Note:
this is the as yet unfinished, unpublished ABS article:
Teaching People to Daydream Effectively:
an essay on the pedagogy of Futures Studies
for a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist
Dr. Wendy L. Schultz
Studies of the Future, University of Houston - Clear Lake
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their
dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Introduction
One drawback to professing in a new academic field is the inability
to communicate your vocation quickly. Answering "What do you do?"
with "I'm a futures researcher" often garners blank, albeit polite,
smiles. Or a follow-up on the prospects for pork bellies. Yet we
want to involve as many people as we can in our conversations about
the future, so incomprehension is a vexing problem. Vexing and so
critical that we require all our students to attempt a solution
in our graduate futures proseminar. Assignment: you are in an elevator
and someone asks you what you do; you have ten floors' transit in
which to describe futures studies; what do you say?
I have two answers.
The ten-floor extended version I offer below in my discussion of
methods; but my favorite response I can offer between one floor
and the next, in half-a-dozen words: I simply say, "I teach people
to daydream effectively." It provokes laughter and usually elicits
further questions. This allows me to explain that beautiful dreams
are the foundation of leadership and the heart of energized communities,
but can only build the future when reinforced by flexible plans
and change strategies. And that flexible plans and change strategies
in turn require observing, understanding, and adapting to the changes
happening around us. So I could also say, "I teach people to question
and reconstruct their values, ideals, and assumptions while dynamically
balancing on the whirling maelstrom of change as an act of self-reflective
meditation." But that image is somewhat more difficult to conjure
up when standing in a crowded elevator.
Thanks are therefore
due the American Behavioral Scientist for offering the field
of futures studies this space in which to explore much longer answers
to the question, "what do you do?". Our new field is still struggling
through that exciting but often untidy adventure that is paradigm
exploration and formation, in Kuhn's sense (Kuhn, 1970). With the
advent of Slaughter's Knowledge Base of Futures Studies (Slaughter,
1996) and Bell's Foundations of Futures Studies (Bell, 1997),
we may finally say that textbooks exist for futures -- Fowles' Handbook
of Futures Research, published in the late seventies, was a
useful precursor to these efforts, but not nearly as well-knit conceptually:
the field has matured in the meantime (Fowles, 1978). Thus this
collection of essays may perhaps serve as a test for "doneness"
-- have we progressed beyond our previous half-baked state?
Contributors to this special issue have been requested to address
the following issues: our theories of social change; our methods
for investigating and affecting social change; our image of a plausible,
preferred future; and approaches to including these theories, methods,
and images in both teaching and consulting. My responses follow,
but I have rearranged the order of my answers to provide smoother
segues to the ideas in each. My conception of social change is directly
linked to my image of a preferred future, so I address those issues
first. I follow with a discussion of methods used to monitor and
affect social change, of which the futures' worldview is itself
the cornerstone. In elaborating how these issues play out in my
professional activities, I have addressed consulting and research
first, as I spent ten years engaged in consulting projects before
my current immersion in teaching, and the former has irretrievably
affected the latter.
Theories of Social Stability and Instability
Instability first: a myriad of stimuli drive social change. Every
complex, dynamic -- i.e., living -- system contains multiple leverage
points where shifts in information flows can instigate shifts in
the system structure itself. Our societies function within overlapping
fields of influence generated by the natural environment as well
as by the backwash of impacts from the arts, the economy, politics,
technology and all our other activities. We are awash in tides of
change: some balance each other, and some reinforce.
But people who wish
to study the changes creating our futures must, for sanity's sake,
narrow their focus to only one or two of the leverage points in
the social system. Thus Toynbee looked at leadership and the environment,
and Marx at technology and economic relations, and Ibn Khaldun at
nomadic-urban transitions (to name a few, and in no particular order
). Each of these theorists, and their like, offers insight into
the nature of social change. But each is flawed for the same reason
that an environmental scan of emerging issues focussed only on technology
would be flawed: they miss the interconnections among the overlapping
change drivers and the various social subsystems.
