight.
It is abundantly clear that education has a crucial role to play in this through the
medium of a strong FE approach. By embedding Futures thinking, tools, concepts
and language as a given in students and teachers’ patterns of thinking, present and
future generations are given powerful thinking and development tools to imagine,
create and understand the future differently. FE opens up the imagination about what
is possible and worth working towards. It resists and offers alternatives to the narrowing
of the collective imagination. This is the basis of social foresight.
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
David Rawnsley, Curriculum Co-ordinator, St. John’s Grammar School
ACT Government Schools Plan 2002-2004
Beare and Slaughter (1993)
see www.det.nsw.edu.au/
http://www.decs.act.gov.au/publicat/pdf/ACTSchoolPlan.pdf (Appendix)
http://www.schools.nt.edu.au/curricbr/cf/pilotmats/CD/els/oview.htm , p18
http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ocll/currcons/publications/answering.htm p12
http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ocll/currcons/publications/answering.htm p25
http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ocll/currcons/publications/answering.htm p35
http://www2.nexus.edu.au/ems/sacsa/downloads/finaldraft/general_intro/page1.html
http://www2.nexus.edu.au/ems/sacsa/downloads/finaldraft/general_intro/page1.html
Smith (2003)
Hicks (1996)
Slaughter (1995a & b)
REFERENCES
Australia 2020 Futures Trail at CERES. Available on-line at www.ceres.org.au
Australian Capital Territory Government Schools Plan 2002-2004). Available at
http://www.decs.act.gov.au/publicat/pdf/ACTSchoolPlan.pdf
Hicks, D. (1996). Educating for the Future. World Wild Fund for Nature.
London.
Kimberley Park Primary School. Available on-line at www.kimbparkss.qld.edu.au
New South Wales Department of Education and Training. Available on-line at
www.det.nsw.edu.au/.
87
88
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
Northern Territory Department of Education. Available at
http://www.schools.nt.edu.au/curricbr/cf/pilotmats/CD/els/oview.htm
Slaughter, R. (1995a). Futures concepts and powerful ideas. Futures Study Centre.
Melbourne.
Slaughter, R. (1995b). Futures tools and techniques. Futures Study Centre.
Melbourne.
Smith, C. (2003). Futures studies in the secondary and tertiary sectors: an overview.
Paper presented at the AFI Futures Education Forum, Swinburne University.
Melbourne
South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability (SACSA) Available
on-line at
http://www2.nexus.edu.au/ems/sacsa/downloads/finaldraft/general_intro/
page1.htm
St John’s Grammar School. Available on-line at http://www.stjohns.sa.edu.au/
St. Margaret’s School. Available at on-line http://www.stmargarets.vic.edu.au/
Stewart, Carmen. Making Places. Available at
[email protected]
Tasmanian Education Department (2003). Available on-line at
http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ooe/curriculumconsultation/publications/
values.htm
The Office of the Queensland School Curriculum Council (2002). Available
on-line at www.qsa.qld.edu.au/publications/1to10/outcomes/ofs.pdf
Appendix One
Comparison of Futures Education statements in Australian
State and Territory curriculum documents
Appendix Two
Extra-curricular areas that include Futures Education
Appendix Three
Summary of Futures Education in Case Study Schools
Curricula – Secondary Schools
Appendix Four
Summary of Futures Education in Case Study Schools
Curricula – Primary Schools
90
Location
ACT
NSW
NT
QLD
SA
TAS
VIC
WA
Department
responsible
Department of
Education,
Youth &
Family Services
Department of
Education
& Training
Department of
Employment,
Education
and Training
Education
Queensland
And the
Curriculum
Council (QSCC)
Department for
Education,
Training and
Employment
Department of
Education
Department of
Education and
Training
Department of
Education and
Training and
the Curriculum
Council
Curriculum
document
ACT Curriculum
Frameworks &
Across
Curriculum
Perspectives
Documents
Board of Studies
K-6 Learning
Outcomes
7-10 subject
syllabus
Northern
Territory
Curriculum
Frameworks
(NTCF)
New Basics
Project
South
Australian
Curriculum
Standards and
Accountability
(SACSA)
Essential
Learnings
Curriculum
Standards and
Framework 2
(CSF2)
Western
Australian
Curriculum
Framework
Learning
Statement
with
futures focus
‘Education is of
strategic
importance
to Canberra and
a key investment
in our future.
