SAnSE: A novel evaluation concept presented by 4CF at UNESCO-PMU Symposium: Towards Evaluation Frameworks for Futures Literacy 

What’s your futures literacy? Mine’s 42. Okay, I’m kidding, but also, not. It’s a lot to think about. You know what I’m saying, don’t you? 

The challenge

One’s ability to “use the future”, have “high futures literacy” or “futures consciousness” is notoriously difficult to capture, posing serious difficulties in presenting any activity as increasing futures literacy (van der Laan, Erwee, 2012, Lalot et al 2019, Bergheim, 2022). The capacity that a person has for understanding, anticipating, and preparing for the future (Lalot et al 2020) should not be confused with accuracy of one’s predictions about the future, which, although theoretically easier to measure (apart from the time needed for such research), is misaligned with the concept of futures literacy or modern futures studies.

The concept of evaluation of an individual’s ability to understand, anticipate and use the future remains largely empirically under-studied and it comes as surprisingly challenging to establish how the futures literacy measurements shall be made, especially when it comes to methodology (Lalot et al. 2020). Major challenges related to the process are an evaluation of complex processes, since there is still a lack of a universal yet highly effective approach (Bergheim, 2022). 

Capturing the change in one’s “anticipatory stance” based on one’s declarations is problematic because after taking part in a foresight activity (which usually includes some more or less direct explanations on why it’s important to… and important not to…), the participants answers in a questionnaire may simply reflect what they think is the expected answer, rather than reflecting an actual change in their perceptions about the future (which could translate into changed behaviour). However, tracking the participants’ behaviour for extended periods of time would be prohibitively impractical, so we have come up with a different approach. 

The concept

Norbert Kołos presenting SAnSE

With all that in mind, we came up with the concept of a novel tool for evaluating and comparing a variety of futures literacy/futures consciousness enhancing activities: Survey for Anticipatory Stance Evolution (SAnSE). The concept was originally developed at 4CF for the needs of UNESCO’s Imagining Africa’s Futures project, but was never used in practice. The purpose of SAnSE is to capture change in individuals’ perceptions about the future as a result of participation in any activity which is supposed to enhance one’s futures literacy (a foresight workshop, a Futures Literacy Laboratory, reading a book or watching a lecture on futures studies etc). SAnSE is also meant to compare various activities in terms of the change in “anticipatory stance” that they induce, thus (theoretically) allowing identification of more effective approaches. By various activities we mean anything from participating in a Futures Literacy Laboratory, through all sorts of other foresight workshops, listening to lectures on futures studies, to watching a sci-fi movie or reading a book on foresight methodology. Each of these can potentially increase our ability to use the future. Which is more effective, in what way, by how much and for whom? We don’t really know. 

SAnSE focuses on two characteristics, which a futures-literacy enhancing activity should cause in our view: openness to alternatives and the ability to use one’s imagination to come up with novel yet plausible futures (which we call ‘self-reframing’). Why these two? There’s a lot of theory supporting their importance in being futures literate. Kahnemann rightly notes that some of the main obstacles to improve the strategies implied in thinking and forecasting are the illusion of knowledge (or epistemic ignorance) and insufficient self-reflection. Ramirez and Ravets say that recognising feral futures is complex and difficult, as it requires the ability to “unlearn” – to deal with them, we must rely on our reflexive awareness to control out possibly erroneous optimism and overcome the “illusion of knowledge”. They also mention that a possible strategy to address feral futures may be to use future practices to conceive “uncomfortable knowledge” that otherwise would not be accepted if located in the present. According to Matthews and Hattam, we ignore or forget any element we do not want to face consciously, repressing unwanted ideas and their sources. The list goes on. But all in all, if we had to pick just two characteristics that are essential to being futures literate in our opinion, it would be these two. They just feel right, even though we’re well aware that some of our fellow futurists might choose differently. 