Futures researchers
use mnemonics like "STEEP" -- social, technological, economic, environmental,
and political -- to remind themselves to look for change drivers
throughout reality (as we can currently perceive it). This reminder
is just as valuable regarding social change. Take any dozen social
change theories and map them out across the STEEP categories. This
exercise produces on the one hand a crude but interesting foundation
for a grand synthesis, and on the other, a cautionary note that
too great an interest in any one theory of social change can lead
to too great an observational focus on only one sector of emerging
change. Change will find new fissures through which to erupt --
in addition to following older channels it has already created.
Having made the caution
explicit, my personal research focusses on images of the future
and technological innovation in creating the possibilities for social
change.
image of the future
[vision & leadership] and technology [adaptability & perversity]
prior cause: imagination and exploration, as variously expressed
by those who build evocative intangibles and those who build provocative
tangibles
dissatisfaction >>> satisfaction = waves of change through successive
generations: cohort analysis
Polak and McLuhan
a new technology or a new vision of reality re-arranges a social
system's structures, resulting in new emergent properties while
some basic structural characteristics persist
stability a miracle composed of security, solidification, expansion
of new metaphor, vision, or paradigm into spaces it can easily fill
>>> comfortable growth
when it begins pushing boundaries, discomfort, tension, and incompatibilities
arise
when boundaries too cramped from the start, immediate discomfort
and tension
stability: static =
stagnation & death; dynamic stability that nurtures growth of human
potential, maintains essential humanity, adjusts the fiddly bits
to new circumstances and recreates balance.
stability is the quivering balance point at the convergence of competing
fields of influence
social inertia: traditions we cherish, monuments to past visions
achieved -- dreams accrete, and embedded in them are values which
also accrete, to be slowly eroded by changing circumstances and
the revolutionary quality of new dreams.
Vision of a Plausible, Preferred Future
It is difficult to vision courageously and still meet the requirements
to describe a preferred future that is also plausible. It is much
easier to describe a plausible, fun future: more toys, more
possibilities, more challenges, more adventure [read: risk]. Change
explodes daily, resulting in both damage and delight:
- all around the planet
people are increasingly in motion, with concomitant increases
in cultural and ethnic diversity locally -- as a result, conflict
increases, but so does creativity, in the wake of unforeseen new
combinations of ideas and worldviews;
- global communication
networks enable people to link across divides of land and language
to form action groups based on mutual interest and a desire to
create -- to create a better partnership with the living planet,
to create new companies and products, to create new learning environments
for children all around the world (to name a few);
- new respect for ancient
knowledge allows us to see ourselves and our fellow species with
exhanced perception, leading to innovative insights in medicine,
psychology, and in spiritual understanding;
- unpacking the genetic
code and the systems of biological development leads to both the
amelioration of the symptoms of aging and the reconfiguration
of various plant species into mini-plastics factories and heavy
metal filters;
- manipulation of molecules
with scanning tunneling microscopes builds nanoengines fitted
to buckypipes and controlled by quantum microprocessors -- nano-mining
and infinite recycling arrive, along with micro-art, ubiquitous
embedded computing, and circuit-to synapse connectivity;
- commercially available
zero-point energy taps offer inexhaustible energy resources;
- and new materials
allow lightweight spaceplane construction and we finally re-enter
interplanetary space (no more of this messing about in low earth
orbit) with colony outreach to Mars and, closer to home, micro-g
Olympics and art festivals.
That's a sample of the
plausible fun future: many of the changes cited are in the
works now, and the farthest only a child's adulthood away. I find
these possibilities exhilarating -- but these changes in themselves
are inadequate to create the future I desire.
Humanity's ability to
innovate, to solve puzzles, to engineer new tools, to create new
art forms and games to play, and to build new monuments to cherished
dreams will enormously expand what each of us can make of ourselves
and our lives, but will not insure -- at least in my lifetime --
universal right of access to those expanded possibilities. Any vision
of a preferred future must address equitable provision for
basic human needs as well as equality of access to emerging opportunities.
Just as my theoretical focus for social change highlights individual
visionary leadership and stresses the exploration of alternatives
and consequences, my image of a preferred future stresses individual
freedom to maximize personal potential balanced with individual
responsibility to sustain the possibilities for other people, other
species, and other generations -- a seemingly implausible future,
and hence my dilemma.
