Foresight and educational planning: Engaging stakeholders to construct preferred futures.

Image credit: Jason Tester/IFTF

Foresight (or “technology foresight”) is a future-oriented approach to policy planning. Foresight programs involve the use of multiple futuring methods, such as scenario construction, Delphi surveys, trends analysis, etc., to engage diverse groups of stakeholders in activities that promote the construction of shared visions of the future, and figuring out how to achieve preferred futures. In the past decade foresight programs have been used to address a range of social policy issues, including education. The use of foresight for educational policy planning has, however, been limited. Considering how the increasingly rapid rate of technological development affects educational organizations through students, teachers, expectations of learning outcomes, etc., there is ample reason to reconsider how foresight can be used for educational policy planning.

In this article I describe how foresight has developed as a policy planning tool and describe some examples of how it has been used for educational policy planning. Finally, I’ll talk about some of the pros and cons of using foresight for educational policy, in particular whether education should be treated as a topic in its own right or as a dimension of broader social concerns.

An ecology of foresight
Foresight is an increasingly common method for engaging a broad range of stakeholders in structured dialogue about long-term implications of social and technological change. In its relatively brief history as a formalized policy planning tool, foresight has gone through a remarkably rapid evolution as the method has been adapted to a diverse range of policy domains. But such success (if that is a measure of success) is not without its difficulties. Today the concept of “foresight” does not refer to a single defined process but rather a range of approaches that differ in terms of the nature, scope and domain of the issues to be addressed. This poses some challenges for foresight practitioners. The decision to implement a foresight program is one that has to be based on careful consideration of what is to be achieved and how, so that the appropriate approach can be selected.

Foresight emerged as a response to the difficulties of planning research and development (R&D) and science and technology (S&T) policy at a time when the rate of technological development was steadily increasing. A UK study commissioned in the early 1980s revealed that R&D and S&T policy in the UK was significantly influenced by a relatively small, insular group of high-level academics whose decisions tended to be short-sighted, conservative and self-serving (Irvine & Martin, 1984). In contrast to the UK, other countries, Japan in particular, had developed policy planning processes that involved not only academics, as potential developers of new technologies, but also business and industry leaders who would be likely to capitalize on new technologies. These processes, involving both developers and producers, were found to be more supportive of emerging technological developments with significant potential for long-term social and economic benefits. Additionally, it was found that countries using inclusive forward-looking policy planning methods had established themselves as early leaders in important emerging technologies, such as information technology, material sciences, and robotics. Thus, the authors of the UK study advocated for large-scale planning activities that would include a broad range of relevant actors to determine what technologies and areas of research hold the greatest potential for long-term benefits. They called these planning activities “technology foresight programs”.

The whole idea of structured foresight programs for policy planning couldn’t have come at a better time. There was growing concern about the rapidly increasing rate of technological development, not only in R&D and S&T circles, but also in relation to other policy domains, including economic policy, social policy, education, and urban planning, to name but a few. Decision makers saw great promise in the foresight approach and, perhaps most importantly, starting in the early to mid 1990s, several international, transnational, and supranational organizations and institutions promoted the use of foresight for a range of policy planning purposes (European Commission, 2009; OECD, n.d; UNIDO, n.d.). By the early 2000s the foresight approach had been modified to address several of the previously mentioned policy domains and would continue to be expanded upon to fit even more contexts in the following years.

The generational model of the evolution of foresight
Irvine and Martin are most often credited with first defining foresight, particularly as “technology foresight”, even though Lederman is known to have used the term “foresight” in a similar context in a well-known paper published at least a year earlier. In their seminal publication, Irvine and Martin define “technology foresight” as (cited in Miles et al., 2008, p, 10):

… the process which seeks to look into the longer term future of science, technology and economy and society with the aim of identifying the areas of strategic research and the emerging generic technologies likely to yield the greatest economic and social benefit.

Although it is clear that Irvine and Martin were specifically concerned with technological development and R&D, they obviously recognized that there were broader implications, indicated by their reference to economy and society. Nevertheless, technology foresight, as they construed it, was primarily to be oriented toward informing R&D and S&T policy planning. The social and economic components are there but the focus on R&D and S&T suggest a primary role in the foresight process for developers and producers of technology, and a lesser role, if any, for the end-users of those technologies. This would change in the following years. In fact, it could be said that the most significant pattern of change in the evolution of the concept of foresight, and what sets it apart from other policy planning methods, is in the composition of the stakeholder groups that are included in the foresight process. These changes in the compostion of the stakeholder groups included in the process would go hand in hand with the evolving changes in the nature and expected outcomes of foresight programs.

