
Imagination and Futures Thinking for K12
Future focused research question
How can we best prepare youth to think critically about and take agency for their futures?Description
Why does every school teach history but hardly any have courses on the future? This project seeks to establish a working group around futures thinking and foresight in K-12 education with an aim of building community and developing an interdisciplinary program of research.
Year 1 achievements:
- NSF AISL proposal involving 5 LFC faculty submitted January 2023
- AERA Workshop/conference proposal involving 5 LFC faculty submitted March 2023
- Initiating a collaborative relationship with the Guadalupe community to co-create an intergenerational community futures project
- Futures games infrastructure project initiated – planning for pilot implementation summer 2023 with graduate student support
Readings discussed in LFC ‘Journal Club’
Gidley, J. M. (2017). The future: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. (Amazon)
Pendleton-Jullian, A., & Brown, J. S. (2016). Pragmatic imagination. (Amazon)
Harjo, L. (2019). Spiral to the stars: Mvskoke tools of futurity. University of Arizona Press. (Link)
Members
Ruth Wylie
Assistant Director, Center for Science and the Imagination and Associate Research Professor, MLFTC
Danah Henriksen
Associate Professor, Education Leadership, MLFTC
Michelle Jordan
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences, MLFTC
Steve Zuiker
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences, MLFTC
Ed Finn
Director, Center for Science and the Imagination
Bob Beard
Program Manager, Center for Science and the Imagination
Shawn Jordan
Associate Professor, Polytechnic School of Engineering and MLFTC affiliate faculty
Maria Teresa Tatto
Professor, MLFTC
O. Matthew Odebiyi
Assistant Professor, MLFTC
Laura Cechanowicz
Assistant Professor, School of Arts Media and Engineering
Bregje van Geffen
PhD student, MLFTC
Kevin Brown
PhD student, MLFTC
Elizabeth Quigley
Student, School of Sustainability
Brian Neal
Student, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence