Preferred Future Research Articles

The Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit: A Unique Convening With Purpose

It is not often that a group of health executives, educators, and professionals gather with the goal of identifying a preferred future for their profession and the patients they serve. It is even more rare when such an assembly results in a clear and actionable plan to follow to achieve that desired future. Nevertheless, the Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice (BPEP) Summit, an unprecedented collaborative event in June 2022 that involved six sites across the country and more than 300 participants, was just such a convening. In this Commentary we provide a brief overview of this extraordinary summit and the events that led up to it.

Islamic Religious Education in Kazakhstan: Applying Futures Studies to Skyrocket the Reform

Futures studies and foresight are new disciplines for Central Asia. Their methodology is making the first steps in the region. The present paper tests how narrative foresight can be applied in the field of religious education reform. For Kazakhstan, Islamic education has become a critical aspect of socio-cultural life. Its present situation requires radical changes, and the seven core questions of narrative foresight methodology help to research the vital dimensions of the problem in the quest for a solution. Going through the history of the issue, the forecast for current trends, identifying critical assumptions, and building alternative futures helps to arrive at the preferred future for Islamic education in Kazakhstan. With a new vision, some practical steps come forward that can guide to that new reality embodied in a new metaphor.

Foresighting future oceans: Considerations and opportunities

Climate change, overexploitation, pollution, and other pressures continue to degrade and threaten the marine environment and associated systems. Successfully managing and governing marine socioecological systems in light of these compounding pressures requires approaches that move beyond reactive and business-as-usual responses. Specifically, achieving ocean health and sustainability in these socioecological systems requires strengthening and applying processes that proactively imagine alternatives and plan for preferred futures. This paper contributes to emerging dialogue on the need to co-create visions of ocean futures, with a focus on the concept of foresighting. Foresighting is a process of creatively identifying possible, plausible, alternative socioecological futures in the medium to long term, and is increasingly seen as an approach that can support decision-making under uncertainty about the future. Here, we explore the origins and practical applications of foresighting from across the literature, before focusing on its (potential) application in the marine context. We discuss which elements are potentially useful or require more engagement to facilitate the visioning of shared futures for marine socioecological systems. We consider key dimensions of foresighting that require greater attention, including futures literacy, inclusivity, and inter- and transdisciplinarity. We also highlight important issues for consideration, including whether foresighting efforts should be informed by experts or by broader community participation, and discuss potential ethical issues associated with engaging marine stakeholders in foresighting. We determine that foresighting has considerable potential in the marine context for connecting stakeholder groups in the process of imagining and shaping equitable and sustainable ocean futures, but several methodological and ethical issues – including who gets to participate, and how - require further critical and careful consideration to create conditions for success.

Developing BSN Students' Quality Improvement Skills Through Addressing Real-World Problems.

To create a preferred future for nursing, our prelicensure program teaches students to think critically, communicate effectively, and be leaders and change agents in health care. As seniors, students apply the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Model for Improvement to search the literature for research evidence about a problem, collect and analyze data, and perform a root cause analysis to develop solutions and plans for implementation. At the semester's end, formal presentations are provided to academic and practice partners.

The Phenomenon of Generational Cohort Differences in Life Satisfaction Reports

The subjective well-being within society continues to be a focus in psychology, especially during the COVID 19 pandemic. The Life Satisfaction Scale for Apostolic Women Religious (LSSAWR) is designed to assess, across generations and congregations, the subjective well-being of Catholic Sisters worldwide. Sisters completing the LSSAWR online get a personal score report, and each congregation receives their LSSAWR scores in a Congregational Report (CR). The anonymous and confidential nature of gathering and reporting results, allows for honest feedback from Sisters about the current state of their community, and it provides insights for the potential planning of their preferred future. Additionally, CRs offer generational cohort comparisons across and within the domains that are reflective of various aspects as related to religious life. A multilevel model to account for clustering of Sisters within congregations was used to examine whether generational differences existed in LSSAWR scores. Results revealed significantly higher scores among elder cohorts as compared to younger cohorts but some differences in patterns among domain scores.

Nurse Executives Impacting the Human Experience in Health Care

The human experience in health care over the past 2 and one-half years has been unprecedented. Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, march on the United States Capitol, economic crisis, social injustice, and growing concerns regarding structural racism—our health system is under siege. Executive nurse leaders find themselves at the crossroads of motivating colleagues to provide excellence in nursing and patient care while confronting both a current and future shortage of registered nurses. Over 30 nurse leaders from around the globe meet and strategize on creating a preferred future for health care. The purpose of this article is to describe The Beryl Institute, the formation of the nurse executive council, the work of its members, and a collective call to action.

The Solution-Focused Approach to Trauma Therapy

The possibilities for using solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) during trauma therapy are presented in this article. First, “trauma” and related constructs used in psychotherapy are defined, as well as some misconceptions about trauma. The second part introduces the basic tenets of SFBT and the adapted “river of integration” model (Siegel, 2010), which helps to reflect the various ways SFBT practices are used in trauma therapy. Methods for solution-development in trauma therapy (e.g., work with preferred future, exceptions, personal growth, identity change, and re-connecting) are introduced in the next section. This is followed by methods for change in rigid patterns (e.g., experiential and “bottom-up” work) and for managing overwhelming chaos (coping and playful meaning-making techniques). Case examples are also available to illustrate those methods.

AI & learning: A preferred future

AI & learning: A preferred future

The Instructions of Melanesian Cargo Cults for the Asia-Pacific Future

So-called cargo cults are new religious movements best known among the indigenous population of Oceania, especially Melanesia. Their focus of attention is the mystery surrounding the new goods brought by light-skinned strangers in awe-striking ocean-going vessels and (later) in great flying ‘bird-like’ containers. Various socio-religious movements arose in response to these European-style wares (later internationally-marketed commodities), or “the Cargo” (pidgin: Kago), often in agitated collective expectation of an extraordinary arrival of new riches. The Melanesian outbursts have been typically inspired by prophet-type leaders, with their messages reflecting a transition between indigenous traditions and more settled islander Christianities. This paper moves on from describing and explaining southwest Pacific cargo-type movements to the issue of the ethos out of which they arose, and addresses the sociology of hope for Cargo (or modern commodities in plenty) as a global issue, best described as “Cargoism.” Sets of beliefs in the coming bounty and changing power of Cargo have much more than ‘provincial’ or local-indigenous implications. They point to a worldwide plethora of expectations wherein material items define the essential comforts of life and capture the individual, family and collective imaginations about the preferred human future. Exploring some of the ‘universally human’ implications within the logic of cargo-cult thinking in its Pacific context, this paper introduces Cargoism as a transoceanic and intercontinental issue that has enormous environmental and politico-economic ramifications. Presages of environmental stress lie with globalizing cargoist dreams and pressures, including hopes for progress and technological solutions offered by trade and commercial expansions (proffered by powerful nations, including China, for the Asia-Pacific future).

Exploring Education Techno-Monitoring Futures: A Participatory Speculative Critical Design Case

In learning and education, techno-monitoring practices are a growing trend. While these practices are still emerging, there has been no public debate on education stakeholders’ preferred futures regarding techno-monitoring in learning and education. This study presents a participatory design case using speculative critical design to support higher education students’ reflection about possible futures related to techno-monitoring practices in learning in higher education. The participants’ experiences using a prototype that monitors mental states are presented in the form of stories, which reflect the students’ complex relations toward techno-monitoring. Participatory speculative critical design is highlighted as a successful strategy to create compelling futures scenarios that trigger critical reflection and debate among the education community.

Visualizing a New Sustainable World: Toward the Next Generation of Virtual Reality in the Built Environment

What is the future of virtual reality (VR) in the built environment? As work becomes increasingly distributed across remote and hybrid forms of organizing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to rethink how we use the set of collaborative technologies to move toward a sustainable world. We propose a new vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform for an interdisciplinary integration of the allied design, social, and environmental disciplines to address emerging challenges across the building sectors. We build this contribution through the following steps. First, we contextualize VR technologies within the changing digital landscape and underlying tensions in the built environment practices. Second, we characterize the difficulties that have arisen in using them to address challenges, illustrating our argument with leading examples. Third, we conceptualize VR configurations and explore underlying assumptions for their use across disciplinary scenarios. Fourth, we propose a vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform that can support built environment users in visualizing preferred futures. We conclude by providing directions for research and practice.