SAnSE is a conceptual hybrid method, notably inspired by and combining some elements of: James A. Dewar’s Assumption-Based Planning (ABP) methodological framework, the Rip van Winkle Method, Delphi Method, as well as Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between Hedgehogs and Foxes as used in Philip E. Tetlock’s research. 

An adaptation of the Rip van Winkle Method is at the heart of SAnSE approach. It is a simple but very useful exercise in which the participants are asked to imagine that they can talk to a person from the future – someone who lives e.g. in the year 2050. They can ask this person 5 questions about any aspect of the world in 2050 (society, technology, geopolitics, economy, environment, etc.) to gain valuable information about the future of a certain topic. The questions need to be formulated in such a way that they can be given a yes or no answer. No question should be dependent on the answer to a previous question. The participants are told to choose their questions thoughtfully, because obviously an opportunity to talk to a person from the future is rare. The exercise is well proven in a wide array of foresight projects, albeit most of them conducted by 4CF. 

Proposed SAnSE procedure

SAnSE PHASE 1

• Ask participants to perform a Rip Van Winkle exercise on a relevant topic (each participant works individually)
• Group similar questions provided by the participants and give each group of questions a short name.
• Prepare individual questionnaires for each participant, including: 
  • Participant’s original list of questions + the groups to which they have fallen into
  • List of the remaining question groups (not covered by a particular participant)
• Send the questionnaires to participants, allowing them to either stick to the list of their original questions OR substitute some (or all) of them with different ones from the pool (each participant works individually)

SAnSE PHASE 2 

Perform any futures literacy / futures consciousness enhancing activities amongst the test group (the control group waits for Phase 3)

SAnSE PHASE 3 

Repeat phase one using a different topic of choice, analyse the results

SAnSE PHASE 4 

Lessons learned: individual reflection on the reasons for change (if any) between phases 1 & 3, sharing and discussing individual results

Participant’s anticipatory stance profile can calculated by analysing the combination of the following metrics: 

• UNIQUENESS: relative uniqueness of the set of questions which the participant provided
• OPENNESS: willingness of the participant to change his/hers original set of questions (relative openness to new questions)
• DEMAND: willingness of other participants to exchange their questions into the ones provided by the profiled participant (relative exchange demand) – adjusted for question uniqueness (big exchange demand for a unique question results in a higher index than big exchange demand for a typical question)

A combination of these three metrics (e.g. highly unique questions + moderate willingness to change them + low exchange demand) would allow us to calculate the participants’ anticipatory stance profile, but the final formula would need to take into account the calibration of weights of the metrics and the adjustment of the “demand” metric with question uniqueness. The difference in participant’s profile between phases can be attributed to the futures literacy/futures consciousness enhancing activity performed in Phase 2, but a control group would be needed to account for the possible increase in Futures Literacy due e.g. to taking part in the SAnSE process itself or the change of topic.

SAnSE could theoretically allow us to compare various futures literacy/consciousness enhancing activities to identify those which work better for different groups of people or different project needs. That would be marvellous and would benefit the design of many foresight projects, ensuring better effectiveness, at least in terms of increasing project participants’ openness to alternatives and their ability to self-reframe. 

But would it allow me to say that “my anticipatory stance profile is 42” and would it be a good thing if it did? It would and it wouldn’t. Okay, I’m kidding, but also, not. It’s a lot to think about. You know what I’m saying, don’t you? 

UNESCO-PMU Symposium 2023

More on UNESCO-PMU Symposium 2023: Towards Evaluation Frameworks for Futures Literacy and Foresight

It’s unfortunately too late for you to join the wonderfully inspiring UNESCO-PMU Symposium, but the good news is that you can read the Summary Report of the Symposium here and on the event webpage you may find speaker biographies as well as presentations that they agreed to share, including 4CF’s presentation on the SAnSE concept. Also, from what we hear, this may not be the last symposium of that kind – we’re definitely looking forward to the future ones!