Pathways to the
Futures of Education
Anticipating change and taking informed actions
Hawai‘i P-20 Partnership for Education
Ko‘olau Ballrooms and Conference Center, 11/13/15
Richard Kaipo Lum, PhD
Vision Foresight Strategy LLC
“Reframing the future.”
www.visionforesightstrategy.com
richard@visionforesightstrategy.com
Understanding and anticipating change in society
FUTURES STUDIES
Understand and anticipate change in society…
and then help others reframe their expectations and
preferences for the future.
Two Complementary Aspects
Analytic:
understanding
and anticipating
change
Synthetic:
reframing
expectations and
preferences
Foresight:
Insight into how and why the future
could be different from the present.
Elements of Our Work
Preferred futures
Forecasting
Innovation & creativity
Theories of change and stability
Trends & emerging issues
Images of the future
Historical analysis
Theories of Change
How and why to societies,
industries, communities, and
organizations change?
•
“Long wave” theories of
economic change
•
Diffusion of technology
throughout society
•
Pathways of institutional
change
Scanning and Emerging
Issues Analysis
Searching for signals of potentially
important developments.
•
Anticipating future public
policy issues
•
Exploring future technologies
•
Tracking the rise of new
concepts and philosophies
Rapid maturation,
“mainstreaming”
Academic/scientific
exploration
Fringe thinking
The “new normal”
Who Uses Foresight?
It’s happened before, and it will happen again
SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL
CHANGE
The “Roadmap” in the 1950s
The “Roadmap” Today…?
Scanning for Signals of Emerging Change
TRENDS & EMERGING ISSUES
Trends vs. Emerging Issues
Trends
Emerging Issues
A Few Trends…
• Generational change
• Digitization (everything)
• Ubiquitous internet
access
• Shrinking middle class
• Rising income inequality
• Rising global economic
competition
• Decline of US student
performance
• Rising cost of college ed
• Decreasing funding for
public education
• Rising dissatisfaction
with ed outcomes
• Shift to career readiness
…And Some Emerging Issues
•
•
•
•
•
•
Adaptive learning
Alternative credentialing
Augmented/virtual reality
Artificial intelligence
Big data
Co-production/colearning
•
•
•
•
•
Internet of things
Learning analytics
Nanodegrees
Online education
Open educational
resources
• Tighter coupling of
employer interests and
educational design
Visions shape actions and perceptions
IMAGES OF THE FUTURE
Competing Images of the Future
Unwinding Higher Ed
The Reformed Institution
Bifurcation of Learning
Anticipating the reactions of stakeholders
RESPONSES TO CHANGE
Three Basic Responses to Change
Selecting the best approach to achieving goals
TYPES OF STRATEGIES
Strategy
A concept or theory for how, in a given context
and employing a given set of resources and
competencies, you expect to achieve your goals
Three Categories of Strategies
Conflict
Competition
Coincidence
Strategies of Conflict
Control the
dynamic
Negotiate
while
advancing
Divide and
conquer
Take small
bites
Hit them
where it
hurts
Deterrence
Strategies of Competition
Segmentation
(of the market)
Cost leadership
(within the
market)
Differentiation
(within the
market)
Strategies of Coincidence
Stepping
stone
Seeding
Network
Building
block
Ecosystem
Now let’s play with some of these ideas…
4 Steps to the Future:
A Quick and Clean Guide to
Foresight
By Richard Lum
Intended to guide business readers
through a complete and easy-to-use
process for foresight.
The book will:
• Provide a complete A-to-Z
foresight process in simple and
straight forward language
• Outline the exercises for running
your own workshops
• Provide the worksheets needed to
lead workshop participants to
producing results
• Give readers the confidence that
their organization is asking the
right questions about the future
December 2015
Mahalo.