Teaching Futures Studies From Disciplinary And Student Perspectives

Introduction

One of the greatest challenges to any discipline is learning how to teach it to each succeeding generation. This challenge is especially daunting for futures studies because it is a discipline in its own right as well as a body of knowledge that needs to be taught in other disciplines (Dator 1998; Miller, Poli and Rossel 2013). This study presents findings from several focus groups held with students who had just completed a course in futures studies. The objective was to learn how those students might teach futures studies if they were to do so in their own future careers.

The course is an introductory course in futures studies for upper division, undergraduate students. Open to students in any field of studies, it is especially designed for those preparing for careers in public service. It is, therefore, necessary to explain how futures studies relates to the field of public administration.

The Enlightenment Roots of Futures Studies and of Public Administration

In 1784, Immanuel Kant wrote an essay titled, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” He answered, “‘Have courage to use your own reason!’—that is the motto of enlightenment” (Kant, 1784). Critical thinking and questioning authority are hallmarks of Enlightenment thinking. So also is the concept that all humans possess an equal right to have a say in how they are to be governed. John Locke (1632–1704) and others stressed the dignity of individuals, all of whom possess fundamental rights including the right to reason for themselves. In his expression of Enlightenment values in the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that each individual has an unalienable right to seek preferable futures for themselves, a right to the “pursuit of happiness.”

Modern academic disciplines are rooted in the Enlightenment. They reflect the commitment to reason and empirical inquiry that was championed by the likes of Rene Descartes (1596–1650), Frances Bacon (1561–1626), and David Hume (1711–1776). The maturation, however, of modern academic disciplines did not occur until well into the 19th and early 20th centuries. Historian Ross (1991) studied the origins of the social sciences in American universities during those years. She learned that the founders of each discipline hoped to develop knowledge that could enhance the functioning of social institutions. Developing knowledge to enhance the functioning of social institutions seems to be a defining feature of social sciences across the globe. Economists seek to enhance the functioning of economies. Sociologists seek to enhance the functioning of social institutions ranging from families and neighborhoods to businesses. The closely related academic fields of political science and public administration were founded in the United States to enhance the success of that nation’s democratic institutions.

Futures Studies is the discovery and dissemination of information to facilitate the making of decisions, grounded in well-ordered conjectures, that enhance opportunities to make preferred futures come into existence. Futures Studies is intended to facilitate the decisions of individuals and of social institutions such as governments, businesses, and charitable organizations. Futures studies is grounded in both theory and sophisticated methods of inquiry (see especially Bell 1997; de Jouvenel 1967). It is a well-established precept that futures studies is intended to enhance the functioning of social institutions through the provision of knowledge that improves the prospects of preferable futures for them. Futures studies emphasizes evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking, especially the questioning of underlying assumptions. Failure to question underlying assumptions is a primary cause of error in thinking about the future (Ascher 1978). A solid argument can be made for the recognition of futures studies as a distinct social science discipline.

If any social science fails to teach ways to envision futures, especially the possible futures of the social institutions in which they specialize, then the ability of that social science to enhance prospects for improving the human condition is diminished. Seen in this light, Dator (1998, 302) admonition that “each academic discipline should become future-oriented” is particularly important. That is why the authors of this piece teach futures studies to students of public administration.

For democracies, public administration can be defined as follows: Public administration is service to others, in the context of democratically established laws, that is, accomplished through the management of people, money, and information in the development, implementation, and evaluation of policy in governments, in public-serving charitable organizations, and in businesses that contract to deliver public services. A half century ago, Dror (1970, 3) posited, “The main test of future studies should be its impacts on policymaking.” The desire to create information that will enhance the development of public policy is a central theme in the literature of both futures studies and public administration.

The need for public administration to be futures oriented extends well beyond policy development. Teaching a topic like leadership is enriched by introducing a futures perspective. Bennis and Nanus (1985) showed that the most effective leaders help others to envision preferred futures for themselves and their organizations. Sharing a vision of a preferred future in an organization increases motivation and better coordinates individual actions. A desire to be well remembered by future generations can be a reason for choosing top executives. That criterion for selecting executives was used by the founding public administrator of a new United States, President George Washington (Cook and Klay 2015).

