From the June 2005 Alternative Futures Newsletter

Shared Learning

IAF Author Advocates Anticipatory Learning for Schools

Schools that bring a future focus to education can prepare students to anticipate change and direct their learning, decision making and actions toward a sustainable future. In Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures, Institute for Alternative Futures Futurist Marsha Rhea sets out a framework for anticipatory learning.

“The learning curve for humanity is always an upward spiral,” Rhea writes. “Anticipatory learning provides a solid footing for the climb to a preferred future.” Anticipatory learning develops the knowledge and skills to understand future possibilities and the ability to collaborate for a preferred future. Rhea says anticipatory learning can take place in any course of study where teachers and students are open to focusing on the future, challenging assumptions and thinking creatively about options.

Rhea organizes the wisdom, methodologies and practices that many futurists and innovative educators use into a four-part framework for education. The four dimensions of anticipatory learning are foresight, identity, direction setting and innovation.

Foresight helps learners make sense of a changing world by analyzing what we need to know about alternative futures. Rhea describes how teachers and students can use such learning methodologies as orienting learning in time, exploring images of the future, doing environmental scanning, forecasting, brainstorming wild cards and creating scenarios to gain foresight.

Identity takes into account what we believe about the world and ourselves. Rhea recommends learning about identity through metaphors, values, alternative cultures, multiple intelligences, learning style and personality preferences, and emotional intelligence. “We cannot understand future possibilities or collaborate in creating preferred futures until we grasp how much of what we see today and expect tomorrow comes from inside us,” Rhea writes.

Direction setting forges the learning of foresight and identity into decisions about what we want to create in the future and how we will do it. The learning methodologies for direction-setting include appreciating prior learning, defining strategic issues, visioning, audacious goals, and action planning. “When direction setting becomes as much about learning as it is about decision making, visions come to life,” Rhea writes.

Innovation explores the solutions we can create together. The learning methodologies of innovation are unlearning, brainstorming, multidisciplinary learning, simulation, experiencing the context and evaluation.

Reflecting on Rhea’s approach to anticipatory learning in the foreword, Dee Dickinson, Chief Learning Officer for New Horizons for Learning said, “Positive changes are being made in thousands of classrooms, but as yet in no whole educational systems. Perhaps some of the farsighted ideas in this book may provide the impetus for whole system change.”

Anticipate the World You Want: Learning for Alternative Futures is available through the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield Education or through the booksellers amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.