Georghiou (2001) first presented a generational development model of foresight consisting of three generations of foresight programs distinguished by differences in terms of the scope and domain of the programs, and their inputs and outputs. Miles, et al. (2008) later expanded on Georghiou’s model to include two additional generations. The characteristics distinguishing these five generations are listed in the table below. It’s worth emphasizing (I briefly mentioned this before) that the generational model is not meant to illustrate a transitional development, i.e. it’s not the case that foresight was one thing and then became another. All of the approaches described by the generational model coexist today and are used to address different types of issues. It’s up to the foresight practitioner to select the appropriate approach given the nature of the issues to be addressed.

Table 1. describes the primary distinguishing characteristics of the five generations of foresight.

The generational model of the evolution of foresight is certainly interesting in terms of illustrating how a novel approach to policy planning has quickly been adapted to changing circumstances. But, equally interesting is that the model illustrates how future-oriented thinking and the perceived need for long-term planning have spread in parallel with increasingly rapid technological development. First generation foresight is best described by Irvine and Martin’s early definition of the concept cited above. There is a clear emphasis on technology itself and, thus, participation in foresight is essentially limited to those parties who are immediately involved in its development. Second generation foresight includes market considerations, addressing not only questions concerning what technologies should be pursued but also what technologies are likely to result in marketable products. In these instances it is not enough to have only the developers of technology involved in the foresight process. The producers of innovative products based on technological development are brought into the foresight process as well. Third generation foresight takes the market role a step further and recognizes the role of the consumer in shaping the future and acknowledges the impact that novel technologies have on society as a whole. Fourth generation foresight turns foresight into a tool for not only identifying technologies that are likely to have an impact in the future but also for strategically planning the future. Among the key outcomes of fourth generation foresight are shared visions of preferred futures and pathways for organizational change intended to institutionalize those visions. As a more holistic approach than previous generations, the fourth generation also includes a broader range of variables for consideration, including technology and changes already occuring, or likely to occur, as a result of technological development, ex. migration, environmental concerns, sustainable development, and health issues. Finally, the fifth generation distinguishes itself from the previous generations in several ways. This is essentially the large-scale, public foresight process reformulated to function at an organizational level. This has come to be referred to as “strategic foresight” and has been expanded on in literature relating to organizational management and innovation strategy. As such, it is somewhat beyond the scope of what I’m discussing here and I won’t dwell on it any further.

Foresight for educational planning
Education has figured into foresight from its early roots. Initially only higher education was involved because of the obvious connections to public R&D and S&T policy. As the target of foresight has expanded to include a broader range of social policy concerns, all levels and types of education have at some time been addressed, including formal, non-formal, and informal. And what’s more, because education is our primary tool for structuring social futures, it’s one area that is hard to justify omitting from any large-scale foresight activity. In the last report from the European Commission’s Annual Foresight Mapping exercise that I know of (the 2009 report), of the 871 foresight programs conducted worldwide that had then been documented in detail, 16% specifically addressed issues relating to education. Regrettably, the report does not indicate what levels or types of education were covered. It’s reasonable to assume, for reasons already mentioned, that many of these programs primarily focused on higher education.

It can be difficult to find literature that specifically addresses the use of foresight for educational policy for reasons that I’ll describe in a moment. There are, however, a few examples of foresight programs that have been implemented to directly address educational issues that have been described in scholarly literature.

• Components of the FinnSight 2015 program, implemented in Finland in 2006, specifically relate to education. Also, Salo, Brummer, & Könnölä (2009) refer to earlier programs that have influenced Finnish educational policy as “foresight programs”, although they were not necessarily described as such at the time of their implementation. The programs they refer to do display the characteristics of foresight programs. The fact that they were not formally described as foresight programs is probably more due to program coordinators’ lack of familiarity with the terminology than that they were not considered to be foresight programs.
• Singapore’s “Masterplans for information technology in education” are sometimes mentioned as examples of foresight in education. There certainly are some similarities between the Masterplan programs and foresight programs. However, it’s questionable whether they meet the criteria of foresight program since the 5 year time span of each programs falls considerably short of what would be considered a “long-term” planning initiative.
• A foresight program on information technology and education was implemented in Thailand in 2001 (Johnston & Sripaipan, 2008). This program really exemplifies the inclusive nature of foresight programs. Participants included education and technology specialists, NGO representatives, students, and local “wise men”. It is this attempt to involve key stakeholders who affect and are affected by change that sets foresight programs apart from many other types of policy planning tools.
• Malta’s eFORESEE program also focused specifically on the impact of developing information technologies on education. Harper and Georghiou (2005) found that the program produced a number of innovative measures for policy consideration.
• Other national foresight programs that address educational policy that I’ve encountered in scholarly literature include programs in the UK, New Zealand, Germany and various others.