A well-educated
community is
the basis of
what makes
Canberra
socially and
economically
healthy’i
‘The key priority
of public schools
is to provide
children
and young
people with the
foundations
for lifelong
learning so
that they
become
literate,
numerate,
well-educated
citizens with the
capabilities and
confidence to
make a positive
contribution to
our society’ii
‘As we enter the
21st century,
our learners
face many
complex,
diverse and
uncertain
global and
local social,
economic,
political and
environmental
issues. Rapid
technological
changes
increasing
cultural diversity
and changing
family and
institutional
structures all
influence and
are influenced
by schooling’iii
‘The New
Basics Project
is a bold and
exciting
undertaking
by Education
Queensland
to prepare our
students for
the future.
It deals with
new student
identities,
new economies
and workplaces,
new
technologies,
diverse
communities
and complex
cultures’iv
‘As educators,
our challenge is
to construct a
curriculum
response which
meets the
emerging
and rapidly
changing
demands of a
knowledge
economy and
society’v
‘Communities
see the
curriculum
as a means for
creating the
sort of future
they want.
Learners’ sense
of optimism is
dependent on
a belief in their
capacity to
shape the future
and to pursue
worthwhile
individual and
community
goals’vi
‘The Curriculum
and Standards
Framework
(CSF) describes
what students
should know
and be able to
do in eight key
areas of learning
… from the
Preparatory
year to Year 10.
It provides
sufficient detail
for schools and
the community
to be clear
about the major
elements of the
curriculum and
the standards
expected of
successful
learners’vii
‘All Western
Australian
students need
appropriate
knowledge,
understandings,
skills and
values to
participate and
prosper in a
changing
world and a
new
millennium’viii
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
APPENDIX ONE
Comparison of Futures Education statements in Australian State and Territory curriculum documents
APPENDIX TWO
Extra-curricular areas that include Futures Education
NSW
NT
QLD
SA
TAS
VIC
WA
‘These cover those
educational and
societal issues
considered of such
significance that
they should be
applied to the
whole
curriculum’ix
• Aboriginal
Education and
Torres Strait
Islander
Education
• Australian
Education
• Environment
Education
• Gender Equity
• Information
Access
• Language
Understanding
Across the
Curriculum
• Multicultural
Education
• Special Needs
• Work Education
‘Students are prepared
for life outside of
school through a range
of programs that put
learning in context,
make it relevant and
part of the culture of
everyday school life’
These include:
• Aboriginal Education
• Anti-Racism
education
• Career Education
• Distance and Rural
Education
• Drug Education
• Environmental
Education
• Gender Education
• Gifted and Talented
Education
• Learning
Technologies
• Multicultural
Education
• Religious Education
• School Libraries
• School Sport
• Vocational
Education
‘Future
generations will
require both
the capacity and
commitment
to successfully
negotiate and
develop socially
just, ethical
and sustainable
futures’x
• EsseNtial
Learnings
• Learning
Technology
• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Learning
Technology
• Environmental
• Indigenous
Studies
• Studies of
Asia
• Vocational
Learning
‘The New
Basics Project
is part of a
reform agenda
that espouses
the view that
educational
outcomes
should be
futuresoriented –
based on a
philosophy
of education
committed to
the
preparation of
students for
new
workplaces,
technologies
andcultures’xi
• New Basics
‘The SACSA
Framework supports
a futures-oriented
curriculum while
building in existing
practices. In South
Australia the
curriculum of the
future is not an
artefact designed by
a group of ‘experts’;
it builds from and
on the daily work of
educators’xii
• Essential Learnings
• Aboriginal &
Torres Strait
Islander peoples’
perspectives
• Multicultural
perspectives
• Gender
perspectives
• Socio-economic
perspectives
• Disability
perspectives
• Rural & Isolated
perspectives
‘The Essential
Learnings
Framework …
provides a
scaffold for
curriculum
selection and
decision
making.
