Scaffolding futures making

What is it about?

More inclusive futures making requires a deeper consideration of how people come to imagine, explore, and shape the future together. With this in mind, I wrote a paper with Gillian Russell and Samein Shamsher for She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation that introduces scaffolding as a structured approach to futures making through embedded, embodied, and emergent processes. This framework is based on years of projects developed with the wonderful team at the Imaginative Methods Lab. The paper is published as part of a special issue "Future Making: Imagining and Crafting Futures in a Diverse World".

Featured Image

Photo by Sarah Sheedy on Unsplash

Photo by Sarah Sheedy on Unsplash

Why is it important?

•A clearer conceptualization of how pedagogy can support the democratization of futures making. •Although futures literacy offers useful insights for teaching futures making, it relies too heavily on cognitive and linguistic models that overlook the material and grounded aspects of collective aspiration. •The traditional pedagogical metaphor of scaffolding often emphasizes instructor control and learner passivity, despite its learner-centered origins. •Drawing on new materialist interpretations, the article advances a socio-material understanding of scaffolding in which futures making involves learning that is embedded, embodied, and emergent.