Creating scenarios

• Further resources

How the scenarios were created for Vision Mapper

Key challenges:

• How can we put the educational vision into the design of learning spaces, resources and environments?
• What sort of long-term partnerships exist with other schools and agencies, including voluntary and community organisations?
• What sort of education do we want in the future?

Overview:

Creating scenarios is excellent for building consensus and a shared vision of the future of education.

It gives policy makers an opportunity to think about the role of the state, and those in education the chance to envisage future ways of learning; and more importantly how their own actions now would influence possible future worlds.

Approach:

Creating scenarios requires a great deal of work; in assembling the briefing material, organising the workshop, and pulling together the final stories. In this case the scenarios were based on commissioned research (scenario evidence).

Once all the research was received it was used as the basis for identifying key trends - in this case the concerted shift towards individual or communal values as being the factors that would vary in each of the worlds. Two scenarios were set in each world: in one the education system would achieve the educational goals of that world, in the other it would not.

Each commissioned piece had to mention education, although the actual topic is much wider because each possible future would be shaped by wider society: politics, tradition, global expectations, society.

Input from a wide variety of skill sets

The scenarios were developed over the course of a three-day workshop with thirty academics of various disciplines: philosophy, neuroscience, geography, sociology, and representatives from organisations that contribute to the shape of education.

They were divided into three groups and asked to develop a world. The diversity of participants meant that they had to use agreed terms for discussing the ideas. And the groups were balanced according to each member's professional and personal experiences.

The role of facilitators (one per group) with knowledge of the intended outcome and parameters was key. They ensured the groups and addressed all the areas required. Plus, there was an external facilitator who was able to test the robustness of the scenarios.

The resulting three worlds and six scenarios highlight plausible futures around an axis; with the varying importance of individual and communal values. However, the workshop highlighted the need for:

• Facilitators
• Identification of key variables
• Structuring the groups and activities

It is important to share the scenarios before the end of the workshop. Each one should be perceived as equally likely and plausible so that all can be considered when the scenario users come to do back casting or check future plans.

Key learning and recommendations:

• It is important to remember the point of scenarios. They do not have to be long and detailed, but they need to be appropriate for the purpose and be sufficiently different from the other scenarios.
• A starting point for scenario creation is the exercise Create your own scenarios.
• You could always spend more time at every stage: the planning, the creation of scenarios, and the writing up.
• Scenarios are useful but because of the effort you need to make sure you will use them.

Scenario building Dan and Rich expert group notes