I began an exploration of futures thinking and futures studies in 2005, and began a related, if undefined, study of learning as a form of cultural expression in 2006. This presentation was adapted and updated based on an early mash-up of these interests.

1. Futures Thinking and Learning
Application and Imagination
Carmen Tschofen Hormel Foundation
Gifted and Talented Education Symposium
tschofen@email.com June 16, 2010

2. “The future has arrived...
...it’s just not evenly distributed.”
~William Gibson

3. Overton Window
S.O.P
Outrageous Optimal Outdated
Overton Window
(of Political Possibilities)
Leaders and/or thought-leaders frame
the acceptable debate or ambition.
~Mackinac Center for Public Policy

4. Understanding
change (or not)
• Change patterns of
unprecedented magnitude
• Severe lag in a conceptual
grasp of change, and in
cognitive and affective
understanding
• Change fatigue

5. Complexity
• “[These changes] demand
something more than mere
behavior, the acquisition of
specific skills, or the mastery of
particular knowledge. They
make demands on our minds,
on how we know, on the
complexity of our
consciousness.”
~ Robert Kegan “In Over Our
Heads: The mental demands of
modern life,” 1995

6. Perceptions of time
• Some people are able to
“live in future time zones”
~Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd,
“The Time Paradox,” 2007
• “Temponormativity”

7. Futures Thinking
Tools, approaches, worldviews
• Present choices
• Alternative futures
• Connectedness
• Emergence

8. “Seeing through”
“...the [expanding] types of
futures study … are those that
are located firmly in our present
consciousness and in the type
of critical vision that “sees
through” the inherited
meanings, traditions, values,
paradigms, myths,
metaphors, concepts and
guiding images of various
kinds that are embedded in
everyday language...”
~ Ron Reed/Noel Gough,
“Curriculum Visions,” 2002

9. Trend: Rapid/Accelerating Change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8&feature=related

10. Trend: Information abundance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ECAVxbfsfc

11. Trends collision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wp3m1vg06Q

12. Emerging Issues
•What “it” means
•How we talk about it

13. Emerging issue:
Personalization
• Is not differentiation
• Is not individualized, social or
personal learning
• Has a moral purpose:
emancipation of the learner
“May conflict with profound,
longstanding social process..
[and] runs up against the
strengths of beliefs held
especially by teachers about
traditional modes of knowledge
transmission.”
~ Organization for Economic Co-
Operation and Development, 2007

14. Alternative paths

15. Learning conversations
Diego Leal Fonseca on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndHLL8l3ZFw

16. Alternative time frames
John Moravec and Pekka
Ihanainen, “Alternatives to
temponormative pedagogy”
http://www.educationfutures.com

17. Emerging issue:
Decentralization
• Capacity development
• Process-oriented and/or
geographic/structural
• “Proposals for decentralization
usually threaten those persons
and groups who benefit from the
current governance
structures.” (UNESCO, 1999)
• Going beyond:
disintermediation and
disaggregation

18. Disintermediation
Photos: Patrick Charles, huggingthecoast and roadsidepictures on Flickr

19. “Piggly Wiggly” learning...

20. Emerging issue: Technology
Fundamental “futures thinking” errors
• Presentism: New tools for usual tasks
• Sunk investment: Using tools,
ignoring affordances
“Technology [should not be] a band-aid
to keep kids in a building while still
exposing them to the world.”
~ Jamias Cascio

21. Play
• Decentralized and personal
learning most resembles... play.
Patterns, rhythms, seeking and
joining.
• Things that make us most
human in a technological world:
play, intuition, imagination,
futures thinking capacity.
John Seely Brown- Reimagining Dewey

22. Implications
• For gifted kids
• For teachers
• For parents
“You don’t adapt this culture [of
education], you replace it… and
it isn’t pretty... If you ask people
to change, they simply change
how they label [what they’re
doing].”
~ Dr. Richard Elmore, Harvard
University

23. Examples:
Futures approaches
STEEP
• Social
• Technical
• Environmental
• Economic
• Political
Integral Futures or Causal
Layered Analysis
• litany
• social causes
• discourse/worldview
• myth/metaphor

24. Examples: Futures methods
Tension pairs/ quadrants Scenarios
NA Futures Wiki Opening Education: 2020 and beyond
Narratives Wheels/Maps
Education Futures KnowledgeWorks Foundation

25. Examples:
Potential futures
What happens when...
• Students don’t have to be in
your classroom
• Learners have integrated
“6th sense” and/or
knowledge-base devices
• Learners’ (and parents’)
perceptions of value or
convenience of formal
education drop as costs
spiral

26. Learning Futures:
Resources
• 2020 Forecast: Creating the
Future of Learning
• The Future of Thinking:
Learning Institutions in a Digital
Age (MacArthur Foundation,
2010)
• Futurelab: Innovation in
Education
• Beyond Current Horizons:
Education Beyond 2025

27. Carmen Tschofen
Robbinsdale, Minnesota
tschofen@email.com
Twitter: ctscho
Skype: ctschof