Futures Literacy in action: uncovering the anticipatory assumptions behind students’ imagination

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Across ages and stages: effects and effectiveness drawn from literacy assessments for children and youth

Proposal

Rapid technological change has expanded the boundaries of human life, seemingly offering infinite possibilities for the future. In this era of transformation, individuals and societies are actively envisioning future, including the reimagining of education, with innovative ideas. Many countries have initiated efforts to explore future, particularly in the realm of education. This study is part of a national research project on future schools, which initially aimed to explore what kinds of skills and mindsets educators should cultivate in students to help them navigate a world undergoing massive change. However, inspired by the concept of Futures Literacy(FL) presented in the UNESCO report Reimagining Our Futures Together, the focus of the research was changed. Researcher gathered insights about FL through a literature review, and the national project research team invited scholars in the field of futures studies to deliver a series of online and offline lectures and workshops. As a result of these engagements and after recognizing the value and potential implications of FL for educational transformation, the focus of this study shifted towards an in-depth exploration of FL.
Futures Literacy is the ability to better understand why and how people use the future(Miller, 2007, 2011, 2018; Poli, 2017). The future does not yet exist in the present. Instead, anticipation represents the form the future takes in the present. It is the means through which yet-to-exist future can be used. The integration of the later-than-now into the present is achieved through various kinds of anticipatory systems and processes(Miller and Poli, 2010). And an anticipatory system can be understood as a system containing a predictive model of itself and/or its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord with the model’s predictions pertaining to a later instant(Rosen, 1985). Thus, anticipation is powerful since it can inspire people’s hopes and fears, and ultimately impact their attention, motivations, and choices in the present. Nonetheless, it often goes unnoticed. Studying FL is a crucial step in helping people break free from the colonization of imagination and move towards freedom.
This study focuses on twenty seventh-grade students from the same class at an international school in Shanghai, aiming to explore their FL by examining sources of their future imagination, underlying assumptions and different types of anticipatory assumptions. It is hoped that the findings may provide a foundation for future initiatives aimed at cultivating and enhancing students’ FL. The Futures Literacy Laboratory(FLL), developed and designed by Riel Miller based on Ontology of Anticipation, was used as a tool to investigate students' FL. FLL typically consist of four phases: Phase 1 - Tacit to Explicit, Phase 2 - Reframing, Phase 3 - New Questions, and Phase 4 - Next Steps, and typically span 1-2 days(Miller, 2018). The twenty participants were invited to engage in an FLL themed “Social Media in 2050” and were guided through these four phases as part of a learning voyage, during which their previously invisible imagination became visible. The students were divided into five groups, each with a researcher assigned as facilitator and observer. Data collected included 15 group reports, 61 sticky notes, 26 field notes, transcriptions totaling 52,653 Chinese characters, 5 sculptures, and 62 photographs.
Preliminary findings from the study indicate that although students’ imagination seem diverse, they display a surprisingly high level of similarity. Some of their ideas stem from fiction films, while others are borrowed from others’ imagination. It was notable that all five groups’ presentations featured elements such as “artificial intelligence,” “brain chip implants,” “World War III,” and “resource competition.” There were also visions of humanity’s future colonization of Mars. As the research progresses, future efforts will continue to integrate methodologies from futures studies and education. Using the Futures Literacy Framework(FLF), Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)(Inayatullah, 1998), and qualitative research methods, the study aims to further uncover the underlying assumptions in students’ imagination concerning relationships between “digital survival,” “human relations,” “human-nature,” and “human-machine interactions.” Additionally, the research seeks to reveal the types of anticipatory assumptions shaping their imagination of the future.
This study is still in progress. Given that research on FL is still in its early stages globally, challenges may arise as the study progresses, For example, the complex relationship between anticipation and action, as well as the intergenerational connections between the future and history historical legacy. Yet, through continuous exploration, researcher and the national project research team’s understanding of the methodologies and core concepts in futures studies has become clearer, and the perspectives on the future have evolved. Originally, the future was viewed as a fixed ideal to be achieved, and education’s role was seen as preparing itself and its learners, as rapidly as possible, to adapt to a high-tech, globally competitive world. Through in-depth exploration of FL, it has become apparent that the future is not set in stone but is a “lived consequence,” a dynamic and emergent reality that individuals can actively shape. What is important is not merely figuring out how to survive whatever the future presents, but rather how to create a world people want to live in (Facer, 2011). In reconsidering the relationship between technology and the future, technology is no longer seen as some magical force driving the whole society down one inevitable path. Rather, it is how human perceive the potential uses of the technology in existing social settings, combined with the new capabilities it offers, that shapes what that technology comes to mean. With this perspective on the future, education, and technology, the goal is to cultivate more learners’ FL, which may enable them to better uncover the richness and potential of the present, while fostering their ability to embrace complexity, uncertainty, and emergence(Miller, 2015).

Author

• Lin Zhu, East China Normal University