Empowering Communities: Future‐Making through Citizen Ethnography

This paper proposes a way to harness the power and benefits of community‐led future change through the process of “citizen ethnography”. Just as “citizen science” has become a potent method for non‐scientists to collect and contribute to scientific knowledge and outcomes, citizen ethnography is where non‐ethnographers are trained in the tools and techniques of ethnography to research social phenomena to understand, recommend and lead their own change initiatives.Citizen ethnography essentially flips the model of a single or small team of ethnographers and consultants working with a community, to one where groups of community members research their own challenges in order to identify their own needs, preferred futures and mechanisms for change. Importantly, this approach requires a significant ‘stepping away’ of the ethnographer as the research expert and move towards a role of skill‐builder, coach and facilitator. This democratisation of ethnography helps to equip and empower communities with useful skills, while also reconnecting ethnography to the fundamentals of its well‐established method and foundation in the ethics of representation. We provide an example of how citizen ethnography is being used to deal with youth suicide in Australia, highlighting how through engaging community members in the process and skills of ethnography they can unpack their own questions of belonging and identity, participate with eachother in the solutions to their current challenges and approach their future as engaged and empowered citizens.

Female adolescents living with HIV telling their story through 'my story' book in Malawi: A visual methodology innovation.

Female adolescents living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus are a unique population facing lifelong challenges in reproductive and sexual health ranging from relational, social and legal-ethical considerations. While HIV prevalence of young females is higher than the males (4.9% versus 1%), evidence show that these adolescents in Malawi initiate sex as early as 15 years mostly with adult partners. Yet, young people are frequently reported to be reluctant to discuss sexual matters and demonstrate avoidance of direct questions on sexual issues during interviews. It is critical therefore that researchers invoke youth-friendly approaches to address these complex issues and enable these vulnerable individuals to articulate and advocate for their preferred futures. This study used an innovative visual qualitative approach known as 'my story' book which combined image selection and sentence completion exercises to enable adolescents living with HIV to share their stories through interviews. The study involved 14 cases comprising of 14 female adolescents aged 15 to 19, 14 caregivers and 14 health providers working at HIV multidisciplinary centres in Malawi. The 'my story' book enabled in-depth exploration of the experiences and issues faced by this vulnerable population. The use of images and sentence completion exercise enabled the researcher to appreciate the type of interactions (or lack of) on sexual issues and status disclosure to significant others including sexual partners. Three themes were revealed, included creating meanings, revealing confirmatory and/or complementary evidence and enabling intergenerational research. The 'my story' book captured the life experiences and needs of the female adolescents. The book assisted the participants in constructing, communicating, and controlling the articulation of their stories. It positioned female adolescents as a diverse group of social agents able to construct and reflect on their social worlds and real-life issues. This approach was highly effective in creating a youth-friendly context for reflection and revelation regarding sensitive cultural and social issues faced by this group. As such, the 'my story' book could be used in one-on-one counselling or provide data to inform intervention development.

Consumer buying behavior and retailer strategy through a crisis: A futures studies perspective

ABSTRACT Using a futures studies perspective, this exploratory research highlights how marketing assists retailers to serve their customers during and after crises. This viewpoint predicts probable, possible, and preferable futures based on insight from consumers and retailers. Through four rounds of data collection, this research develops a model of the then current crisis state of retailing, the predicted and realized retail future for consumers, consumers’ preferred retail future, and business owners’ vision of how to transition to this preferred future. Grounded theory analysis revealed themes, including systems development, relationship building, consumer safety, and adaptability as paths to a preferred retail future.

Research as an Act of Resistance: Responsive, Temporally Framed Narrative Inquiry

In this paper I frame systemic, narrative informed, group work practice as an act of solidarity; and narrative inquiry as an act of resistance and activism. I describe research I have been part of as an intervention into (and a resistance against) discourses of individualised psychopathology that exist within the mental health services (where I have worked for the last decade) and colonising practices that can and do exist in academia. Part of the narrative is my own story of movement from research informed practitioner to practice based researcher which includes an exploration of an evolving relationship with power. I also describe how I have devised a five-step process to inquire into my own group work practices – a process I have called a responsive, temporally framed narrative inquiry. Responsive because it has been designed to be adaptive and attuned to the inevitable movement between research ‘material’ and people involved in any such inquiry. Temporally framed, and with an emphasis on narrative, because it pays attention to past stories (of abuse and oppression), present feelings in relation to those stories and narratives that develop through inquiry that are ‘future forming’ and speak to ‘preferred futures’.