"Balancing the planet
and centering the self" sums up my vision. Let's create a future
which protects the child in each of us, matures the creator in each
of us, enables the leader in each of us, empowers the community
member in each of us, and teaches all of us to communicate more
easily and effectively with each other and with the living systems
which we inhabit. How? I do not think human nature is perfectible:
I do believe that perversity, and vices, and crime, and conflict
will be with us always. Yet I see the emergence of hope in such
emerging issues as the growth in people trained in group process
facilitation as well as the growth of people trained in shamanism
-- the former an example of honing our awareness of the external
self, and developing social tools needed to create flexible social
networks with a dynamic fit to balanced planetary systems; the latter
an example of honing our awareness of the internal self, and developing
the tools necessary to enable grounding, centering, and dynamically
balancing a whole soul. We astonish ourselves with the possibilities
inherent in genetic engineering and nanotechnology, but the farther
frontier is the frontier represented at the intersection of body
and brain, brain and mind, mind and soul, soul and society.
Methods Used to Monitor and Affect Social Stability and Instability
Futures studies is itself the method used, in the largest sense.
A transdisciplinary,
systems-science-based approach to 1) analyzing the patterns of change
in the past; 2) identifying the emerging issues of change in the
present; and 3) extrapolating an array of alternative possible futures,
such that we can facilitate people in creating the future they desire.
social change and systems science
emerging issues, 360 degree scanning, STEEP/EPISTLE
assumption & paradigm busting
scenarios
visions
plans
needed: scenarios >>
systems science, ads & religions; applied vs. creative
visions >> Polak revisited, religious & cultural, mixing of visions
in multipolar world, investigation of timing >>> vision completed,
new vision gap -- what are the dynamics?
plans >> need stronger links between fs and planning -- Mintzberg
offers clarion call, who's taken him up?
evaluations of effectiveness
>>> what worked, what didn't
reviews of past forecasts, common errors
Training People to Daydream Effectively
I am going to disarrange the order in which I address Dr. Dator's
questions. As I was engaged in applied futures research and consulting
before I taught, my consulting experience necessarily informed --
and formed -- my approach to teaching. And my graduate education
at the hands of a critical, neo-Marxist, semi-postmodern political
science faculty informed my approach to consulting. My consulting
style was also mediated by working with an anthropologist focussed
on practical approaches to long-term policy issues -- Dr. Michael
Hamnett -- and a planner with extensive experience in group process
dynamics and mediation -- Dr. Kem Lowry. The amalgamation of these
perspectives and experiences created a bottom-up, stakeholder involved,
experiential, process-focussed approach to helping people, communities,
organizations, businesses, and government agencies think creatively,
critically, and productively about the future.
What does that mean
in the light of day? For the last decade,
Teaching People to Daydream Effectively
"The foundation of every state is the education of its youth."
Diogenes
It's time to update
Diogenes. How does, "The foundation of every species is the education
of its youth" sound? Or even, "The foundation of every living planet
is the education of its youth"? Much better: the latter restatement
allows for the eventual recognition and inclusion by
Teaching
Teaching is a celebration. It celebrates human accomplishments,
human diversity, human playfulness, human experience, and the human
ability to excel in the face of challenge. It is not merely delivery,
it is exchange: the next question, the next paper, and the next
debate each enable the teacher to question her own established mental
models, to see the world anew, and to orchestrate a symphony of
minds in a creative process greater than anything she could achieve
alone. Teaching is its own reward.
Teaching at the turn
of the third millennium presents challenges unlike those faced by
teachers over the previous two millenia, of which the chief challenge
is compression. Students -- particularly the non-traditional
students who are the primary participants in Studies of the Future
at the University of Houston - Clear Lake -- have much less time
to allocate to studies, and have attention spans conditioned by
fast-paced electronic media. Thus the teaching aesthetic of clarity
-- clarity of organization, of presentation, and of priorities and
outcomes -- moves from nicety to necessity.