Although governments are usually resistant to change, the academic discipline of public administration is inherently proactive. In the United States, for example, the standards for accrediting graduate programs in public administration require them to show evidence of preparing students to become agents for change and promoters of democratic values, especially social equity. Futures studies scholars and practitioners also advocate a proactive stance (Millett and Staley 2009). This raises the question as to which values are promoted in influencing future outcomes. As Bell (1997, Vol. 2) argued, critically assessing the values used to judge which possible futures are preferable is fundamental to the doing of futures studies. For public administration, good futures are those in which democratic institutions thrive in service to their citizens. Its scholars and practitioners seek greater efficiency, effectiveness, and social equity in order to earn the trust of citizens in their democratic institutions. The success of a newly established American republic depended heavily upon the ability of its founding public administrator to make the government worthy of being trusted by its citizens (Cook and Klay 2015).

The concepts of civic duty and service to others are central to the field of public administration (Cook and Klay 2014). They are rooted in the broader concept of benevolence which was elucidated by Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), a teacher and friend of Adam Smith. Hutcheson’s contributions included pioneering the importance of utility and self-interest in economic theory. Hutcheson’s reasoning, however, also led him to conclude that humans have an inherent capacity for benevolence and that acting on behalf of others is requisite to a well-functioning society.

Futures studies are examples of benevolence. They are undertaken so that others might benefit. For the most part, the beneficiaries of futures studies are not those who do the studies; the true beneficiaries are those who benefit from wiser policy decisions. Hutcheson anticipated futures studies when he wrote that humans should use their moral sense and their capacity to reason to discover “what conduct tends either to the common prosperity of all, or that of individuals, and what has a contrary tendency” (Hutcheson 1753, 104).” In teaching futures studies, the authors unabashedly seek to promote the Enlightenment ideals of critical reasoning and benevolence as expressed through civic duty and service to others.

The Course

The course is an introduction to futures studies for undergraduates from any discipline. Most major in social sciences but others range from the humanities to physics. Critical thinking is stressed throughout the course. We seek to enable each student to develop the capacity to analytically examine evidence, or the lack thereof, and the underlying assumptions, often not evident, that are used to frame conjectures about the future. In doing this, we seek to emulate the perspectives of de Jouvenel (1967) who established the importance for futures studies of analytically examining both evidences and assumptions. From the beginning of the course, students learn what de Jouvenel meant when he said that exploring possible futures can expand awareness of possible options and enhance prospects for success.

Enlightenment thinkers emphasized that teachers of future decision makers should emphasize the study of history (Cook and Klay 2014). In the course, students study how past efforts to envision the future succeeded or not. Students are encouraged to examine the underlying assumptions that seemed to influence the persons who were doing the studies. For example, demographers in the late 1940s in the United States repeatedly failed to recognize the emerging “baby boom.” They persisted in clinging to the demographic transition theory that populations in industrialized countries would inexorably reduce their fertility behaviors to something close to a replacement level. Citing the example of those demographers, Ascher (1978) concluded that such failures to critically examine underlying assumptions were a primary cause of forecast errors.

We use Ascher’s perspective repeatedly to encourage students to demonstrate their own abilities to think critically, especially in their required research paper on the possible futures of a topic of their choosing. In each paper, students are expected to show they can effectively use the Societal, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political (STEEP) framework in organizing their thoughts. For assignments such as the term papers, the time horizon is usually left up to the student and depends on the subject they choose but is never less than a decade or so. Topics have ranged from the futures of technologies, such as blockchains, to the futures of places, of industries, of groups, and of humanity itself. The underlying assumptions that students seem to be most inclined to question and criticize are ones associated with future uses of technology. Here are some of the assumptions challenged by students in their papers and other contexts such as class discussions:

1. Assumptions that a free economy will assuredly create enough new jobs to replace those made obsolete by smart technology;

We agree with Dator's (2003) recommendation to use the STEEP framework throughout the course. We also agree with Dator (2003) in using the insights of William Fielding Ogburn (e.g., 1937). A leading sociologist in the early 20th century, Ogburn sought to understand the industrial revolution. He concluded that significant new technologies inevitably change societies. Ogburn also emphasized that the ways in which new technologies change things are not predetermined; societal outcomes are a result of differing cultures and the values that prevail in shaping how a new technology is employed. To help students think about the duality of new technologies, we discuss a well-known biblical admonition from the Book of Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

The quote shows how humans, nearly three millennia ago, understood the duality of new technologies—that they can be used for good or for harm, depending on the values that prevail in determining how they will be used. Students find it very easy to jump ahead from a discussion about the uses of ancient metallurgy to the possible futures of something like artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Ogburn (1936) also wrote about how industrial technology had changed families. For most of human history, extended families were the primary providers of employment, of education, of health care, and of protection. Obliterating extended families in many places, industrial technology made it necessary for governments to assume important roles in meeting each of those needs. Students find this perspective helpful in thinking about possible futures of governments.

