Thinking and designing futures

How would we like to live in the future? Against the backdrop of dwindling hopes for the future and in the face of climate crises, conflicts, wars, and a lot of dissension, this question is crucial at various levels of our societies. This question affects young people in schools and other educational institutions in particular. However, in traditional educational approaches the power to actively shape the future tends to rest with the educational institutions (e.g., through curricula) or teachers (through pedagogical and didactic implementation). True future-readiness, however, can only develop if it is the young people themselves who are viewed as the central actors and designers of future worlds—as cultural agents who are able to actively shape and develop their lifeworlds and environments, and who possess the respective cognitive-imaginative (thinking futures) as well as linguistic-discursive and semiotic (designing futures) abilities to do so.

Precise Imagination: Envisioning Futures

The starting point for such a “goal-oriented thinking for the future” (Römhild 2024: 56) must be a critical diagnosis, analysis and assessment of societal, cultural, and media changes of the present, from which futures must be actively imagined in the sense of a “precise imagination” (‘exakte Phantasie’; Goethe). As complex as the task of diagnosing the forms of societal changes may be (see The New London Group 2000: 10–19), only these can serve as the starting point for developing the young generation’s readiness for the future by “acknowledging the status quo, critiquing it, and accompanying this with clear calls to action for transforming the status quo” (Römhild 2024: 56).

Developing a Futures Discourse Competence

Young people must therefore be equipped with the skills that enable them “to fully participate in all aspects of civic, cultural, social, intellectual, and economic life” (Payton et al. 2010: 1) — not only in the here and now, but also in future worlds and societies. This interventionist approach, grounded in the concept of young people’s cultural agency (in the present and the future, as well as intergenerationally and collectively), aims to empower them to shape future worlds (in the plural) in a self-determined and active manner. This is meant to serve as an alternative to the current dominant focus on crisis scenarios and dystopias and, by emphasizing transformation, to foster young people’s hopes for the future. Futures discourse competence (futures literacy) and cultural agency are thus also cornerstones of a pedagogical orientation toward the future: futures must be conceived in transformative terms and negotiated through democratic discourse, with an eye toward their global dimension—also, and in particular, in the English language: Young people in the English language classroom are thus not merely learners, but also cultural actors, “active designers—makers—of social futures” (Cope & Kalantzis 2000: 7)

Designing futures

When young people are ‘active designers—makers—of social futures’, the concept of design takes centre stage in competency-based learning—in language education as well as in all other subjects. This concept expresses the idea that designing futures is always tied to shapes and forms that find expression in material, semiotic and interactional-discursive artifacts, ranging from simple dialogic interactions to comics, floor plans, and city maps. The concept of design thus implies that in all processes of designing the future, we constantly draw on available forms and sign languages to develop the future:

[W]e are both inheritors of patterns and conventions of meaning while at the same time active designers of meaning. And, as designers of meaning, we are designers of social futures—workplace futures, public futures, and community futures.

(Cope & Kalantzis 2000: 7)

The multitude and diversity of the domains in which futures are shaped implies that the designs valid and relevant in these domains are, at the same time, ‘languages’ to be learned, which find their expression in corresponding end products. This explains why, in addition to verbal languages, a multitude of other semiotic modes of meaning-making and communication must be learned (multiliteracies). The use and creation of videos or podcasts has now become standard in everyday communication in digital environments, and on social media in particular.

Design Thinking

This focus on the diversity of semiotic designs is also linked to design thinking, as first developed in the engineering sciences (e.g., Plattner et al. 2019). It posits that, when we engage in problem-solving, we must always simultaneously consider the semiotic or material form of a product or artifact that serves to solve the problem. Problem-solving can only be effective if it takes on a concrete form. In educational theory, this concept is a component of the task approach, in which the task itself is always linked to the creation of a target product. This type of goal orientation also implies that design must always be conceived in transformative terms. In the multiliteracies approach, such design thinking is therefore associated with an iterative process of ‘available designs’, ‘designing’, and ‘the redesigned’ (The New London Group 2000: 19–30), in which all modes of making meaning always constitute an intervention in the cultural repertoire of available designs across various semiotic modes and exert a transformative effect. Design thinking therefore aims at “social participation by design and thus inherently includes agency as a central component.” (Römhild 2023: 290).

A symposium: Thinking and Designing Futures

On October 1 and 2, 2026, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in Cologne will host a symposium titled Thinking and Designing Futures, where scholars from the fields of Applied Linguistics, English Language Education, Cultural Semiotics, Multilingualism and Public Environmental Humanities as well as experts from schools and teacher education programmes, will address issues related to education for the future, social transformation, and the agency of young people in these processes. The goal is to bring experiences, concepts, and research findings into an interdisciplinary dialogue in order to jointly develop perspectives for research, teacher education, and the language classroom ( see full programme). The event is aimed at researchers, teachers, teacher educators, and other experts at the intersections of language education, with whom current theoretical, empirical, and didactic perspectives on Futures Education will be discussed ( please register here).

References: Cope, Bill & Kalantzis, Mary (2000). Introduction. Multiliteracies: the beginnings of an idea. In: Cope & Kalantzis (eds.). 3-8. – Cope, Bill & Kalantzis, Mary (eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies. Literacy learning and the design of social futures. London & New York: Routledge. – Payton, Sarah, Harlington, Marisa, Denney, Claire, Hopkins, Graham, Thomson, Duncan (2010). Futures Thinking. Teachers Pack. https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/futures-thinking-teachers-pack/ – Plattner, Hasso, Meinel, Christoph & Leifer, Larry (eds.) (2019). Design Thinking Research. Making Design Thinking Foundational. Cham et al.: Springer. – Römhild, Ricardo (2023). Global Citizenship, Ecomedia and English Language Education. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. – Römhild, Ricardo (2024). Global Citizenship Education im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Tübingen: Narr. – The New London Group (2000). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies. Designing social futures. In: Cope & Kalantzis (eds.). 9-37.