Futures education as temporal conscientisation

Futures education has been around for almost four decades. Beginning in the US in the 1960s, it has now been developed in many different countries. The history of its unfolding has been well documented, for example by Richard Slaughter (2004). In Australia, considerable work has been done at the primary and secondary school level (Gidley, Bateman and Smith 2004). Even though it is a relatively new academic tradition, there are now over 50 universities around the world that teach futures studies (Ramos 2005). Some are just one or two classes at the bachelors level, brought into a university by an enthusiastic professor. Others incorporate futures studies' into existing programs, for example in the areas of planning, business, environmental sustainability, economics, development studies, science and technology studies. There are also formal Masters level programs, with degrees entitled such as: futures studies, strategic foresight, prospective (in France), prospectiva (in Latin America), and prognostics (in Eastern Europe). There are also numerous doctoral dissertations around the world with a focus in futures studies. Contributing to this debate, the approach to futures education in this article will consider Freire's (1970, 1973) work on conscientisation in the contexts ofcritical futures studies and, further, discuss some potentials of Freirian-style action research in futures studied. This framework offers practical and theoretical possibilities in futures education toward the development of democratically-oriented consciousness and the real issues and challenges we face as communities and as humanity in the 21st century.