Possible Scenarios on the Future of Polytechnic State University of Bicol (PSUB) – Research Culture by 2030 using Jim Dator’s Archetypes of Alternative Futures

This paper explores possible scenarios for the Research Culture of Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges (CSPC), to be known as Polytechnic State University of Bicol (PSUB). The paper utilized Jim Dator’s four archetypes of alternative futures to construct PSUB’s Research Culture possible scenarios by 2030. This paper highlights the assumption that the research culture in PSUB is of world class quality and all of its faculty members are actively involved in research, its disciplined, collapsed, transformative, or business as usual scenarios. Four plausible scenarios have surfaced in this paper: Progressive Research Culture, Lax and Deficit Research Culture, Sophisticated Research Culture, and Transformative Research Culture. The article explored areas for a preferred future by 2030. It requires multiple drivers along faculty, students, administration and community for a better research culture. This study proved to be useful in crafting and anticipating the future scenarios of PSUB’s research culture. Preliminary as it may, this study highlighted important building blocks of the four future scenarios. Dator’s framework was proved to be very useful in developing the four scenarios, the use of other future study tools will further amplify plausible scenarios for the Polytechnic State University of Bicol.

In the heat of the game: Analogical abduction in a pragmatist account of entrepreneurial reasoning

We draw on Searle's philosophy of language to distinguish between “opportunities” as intentional content directed towards a preferred future that entrepreneurs aim to fulfill and opportunities as conditions to be met for their satisfaction. We maintain that studying the former requires adopting a player stance rather than the analyst stance that prevails in the current literature. We build on pragmatist conceptions of truth and imagination to elaborate on the player stance and propose analogical abduction as a mechanism for conceiving and fulfilling “opportunities”. We develop a pragmatist process model of entrepreneurial reasoning that balances the two stances, and derive action principles for entrepreneurs from it.

The future of compulsory schooling: Participant developed scenarios from a modified Delphi survey

In this paper we present five scenarios that describe preferred futures for the design of compulsory schooling. The work addresses the counterfactual research question: What if compulsory schooling was a 21 st century invention? and is informed by the research in anticipatory systems thinking. The expert advice evolved over multiple rounds of input using a modified Delphi approach. The scenario development round followed a consensus and dissensus process in the early stages. The creation of a series of preferred futures for compulsory schooling can be used by education leaders in states, provinces, and countries to create momentum for strategic change in the static structure of schooling that generally maintains industrial models of schooling. The combining of a modified Delphi process with scenario development can be used to present possible futures which can be contextualised, divergent, and used as a catalyst to create other preferred scenarios for a future based on a success-for-all paradigm.

Teaching Futures Studies From Disciplinary And Student Perspectives

Concepts from the Enlightenment and the historical origins of modern social sciences are used to discuss how futures studies deserves recognition as a social science in its own right and as a needed component of the curricula of other disciplines as well, especially in public administration. In focus groups, undergraduate students who had just completed a course in futures studies identified what they would emphasize if they become teachers of our field. They would emphasize critical thinking, individual relevance and empowerment, interrelatedness, technology as a two-sided agent of change, a risk management approach to understanding crises and opportunities, past efforts to anticipate possible futures, developing scenarios using the Societal, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political framework, environmental scanning and backcasting, and especially the importance of Enlightenment values in framing preferred futures. As teachers, they would use technology extensively but were sharply divided on whether futures studies should be taught in an online only format.

Experiencing the future: preservice teacher perceptions of the solution-focused brief coaching approach

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to describe teacher candidate perceptions of the influence of solution-focused brief coaching (SFBC) sessions on movement toward self-identified outcomes. The SFBC approach emanated from the London-based organization BRIEF: The Centre for Solution Focused Practice (BRIEF, n.d.).Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study engaged ten participants in two SFBC sessions. In the first coaching session, participants identified a “preferred future” and described what would be happening when it came to fruition. Coaches employed SFBC elements such as the “miracle question,” scaling questions, descriptions of strengths and recognition of resources already in place (Iveson et al., 2012). In the second session, following coaching, participants shared their perceptions and experiences of the SFBC process.FindingsAll participants reported movement toward desired outcomes, and their perceptions of the SFBC process revealed five themes: an increase in positive emotion, enhanced self-efficacy, value in the co-construction of their preferred future, the coaching process as a catalyst for actualizing their preferred future and adoption of a solution-focused lens in other contexts.Originality/valueThis study answers the call for additional research in three areas: it provides data from completed SFBC sessions, examines participant follow-up on progress toward their preferred futures and provides insight regarding the coaching relationship dynamic. In addition, it provides qualitative findings for the SFBC approach, which have traditionally been dominated by quantitative results.