Transcript Thinking and learning from the futures

SIEC conference 8.8.2014
Leena Jokinen
Univeristy of Turku
Finland Futures Research Centre
www.ffrc.utu.fi
[email protected]
 Futures thinking and learning from the future framework
 Futures orientation in career and life guidance processes
 Guidance tools and working methods
 Feedback and experiences on future work simulation and
similar tools
I have seen the future
The tasks and interests of futures
research (Mannermaa, 1986)
Interests of
knowledge
The Futures Field
Possibility
Probability
Desirability
Technical
The aim is to
search for trends
(objectivity);
alternatives are
irrelevant
Forecasting is the
main task of a
study
Inessential
Unscientific
Self-evident
Hermeneutic
Main purpose is communication between people in a
society, different tasks of futures research melt into a
common understanding of the social reality
Emancipatory
Increasing
alternatives,
making
‘impossible’ into
possible
‘Probable’ is
considered a
reference
alternative and
(usually) an object
of criticism
It is more
important to impact
than search for a
‘probable’
alternative
Scenario building & futures thinking – some
presumptions
• Possible, probable, preferred, transformative futures
• Focus on the personal futures approach
• Dealing with uncertainty, new models of reality, nonlinear changes
• Inflation of education, need for new skills and life-long
learning
• Diversity in anchors of life: work, wealth, personal
wellbeing, family, religion, ideologies…
- > rise of new communities, tribes, subcultures
approaches to career
choices and development
Theoretical
• Since the 1950s, there has been much written on how
personal and environmental factors shape people’s career
choices
• Main strands of research:
developmental approaches
personality-based theories
trait and factor approaches
typological theories
self-concept
social learning
self-efficacy theory
gender, racial and minorities
approaches to
career counseling
Cognitive
• Tools in general address to students´ need to transform their
personal likings into careers
• Databases and information sources about professions and jobs
are based on history leaving teens with more questions than
answers about how to best prepare for those opportunities
• A realistic view of a broad range of occupations and concrete
advices about possible ways to get started in any given profession
is very time and context sensitive
Holistic and future oriented sociodynamic
approach to counseling
• Thinking of one’s own life and transition to working life
• Supports the student in self-efficacy in the vocational growth in
different stages of studies
• Basic notion for guidance is to promote comprehensive and
personally meaningful representation of the work self
• Explorative rather than normative model of decision
making
• Emphasis on alternative futures, happenstance, uncertainty,
context
• Promoting critical reflection and self regulation
• Future consciousness , reflection of individual thinking and acting
Futures
consciousness
• The human capacity to think about the future, create ideas,
images, goals, plans and use them to direct one's life and actions
• “Future consciousness is a total integrative set of psychological
abilities, processes, and experiences humans use in
understanding and dealing with the future” (Lompardo, 2008)
• Awareness of the future grows in time and experience. It can be
promoted and capacities improved
• Some cultures are more future oriented while others focus on
pasta or present
• Attitudes, modes of thinking, and frames of minds vary from
negative, counter-productive, or apathetic to the optimistic,
positive, and active
Personal
futures
• The future is present in our thoughts, aspirations and choices,
when we plan our lives, when we solve problems related to it,
when we make decisions that affect our lives
• The comprehensive manifestation of the future, its presence in
us and to us, can be termed as futureness
• The future that is not purely objective, rational and logical
representation of possible future realities – a set of probable or
desirable alternative paths or scenarios.
• From the personal point of view, the future is giving meanings
and significance to things, not just the time from here on or a
general abstract possibility and the probable direction of events
• The concept of making or creating the future contains the idea
that the future is open and that we can influence it with our own
action
guidance
messages
Futures
Trust your options
Statements of
futures of work
• Human work will end, humans will free themselves
from work, enlightenment project will reach its
conclusion
-> the end of work?
• Illusion of education and employment meaning,
(welfare) state propaganda
- learn how to run faster or jump into another game
• Hybrid occupations, seasonal variations, precariat,
cognitariat
• Overproduction of goods, crisis of demand
-> obligatory consumption
Futures awareness in career management and
consciousness building
• Readiness and proactive attitude for alternative and
uncertain futures
• Simulation creates a future context in which
individuals can test their assumptions and values,
facilitating greater self-knowledge and self-directness
• Futures images engage intuition and emotions to
complex cognitive processes of career management as
well as decision making
• Probable images of future work life suggest that
organizations can no longer offer jobs for life and
individuals have to be proactive about their careers
Learning in simulations
• Learning to:
• Know (new information, cognitive processes), which is
intertwined with learning to:
• Do (decision-making, choices based on cognitive processes) that
results in learning to:
• Be (in a new, unprecedented situation)
• Simulation produces new situations of which the user hasn't any
previous experience
• The user combines existing information and seeks likenesses using
also others' experiences (friends, parents) and other information as
reference and acts (=chooses) based on the combined knowledge.
Get a Life! An online simulation tool
• Future work life simulation tool for HE students
• Based on scenarios for future work life in Finland
&Europe to the year 2030
• The outcomes:
• Long-term future scenarios on the development
and changes in working life
• An online simulation tool for students in the
career-planning process
• Pedagogical model and a virtual handbook for
career counselors
• Get a Life –futures simulation www.getalife.fi
• Major and minor choices
http://www.koukkuun.fi/2014/01/pienet-suuret-valinnat.html
• Andventure in mist
• http://www.koukkuun.fi/2014/01/seikkailu-sumussa.html
• Personal career paths compass (HUPS-prosessi)
http://www.koukkuun.fi/2014/01/hups-henkilokohtaisiaurapolkuja.html
• Future Camp –
www.facebook.com/futurecamp.fi
Feedback on the
tools
• The students seem to have focused on receiving
actual, concrete advice about the future of work life
• The concept of career planning does not resonate
too well with radical changes
• “I think that the simulation is mainly about the
effects of your personal choices on the future. At
one point I felt like that it also enables the testing of
changes in one’s moral values and principles on
career development.”
Contact
http://www.ffrc.utu.fi/
[email protected]
Picture Osmo Rauhala