If Null, Then Futures

• In Event: When Nothing Is Something: Null Results in Informal Learning Research

Abstract

Purpose: “The notion of teaching and learning explicitly about futures in education is not new” (Slaughter, 2004, p. 1). Futures are tricky and yet the difficulties involved in studying something plural, unknown, and uncertain is not at all discouraging. It is hopeful. Futures don’t have to reproduce or echo what has already been, but they can’t vary without a point of reference. Contrast brings about difference. Null provides contrast. Null is an invitation to vary, diverge, (re)imagine. If null, then futures.

Framework: A futures framework uses imagination and structured approaches. In a futures framework imagination is necessary. Imagination can be located in wetware. Mental time travel (MTT) is a neuroscience concept that reveals the connections between episodic memory and episodic foresight. Episodic memory is remembering events richly contextualized through a personal lived experience. Episodic memory makes it possible to use past experience to inform and simulate future events and scenarios. Episodic foresight is the ability to simulate situations in a future. MTT is rooted in an adaptive advantage memory plays in navigating unknowns and future survival. In a futures framework structured approaches are necessary. In the past magic and myth were used. Futures were investigated using future-probing, fortune telling, and spiritual practices including divination, stargazing, visions, dream interpretation, horoscopes, clairvoyance and precognition procedures. In the present there are the sciences, with methods, and instruments. Foresight and forecasting methods are used to provide formality, rigor, and transparency while supporting futurist-infused research agendas.

Modes of Inquiry: Key futurist activity involves identifying or generating, then operating on: probable, plausible, possible, and preferable futures. These conceptual models guide a futures process no matter the research context or specific methods used. Probable futures are likely. Probable futures are based on inertia. Plausible futures could be. Plausible futures are based on making sense of what is known and projecting. Possible futures may be. Possible futures are based on a willingness to see problems as opportunities and obstacles as transcendable. Possible futures are open to new and different. Preferable futures should be. Preferable futures require agreement and a shared understanding of what best case means.

Materials - Futures Cone: Futures can be difficult because it is a lot to manage and process. To alleviate this heavy cognitive load a visual heuristic device has been designed. The futures cone diagram plots probable, plausible, possible, and preferable futures on a graphic cone shape that represents expanding time. It originates in a 1990 article where it was referred to as “The Cone of Plausibility.”

Conclusions: The futures cone has been through several iterations and continues to evolve. This means it is open to modifications. Currently none of the futures cone diagrams include or plot a null. A graphic intervention positions null in the futures materials.

Significance: Futures currently assumes a dynamic “now” starting point but the research literature never states how to assess or benchmark the now. Sometimes the futures cone uses “present” or “today” to label or represent now. If null, then futures proposes using a null as the dynamic now in a visualized futures conceptual model.

Author

• Jess Parris Westbrook