Technology foresight in educational policy and planning

One of the problems that plagues educational and other social policy regarding technology, is that it tends to chase technology in a hopeless game of cat and mouse. Policy is formulated based on currently existing technology (or what is in the sphere of policymaker’s knowledge at that time) and is ill equipped to deal with new technology developments. As a persistent problem in developed areas of the world, this tendency is transmitted to other parts of the world in the form of programs and initiatives meant to stimulate ICT development. In developed parts of the world, there is considerable evidence that policies lead to a knee-jerk reaction on the part of decision makers to limit the use of technology that is not explicitly covered by existing policy. We see this for ex. in the outright banning of cellphones, social networking applications and other technologies in schools even though they have been shown to be effective learning technologies when used right. The rapid rate of technological development and change makes this unviable. What is needed in educational policy-making is technology foresight and longer term planning, i.e. policies that take into account expert views on anticipated or preferred technological developments and are able to accommodate rapidly developing technologies.
The term “technology foresight” is a fairly recent concept that has emerged from the future studies and technology forecasting fields. Irvine and Martin (1984) first used the term to describe a long-term, strategic activity specifically intended to inform policy-making. Since then, and especially throughout the 1990s, there has been significant interest in technology foresight and a number of notable national-level foresight programs, although definitions of the term and the precise nature of the activities tend to vary somewhat. Some use “technology foresight” to describe the interplay between a range of future-oriented activities, including, technology assessment, technology forecasting, and future studies, with lesser emphasis on the actual policy-making process. Many of the case studies presented in the informative Handbook of Technology Foresight (2008) demonstrate this, where the emphasis seems to be more on the foresight generating activity than policy-making processes. Slaughter (1995), however, makes a point of specifically relating technology foresight to decision making, although he is more concerned with technology foresight in organizations than public policy.
There’s a distinct difference between the two uses of the term “technology foresight” described above. First, “technology foresight” is used to describe the product of a range of forecasting methods. Second, “technology foresight” is used to describe a property of the decisions and policies formulated on the basis of the forecasting activities. I have a problem with the first use of the term and it has to do specifically with the word “foresight”. In our everyday language, foresight is not an artifact that can be generated as the first use of the term would seem to suggest. We generally encounter the term “foresight” as a descriptive property of an action, i.e. someone did something with foresight to mean that someone’s actions took future implications and expectations into account. Pertaining to the first instance, and has been pointed out by Miles, Harper, Georghiou, et al (2008, p. 8), “technology foresight” tends to be used as a catchall term for a wide range of future forecasting and assessment activities, and as such, is not especially helpful in clarifying the way that these activities affect policy-making. Hence, I’m more inclined to accept Slaughter’s (1995) formulation of the term “technology foresight” as focused primarily on the use of rigorously and objectively generated future-orientations in decision-making or policy-making activities.
Despite a growing body of literature on technology foresight, and perhaps partly due to the conceptual fuzziness that I’ve described, little attention has been paid to the actual policy-making process, especially how anticipated and preferred futures, generated by technology foresight programs, inform policy-making activities. One very interesting question is how anticipated and preferred futures become significant policy issues? The literature on policy-making fairly consistently emphasizes that for policy action to occur there needs to be a well formulated, broadly accepted, and solvable policy problem. It’s interesting, then, to consider how an anticipated or preferred future, n.b. something not yet in existence, is translated into a critical social policy problem worthy of policy action, ex. new educational policy.
The issue of how anticipated and preferred futures affect policy-making is the topic of my dissertation research, so expect to read a lot about it here on my blog in the coming months. There are a number of countries that have implemented what I would consider foresightful educational policies at the national level with some success, such as for ex., Finland and Singapore. Nevertheless, the methods that have been used to inform the policy-making process and the resulting policies differ in many ways. My plan is to focus on a single country, Finland, instead of doing a multi-country comparison, since I think that this will allow me to get at the issue in more depth.
Here are some links to resources related to technology foresight for those who are interested:
Foresight: The journal of future studies, strategic thinking and policy
Richard Slaughter’s Foresight International
European Foresight web site
European Foresight Monitoring Network (hasn’t been updated for awhile but some good resources on the site)
References:
Georghiou, L., Harper, J. C., Keenan, M., Miles, I. & Popper, R. (2008). The handbook of technology foresight: Concepts and practice. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Irvine, J. & Martin, B. (1984). Foresight in science. London: Frances Pinter.
Miles, I., Harper, J. C., Georghiou, L., Keenan, M. & Popper, R. (2008). The many faces of foresight. In L. Georghiou, J. C. Harper, M. Keenan, I. Miles & R. Popper (Eds.), The handbook of technology foresight: Concepts and practice. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Slaughter, R. A. (1995). The foresight principle: Cultural recovery in the 21st century. London: Adamantine Press.