In designing courses,
I maximize clarity by the simple tactic of treating each course
as a consulting contract for fifteen weeks of thematically related
training workshops. This immediately establishes my students as
respected clients who themselves have clear ideas regarding the
optimum outcome of our interaction: they want to review and absorb
a particular knowledge base, and leave with their basic communication
skills enhanced, and with the acquisition of new, specialized skills.
My focus must then be organizing the knowledge base, presenting
it in a variety of modes to match the variety of student learning
styles, and coaching students in the acquisition and refinement
of associated skills. This focus on "coaching the acquisition of
skills" emphasizes grades only as benchmarks, thus creating a system
in which students may re-submit revised assignments as often as
they wish for review, commentary, and possible grade revision. In
theory, with sufficient student motivation and with adequate coaching
on my part, everyone in the class then has the opportunity to succeed
-- as benchmarked by a grade of "A."
Treating classes as
consulting contracts with valued clients puts respect for students
center stage. In addition, it emphasizes modular design: each class
should stand on its own merits in balancing knowledge acquisition
with skills practice, as well as offering students compressed delivery
of the topic (lectures, slides, films, video); interactive experience
of the topic (workshops and group exercises); dialogue and discussion
as an opportunity to clarify and personalize individual understanding
of the topic; and writing to codify and establish individual understanding
of the topic. The modular "training session" approach bounds each
substantive topic, allowing design of more accessible, more easily
"digestible" support materials. Modular design is also more easily
packaged into videotapes and Web pages -- and the future of education
lies in flexible access across space and time.
Treating classes as
consulting contracts also emphasizes the basic rules of group process
facilitation. First of these is, "remember your "O*A*R*R*s,"
that is, remember to clarify outcomes and expectations for
the overall course and for each specific class; clearly state, in
the beginning, the agenda for the overall course and for
each specific class; clarify the responsibilities, extent, and limits
of each participant's role; and establish the groundrules
early and via collaborative conversation (Grove Consultants, 1994).
This involves students in creating a "class culture" which they
understand and in which they feel safe exploring, questioning, and
working. Groundrules are the foundation of that culture, especially
an emphasis on respecting other people's ideas and comments, reserving
judgement, sharing the discussion time, actively soliciting ideas
from everyone involved, and, perhaps most importantly, maintaining
a lively sense of humor.
Finally, in an era of
shrinking fiscal resources and spiralling emphasis on "enrollment
management," treating classes as consulting contracts and students
as clients reminds me that I want to see my "clients" again: I want
to create a valuable "product," so that previous students bring
me new students by word of mouth, and I want previous students to
come back for new courses as well. Thus I must teach not only to
my own and my discipline's standards, I must teach to my students'
standards as well.
Futures Studies:
Daydreaming Effectively
Conclusion
To return briefly to
my opening theme of celebration, I am reminded of a comment by one
of the best corporate facilitators I know: "Every time I walk into
a meeting or workshop, I look at the people in the room, remind
myself of the depth of experience, the breadth of ideas, and the
heights of energy and enthusiasm they represent, and am exhilarated
by our joint potential to create." I feel especially fortunate to
teach Futures Studies; as a transdisciplinary field of study that
exists to consider planetary futures and human potential in the
long term, it particularly attracts students from a wide variety
of professional and life experiences, diverse cultural backgrounds
and worldviews, and unique flexibility of mind. I get much more
than I give, and my recognition of and gratitude for that, coupled
with my sense of wonder at our joint potential to create, my sense
of humor with regard to mistakes we will make in the process, and
my passion for my profession, are the foundation of my philosophy
of teaching.
Kuhn, revolutions, half-baked,
do we WANT to be fully baked?
Bibliography
Bell, Wendell. Foundations
of Futures Studies, Vols. I and II. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 1997. 365 and xxx pp.
Fowles, Jib. Handbook
of Futures Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.
The Grove Consultants International. An Orientation to Facilitation
-- Fundamental Principles. San Francisco: The Grove Consultants
International, 1994. 44 pp.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Second Edition, Enlarged).
Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Slaughter, Richard.
The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, Vols. 1-3. Hawthorn,
Victoria, Australia: DDM Media, 1996.
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