Learning Three Horizons of Education Futures: brief reflections on a workshop for ReimaginED23

In my work with the Woodleigh Institute, I help lead the design and delivery of learning workshops focused on sustainable and regenerative futures.

As part of this, I had the privilege of facilitating workshops for educators at ReimaginED23 (in Fremantle and Melbourne). We focused on building capability to use the Three Horizons framework, a futures thinking tool.

Why futures thinking?

Futures thinking and foresight is something we do all the time — we speculate about which football team will win; we anticipate what component you will need to build a new shed; we envision what next year will look like for our family.

Futures thinking is a practice that involves structured methods to think and act today with more agency in relation to possible, plausible, probably and preferred futures.

In the context of education, we are most interested in imagining preferred futures; not because we want to generate naive hope, but because people choose their actions based on their expectation of the future. Actively envisioning and acting up preferred futures will increase the likelihood of those futures to eventuate.

There are many plausible futures. And we do have agency to shape our future if the pre-conditions are suitable.

The workshop

Why did we teach the three horizons framework for education?

We live in a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and adaptation). Despite the challenging times, there are always educators and people who will not give up on cultivating in our young people strength of heart, determination of will and hope for our future.

This is why there is a growing need for futures thinking capabilities among teachers and learners — and this is why we recently delivered workshops on how to use the Three Horizons Framework; developed by Bill Reed of the International Futures Forum (IFF). (Our friends at IFF have a whole practice dedicated to transformative innovation in education, which includes Three Horizons).

The purpose of the workshop was to enable reflectivity and agency in transforming futures. We aim to enable teach to understand how they could use this framework in their classrooms and their role and capacity to influence preferred futures.

The Three Horizons Framework is a practical tool for understanding the inter-relationship between three systems or horizons that are concurrently operating in the present, and that are all influencing our future. The 1st horizon is the dominant system or the status quo. The second horizon is the zone of innovation and turbulence (disruption). And the third horizon is the zone of transformative innovation — operating on a fundamentally different premise.

We collaborated with Nina Sharpe and Lisa Remato from Uncommon Folk, who delivered a practical case study on how this framework is helping their regenerative farm identify, cultivate and steward pockets of the future in the present. Natalie McLennan, the Deputy Principal at Woodleigh, introduced the Futures Studio, a new learning space designed by Frank Burridge according to regenerative principles, to show this field grounded in a practical context.

Insight of the workshop

• The first horizon: we identified that some signs of decay in the current dominant education system include teaching knowledge siloes rather than skills, mental health problems among youth, climate anxiety and behavioural challenges, teacher burnout, students losing hope, and academics over social and emotional skills.
• Third horizon: the future we want: we envisioned a future education built on new metrics, including wellbeing and social and emotional learning, a recognition of life long learning and enabling pedagogies and institutional infrastructures.
• Second horizon: the zone of disruption and innovation to the future we want: funding shortfalls, generative AI and the declining relevance of graduate scores, are driving disruption towards new education models. And yet, new metrics for success, social and emotional learning, mindfulness in schools and compassionate systems practice are demonstrations of positive change happening today.
• Teachers and learners can use this tool: teachers expressed how practical the tool is and how it could be used with leaners to that there are pockets of the future in the present, and how their actions can help shape a preferred future.

The wider conference: towards a regenerative future

The theme of the education conference in Melbourne was regeneration — an emerging field that aims towards net positive goals across (i.e, nature positive, socially positive, climate positive). In the words of Christian Wahl: regenerative culture means being part of the regenerative impulse of life to support life.

An online conference report can be accessed here.

The tapestry of ideas and practices shared at the Melbourne and Fremantle conference created an interesting landscape of emerging education futures. A few illustrative highlights:

• Dr Kevin House: the leader of the Green School in Bali, spoke about moving from a pathogenic to a salutogenic approach to education, based on biophilic research by Jovosky.
• Louka Parry provided a horizon scan on regenerate education, with insights from social and emotional learning, such as from Polyvagal Theory: we should support the polyvagal nerve to activate positive social engagement and reduce the sympathetic nervous system.
• Mette Boelle spoke about the need to cultivate compassionate systems in schools, and this starts with practice of emotional liberation; to become aware of emotional states and self-regulate. Ecosystems of education are entangled with intergenerational systems, emotion, and layers of meaning: a complex system for anyone to navigate. Despite this compelxity, a good place to start system change is through internal change of the individual (parents and leaders having disproportionate responsibility).
• Professor Sandra Milligan: the primacy of learning should aim towards practice as the goal. Miller’s pyramid: the top learning outcome is performance in practice.
• Tony Wagner: creating innovation ready students means not focusing on what we know but what we can do with knowledge. There is a growing need to solve problems creatively (ie, design education) (affirming a central pillar of my Masters of Design Futures thesis). Tony’s research found that people became creative problems solvers in spite of education, not because of it. Curiosity is the wellspring of motivation, which grows sustained innovation.
• Jan Owen: never doubt that someone can always reset their life; we are a creative force in our own life.

Thank you teachers, educators, leaders working towards wellbeing and a thriving future.