Risk assessment is emphasized in public administration courses. One approach to teaching it is to have students identify the possible risks associated with following the recommendations of two contending groups, each claiming to be right about something but one of them turns out to be wrong. We help students to identify possible futures if each side in the climate change issue proves to be wrong. The risks of doing what climate change deniers propose, and they turn out to be wrong, are evident—sea rise, uprooted populations, desertification, wildfires, and heightened risk of military conflicts. The downside of doing what the proponents of averting climate change want and they turn out to be wrong? More fossil fuel will be left in the ground for future generations, less money spent on health care, and more jobs producing alternate energy than were needed.

Students in the course are introduced to several methods of doing futures studies. Students learn a bit about methods such as econometric forecasting and the Delphi method. All methods of futures studies require specialized training, but students in an introductory course can apply the basics of some methods. We emphasize the development of scenarios to stimulate thought about alternate possibilities. Scenario development is accompanied by an introduction to future mapping/backcasting (Inayatullah 2012, Robinson 1982, Glenn 1997). Students are required to write scenarios and to backcast from their descriptions of preferable futures to frame recommendations for current policy actions. The students in the course seem to be especially drawn toward scenario development. This is perhaps not surprising since scenario development lends itself to the bridging of theory and practice (Yeoman and Curry 2019), and most students in the course are pursuing careers in which they will need to apply knowledge.

Students are introduced to environmental scanning from the perspective of our discipline. Developing future leaders is a continuing challenge. We, therefore, help our students see how environmental scanning can help an organization to become more anticipatory while also identifying persons at various levels who possess important talents. One of the authors, for example, has encouraged police chiefs to call for volunteers from all ranks to scan sources of information and share their implications for the futures of their organization and their community. A patrol officer, who would otherwise not have an opportunity to show that she or he is capable of anticipatory thinking, could be identified and fast tracked to higher levels of responsibility.

After students are introduced to general concepts and methods, they are then helped to apply those perspectives to several different policy arenas. Students learn about possible futures related to the following topics (as listed in the course syllabus).

1. Ecology and the Economy.

The Focus Groups

Focus groups are widely used to obtain information from multiple persons simultaneously. Focus groups formed from pre-existing groups are likely to be less threatening than individual interviews. Using focus groups, researchers can structure discussions around themes that are of particular importance. Moderators should be well familiar with focus group methods and with the topics discussed. Systematic analysis of recordings and transcripts, although time consuming, is a requisite in professionally done research. (Note: Each of the preceding statements in this paragraph is discussed more fully, with supporting literature, by Onwuegbuzie, Dickinson, Leech, and Zoran 2009.)

For this research, focus groups were conducted in each of six sections of the course, taught over a time span of two academic years. Each focus group session was conducted on the last day of classes. The sessions generally lasted an hour and a half. The course makes considerable use of electronic technology in all sections, with all readings available electronically as well as assignments to watch a number of videos and access some websites. Four of the sections met together in traditional face-to-face classrooms and two were taught entirely online. The total number of students was 188, 89 in the two online sections and 99 in the four face-to-face sections. The students in the classes mirrored the demographics of the research site, Florida State University: 57% women and approximately 58% white, 20% Hispanic, 10% Black, and 12% from other backgrounds or not identified.

Both instructors participated as moderators in all six focus groups. The moderators created some questions in advance, but the resulting discussions ranged widely in subject matter. Each of the prearranged questions was asked of each class section. Students were asked to imagine themselves as future teachers of a futures studies course. They were asked how emerging trends and conditions, especially future threats and opportunities, might affect what they would teach. Participants then discussed what additions, deletions, or other changes they would make relative to the contents of the course they had just completed. The broadest question asked of the “future instructors” of a futures studies course was, “How do you think the course should be taught?” The resulting responses to that question ranged from discussions of contents to how they would use technology.

In research involving focus groups, the text of what is said is the primary source of data. The mediators made notes during the focus groups. The focus groups were also recorded, and printed transcripts were made. Qualitative analysis software (specifically Nvivo) was used to analyze transcripts. The software did not reveal any overlooked themes. In reporting the results of focus group discussions, it is especially important to report areas of disagreement and minority opinions. In these focus groups, there were surprising levels of consensus and little to no disagreement on issues with one notable exception, whether or not a futures studies course should be taught entirely online.

Students’ Perspectives

One of the most consistent findings, in each focus group, was that students found all of the course’s contents to be relevant and appropriate for an introductory course in futures studies. The participants said that it was difficult to think about what to remove from the course. When asked what there should be “less of” in the course, the only suggestion made was to reduce emphasis on the emerging multi-polar world topic. They felt the topic was important but recommended less emphasis on it. We were worried that the presence of the instructors as focus group facilitators might bias student responses, but students were critical in other contexts such as recommending less lecture time and more class discussion time, so we believe they would have recommended removal of course topics if they were inclined to do so. The course they had just taken was, by design, similar to other introductory courses in futures studies elsewhere. If the opinions of the students in these focus groups are any indication, the contents of futures studies courses in the future might resemble the contents of present and past courses.