It focuses on
the social and
economic
futures of
young people
and what kinds
of competencies
and
understandings
students will
need for a
successful
future’xiii
• Essential
Learnings
• Core Set of
values
‘Essential learning for
each key learning area
is defined as the
knowledge and skills
that students need in
order to:
• Operate effectively
and competently at
each stage of
development and
experience success
• Progress to the
next level
• Develop the capacity
to participate
effectively and
responsibly in
society’xiv
• Information and
Communications
Technology
• Environmental
Education
• Civics &
Citizenship
Education
• English as a Second
Language (ESL)
• Disabilities studies
‘The
Curriculum
Framework
is built upon a
commitment
to the
philosophy
that learning is
continuous and
that the
essential
purpose of
schooling is to
improve the
learning of all
students’xv
• Core shared
values
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
ACT
91
92
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
APPENDIX THREE
Summary of Futures Education in Case Study Schools Curricula
Secondary Schools
Learning area Year
levels
Topics/teaching
approaches
FE tools/
concepts
Resources
Drama
9, 10
Play presentation,
‘3Ps’
poetry, music: The
future of technology,
education
environment
Artist in Residence
Scenario building
Public Performance
English
8,9,10,
11
Short story reading
and writing
‘3Ps’
Prequel writing
Literature/film with
a Sci-Fi focus eg
Century, Dream of
Stars, Children of
the Dust
Integrated
Futures
9
Ethical decision
making
Ethical decision making
around different futures.
Futures as a continuum
from a recapitulation of
the status quo to
transformative worldviews,
recognising that futures
scenarios arise out of
specific worldviews
Studies
Pop, problem centred
and critical futures
Home
economics
11
Food and shopping.
Major essay ‘from
humble beginnings
to futures unknown’
Brainstorming
Concept mapping
Futures wheel
400 year present
New Scientist
Interview older
person
Indonesian
10
Endangered animals –
Orang-utan
‘3Ps’
Webs of causation
Role play
Australian Orang
-utan Project
Mathematics
9
Graphs
Linear and exponential
growth
Extrapolation
Population statistics
Environmental
trends
RAVE
10
Natural environment
Values clarification
Notion of progress
Australia 2020
SOSE/
Integrated
curriculum
7, 9
Immigration
Transport
Water use:
The Murray River
‘3Ps’
Literature and film:
The Time Machine
Bicentennial Man
Links in the
Curriculum
World Feast Game
Chronicles of the
future
Futures Education in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools:
Mapping Current Principles and Practice
Learning area Year
levels
Topics/teaching
approaches
FE tools/
concepts
Resources
Integrated
curriculum
10
Community-school
links
Health, safety and
sustainability
‘3Ps’
Making places:
‘Making Places’
funded by the State
Government’s
Department of
Housing project
‘Community
Renewal’
Integrated
curriculum
10
Transport; The local
environment;
The school;
Technology in the
home;
Entertainment;
Health and designer
babies; Population;
Housing
‘3Ps’
Peace: local to global
‘3Ps’
Visioning
Geography/
Integrated
curriculum/
Art
Conflict resolution
Peer mediation
UN Forum
93
94
FUTURES IN EDUCATION
APPENDIX FOUR
Summary of FE in Case Study Schools Curricula
Primary Schools
Learning area
Topics/teaching approaches
FE tools/concepts
Resources
Integrated curriculum:
Doom, Gloom or Boom
– is ours a fascinating
or frightening future?
Enquiry questions: Superhumans –
Mechanical humans or human
machines?
Will tiny machines rule the world?
The technology revolution impacts
on our world, but will it be
sustainable?
Prediction or
foresight?
‘3Ps’
Talking to
Grandparents
WFSF materials
Public Summit
simulation
Integrated curriculum:
SOSE, Science,
Technological
Understandings,
Drama
Changing community past,
present and futures
‘3Ps’
Extended present
Public
Performance
Mathematics
Probability
‘3Ps’
Weather data,
dice and
spinners
NOTES
i
http://www.decs.act.gov.au/publicat/pdf/gov_school.pdf
http://www.det.nsw.edu.au/aboutus/public.htm
iii http://www.schools.nt.ed.au/curricbr/cf/pilotmats/CD/intro/overview.htm p2
iv http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics
v http://www2.nexus.edu.au/ems/sacsa/downloads/finaldraft/general_intro/page1.html
vi http://www2.education.tas.gov.au/el p12
vii
http://vcaa.vic.edu.au
viii Minister for Education
http://www.curriculum.wa.edu.au/pages/framework/framework01.htm
ix http://www.decs.act.gov.au/publicat/acpframeworks.htm
x http://www.schools.nt.edu.au/curricbr/cf/pilotmats/CD/els.oview.htm p17
xi http://education.qld.edu.au/corporate/newbasics/html/trial/research
xii http://www2.nexus.edu.au/ems/sacsa/downloads/finaldraft/general_intro/page1.html
xiii http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ocll/currcons/publications/answering.htm
xiv http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/csf/GeneralInfo/csfII/overview.htm
xv http://www.curriculum.wa.edu.au/pages/framework/framework01.htm
ii