Almost all of these foresight programs are of the third or fourth generational forms. They are intended to look beyond technology and consider the impact of technological development on various social institutions. We see evidence of this both in the composition of the stakeholder groups involved (most of these programs involve groups ranging from technology experts to the general public) and in the nature of the issues addressed (ex. education other than higher education, which is arguably only indirectly affected by technological development). These forms of foresight make perfect sense when the aim is to address educational issues. Education is a complicated beast. It permeates society in ways that other policy domains do not. The range of stakeholders groups that involve themselves in discourse on educational policy is very diverse and includes business leaders, community representatives, politicians, educators, parents, students, and the list could go on. Because our ideas about education are so integrated with our sense of culture and community, significant change in education requires nothing short of cultural change. Thus, the third and fourth generational forms of foresight, with their broad stakeholder involvement and their holistic approach to policy issues, are ideally suited to addressing educational issues. But, the question remains, are they being used to adequately deal with the educational issues of tomorrow?

The untapped potential of foresight for educational planning
A likely reason that we find little literature on the impact of foresight programs on educational policy is that education is not often treated as an exclusive topic, but rather as one of many dimensions relating to broader social issues (“ideas in good currency” as Schön (1971) would say – or the more fachionable issues). For example, there have been plenty of foresight programs that focus on skills needs for future workforces. Education figures into those considerations but only insofar as education is regarded as a means to teach certain types of skills. Consequently, many of the education related outcomes that we see coming from foresight programs are primarily curricular; addressing questions of the type, “What will we need to teach our learners in, or for, the future?” Fewer address questions of the type, “What will, or should, learning environments look like in the future?” or “What will our learners be like in the future?” “How will technologies like Google’s Project Glass change learners and learning environments?” Given the increasing rate of technological development, if we ever hope to bring education up to par with, or preferably ahead of, technological development, we have to be asking these types of questions. Sadly, I find little evidence that policy makers, whether in the context of foresight programs or otherwise, are seriously considering these types of issues.

Foresight is obviously a helpful tool for educational policy planning in times of rapid change. It allows us to engage a broad range of stakeholders in meaningful discussions about, not only what we think education might become, but also what we want education to become. The various approaches to foresight that currently exist provide a powerful toolbox for foresight practitioners to select from to find the ideal methods to suit the issues that are to be addressed and the anticipated outcomes. However, there seems to be a tendency to limit ourselves in terms of what it is that we hope to get out of foresight programs for education. One way to address this is by carefully considering what types of questions we start off with. Another is to have more foresight programs with a primary focus on education. It’s ironic that in many of the foresight programs that I have studied there is an underlying sense that things like the labor market and industry progress through some mystical evolutionary forces beyond our control, but that education is something that we can easily change to fit new contexts. Nevermind that everything we know about educational change tells us that it is remarkably difficult to achieve! The result then is that we try to change what little that we can and, thus, end up with minimal change where something more comprehensive is needed.

My point, then, is this; when education is made to play second fiddle to other social policy domains the ensuing discourse is confined and our ability to explore all sorts of important and significant issues is restricted. What I would like to see are foresight programs that turn this around; let’s, for example, use these tools that we’ve developed to seriously consider what tomorrow’s learners are going to be like and, on that basis, think about what kind of society they are likely to create. Then we can start talking about what education should look like in the future.

References
European Commission (2009). European foresight. Retrieved March 5, 2011, from http://foresight.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.html

European Commission (2009). Mapping Foresight: Revealing how Europe and other world regions navigate into the future. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Georghiou, L. (2001). Third generation foresight: Integrating the socio-economic dimension. Paper presented at the International conference on technology foresight. Retrieved March 5, 2011 from http://www.nistep.go.jp/achiev/ftx/eng/mat077e/html/mat077oe.html

Harper, J. C., & Georghiou, L. (2005). The targeted and unforeseen impacts of foresight on innovation policy: The eFORESEE Malta case study. International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy, 2(1), 84-103.

Irvine, J., & Martin, B. R. (1984). Foresight in science: Picking the winners. London: Francis Pinter.

Johnston, R., & Sripaipan, C. (2008). Foresight in industrialising Asia. In L. Georghiou, J. C. Harper, M. Keenan, I. Miles & R. Popper (Eds.), The handbook of technology foresigh: Concepts and practice (pp. 237-255). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

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 (pp. 3-23). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.

Salo, A., Brummer, V., & Könnölä, T. (2009). Axes of balance in foresight: Reflections from FinnSight 2015. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 21(8), 987-1001.

OECD (n.d). OECD technology foresight forum 2010. Retrieved March 5, 2011, from http://www.oecd.org/site/0,3407,en_21571361_45683854_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) (n.d.). Technology foresight. Retrieved March 5, 2011, from http://www.unido.org/index.php?id=o5216

Schön, D. A. (1971). Beyond the stable state. New York: Random House.