Imagine the Possible! Dealing with Barriers to New Economic Thinking in Higher Education

This paper explores how the imagination of possible futures can address socioeconomic challenges under conditions of polycrisis—specifically in the field of higher economic education. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks of Futures Literacy and Possibility Thinking, the study investigates the transformative potentials of futures engagement and the barriers that prevent it. Based on twelve adapted Futures Literacy Laboratories and 25 in-depth interviews with students in socio-economic master’s programmes at four German universities, the analysis identifies structural, emotional, epistemic, and institutional constraints that inhibit imaginative openness. Rather than framing these barriers as obstacles to be removed, the study examines how they can be held and responded to through pedagogical design. Emotional trust, embodied practices, playful methods, and the legitimisation of hesitation emerged as enabling conditions. Futures Literacy is thus not understood as a transferable skillset but also as a situated, relational, and affective capacity—requiring curricular anchoring, ethical facilitation, and safe, dialogic spaces. Imagining possible futures becomes central not only as a method but also as a way of cultivating economic imagination, agency, and critical reflection in the face of uncertainty. The findings suggest that fostering possibility thinking in economic education requires a shift towards engaging with economic challenges not through fixed solutions, but through the sustained exploration of contingent, plural, and socially grounded possibilities.