Analyzing Students' Writings on the Future: Types of Agentic Orientations

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Building on Community Assets in Education

Abstract

Individuals’ capacity for action is profoundly dependent on how they perceive their own relationship to the past, future and present. Such understanding gains in salience in education, since curricular aims increasingly emphasize students’ abilities to take action and contribute to change. We report on a study where high school students’ writings on the future were analyzed to identify three different types of futures thinking: 1) Stability/extrapolation, 2) Alternative futures, and 3) Preferable futures. We discuss their connections to students’ agentic orientations. On the basis of the results we argue that in order to foster transformative agency, school should teach versatile ways to think about the future, and students need practice in imagining futures based on values and choices.

Authors

• Antti Laherto, University of Helsinki

• Tapio Rasa, University of Helsinki