Conclusion: Remembering Our Enlightenment Roots

Focus group participants repeatedly emphasized the importance of understanding the past. In doing this, they were underscoring that futures studies is perhaps more an art than a science. Natural science students do not have to read biographies of past scientists to understand contemporary science, but art students need to study the biographies and times of past artists to comprehend what those people were trying to accomplish and to learn from them. Emphasizing honesty in research is about as far as ethics education goes in many natural science curricula. For futures studies, however, careful attention to human values is essential in the framing of preferable futures. As Dator (1998, 302) explained, “Ethical considerations are central to futures teaching and futures research.”

In many ways, the ideas promoted by Enlightenment era philosophers have become widely accepted across much, although not all, of our planet. Smith (1759), for example, especially in his Theory of Moral Sentiments argued that enabling individuals to have the right to be entrepreneurial in pursuit of their own ideas and economic self-interest is the surest way to increase wealth, but he did not stop there. He also argued that in a moral society, all individuals have a right to live lives of “dignity,” freed from poverty; that governments should do things like adopt progressive taxation to reduce poverty; that it is a duty of governments to protect individual rights; and that moral virtues are widely distributed among the cultures of the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, is grounded in Enlightenment concepts. That Declaration provides an important normative framework for judging the desirability of alternative futures.

Sadly, the nations that gave rise to Enlightenment thinking also, at the same time in history, embarked on planet-wide colonialization that institutionalized bigotry, suppressed human rights, and even promoted slavery. Enlightenment philosophers were sometimes complicit. John Locke, for example, sought to justify slavery under certain conditions, and the authors of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, which champions equality and human rights, were an odd mixture of slaveholders and abolitionists.

While recognizing the Enlightenment roots of modern academic disciplines, including futures studies, some futures studies scholars are now seeking to broaden the intellectual base of the field to include perspectives from non-Western cultures. This is an important undertaking, one to be encouraged. It has been a common tendency for some academic disciplines, including social sciences, to become inwardly focused. Their scholars become fixated more on doing research that passes the scrutiny of gatekeepers to their journals than they are on producing knowledge that can help others. By remembering that the ultimate purpose of futures studies is to enhance the prospects for preferable futures to come into existence, and by encompassing perspectives from across the globe, futures studies is likely to remain outwardly focused and a promoter of positive change.

Focus group participants emphasized that futures studies teachers must help their students to learn how human values influence future outcomes. We are likely to be on solid ground if we design courses with a firm understanding of the Enlightenment roots of futures studies. The Enlightenment era gave rise not only to the concepts of empirical inquiry associated with the practice of science but also to the importance of fostering creativity and applying knowledge to the betterment of humanity. George Turnbull (1698–1748), who delved more deeply into education than other writers of the Enlightenment, offered some suggestions that are relevant to the teaching of futures studies (1742).

Turnbull believed that children are capable of learning to reason at an early age and he encouraged teachers to use Socratic methods to stimulate creativity and logical thinking. The curriculum proposed by Turnbull, and reiterated by Benjamin Franklin, has a contemporary feel to it (Cook and Klay 2014). Turnbull, for example, opposed corporal punishment for children, believing it resulted in making adults more prone to violence. Turnbull’s proposed topics of study included a strong emphasis on history and philosophy as well as natural sciences, mathematics, and the arts. Encouraging students to embrace Enlightenment values was a vital component of education. As Turnbull (1742, 40) put it, “The whole business therefore of liberal education, and it is called liberal for that very reason, is to cherish into proper vigor the love of liberty.” Two and a half centuries later, Poli (2011, 409) reiterated that one of the “duties” of futurists is to promote “liberty and welfare for future generations.”

As we indicated earlier, developing knowledge to enhance the functioning of social institutions has been a defining feature of social sciences. Seen from this perspective, futures studies is clearly a social science that is deeply rooted in Enlightenment logic and values. Its practitioners seek knowledge that can help the institutions of society to function in ways that benefit humanity. Futures studies, however, differs from other social sciences in one respect. Most social science disciplines focus on a limited range of social institutions. When futures studies are done well, all social institutions should benefit, especially democratically oriented ones. The challenge for future teachers of futures studies will be to prepare their students to envision doable preferable futures and entice others to work collaboratively to make those visions a reality.