Imagining Preferred Futures is a core element of Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP). It offers students a way to move beyond fear, fatalism, and climate anxiety by engaging in hopeful, grounded visioning. Rather than centering on what's broken or lost, this practice invites learners to consider what a just, livable, and sustainable world could look like—and what actions they can take now to help bring those futures closer.

How students think about the future shapes what they do now. 

Futures thinking builds hope, nurtures agency, and lays the groundwork for meaningful, systems-informed action.

What is “Imagining Preferred Futures”? 

Imagining Preferred Futures involves helping students envision the kinds of futures they want to live in—for themselves, their communities, and the planet. It is a critical element within AOP that:

• Shifts students away from despair or inaction

• Engages their creativity and values

• Encourages purposeful planning for change

Depending on when it is introduced in a learning sequence, it can either guide planning for impact (when done early) or support reflection on outcomes and legacy (when done after action).

Imagining Preferred Futures is most effective when paired with systems thinking, knowledge-building, and the integration of multiple perspectives.

Youth as Agentive Shapers of the Future 

Young people have the most at stake in the future, yet schools often fail to treat them as active participants in shaping it. In traditional schooling, their civic and ecological contributions are postponed in favor of passive learning, operating from the assumption that youth are "not ready yet" to engage meaningfully. This postponement fosters apathy and undermines student agency by presenting the future as an overwhelming, uncontrollable mystery.  

By contrast, when educators create space for students to explore and articulate desirable futures - particularly ones rooted in justice, sustainability, and community well-being — we help develop inspiring visions, build genuine hope, and engage in meaningful conversations that lead to real action in and with their communities today. 

Imagining preferred futures positions youth as:

• Agents of change, not just future recipients

• Creative contributors to civic and ecological problem-solving

• Designers of futures rooted in justice, care, and possibility

Systems Thinking Invites Agency and Hope 

In a world of complex, dynamic systems, students need tools for understanding how change happens. Imagining preferred futures helps them engage in systems thinking where uncertainty is not a barrier but an invitation.

Real hope and agency emerge when students can connect past, present, and future in meaningful ways, understanding through history how we arrived at current challenges and seeing that alternative pathways are always possible. 

Therefore, it is important that students are able to understand that:

• No future is predetermined.

• Systems contain leverage points, and small actions can scale.

• Complexity opens possibilities, rather than closing them.

By combining futures thinking with systems analysis, we help students see that they are not powerless—they are participants in shaping what comes next.

Multiple Perspectives Inspire Imagination

Every community, culture, and individual brings unique knowledge, values, and experiences to the imagining process. Because no future is equally valued—or free from unintended consequences—inviting diverse perspectives helps students envision more just, inclusive, and responsive possibilities. This begins with valuing many ways of knowing. Thus, creating space for students to imagine preferred futures begins by helping students value many ways of knowing.  

To foster inclusive visioning:

• Encourage students to draw from local wisdom, cultural practices, and community assets

• Include multiple ways of knowing, supporting learners to explore knowledge from local and traditional sources, scientific and technical fields, and personal and collective experiences.

• Promote dialogue across differences

By valuing multiple perspectives, educators can support students in critically examining current social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental systems while envisioning a richer set of possibilities for shaping the world ahead.

Futures thinking offers structured ways to help students explore what might happen, analyze implications, and imagine what should be. Below are tools and strategies for K–12 classrooms.

What Might Happen? Tools to Identify How Things Are Changing 

So What? Tools to analyze potential consequences of change

Scenario Planning: Write or explore narrative "what if" stories.  

Simulations: Experience and respond to imagined futures through games or role play. 

Counterfactual Thinking: Reflect on alternative versions of the past to imagine different outcomes. 

Futures Wheel: Map ripple effects of changes to systems over time. Editable templates can be found here. 

What Should We Do? Tools to Shape the Future

Assumption Testing: Uncover and challenge biases about what's possible.

Backcasting: Work backwards from a desired future to identify steps to get there.

Futures Narratives & Worldbuilding: Create stories, visuals, or artifacts of possible futures.

Community Timeline Mapping: Explore past pivot points to inspire future action.

Imagining preferred futures doesn't require a separate unit or new curriculum. It can be:

• Integrated into science, social studies, ELA, or project-based learning

• Scaled up or down based on time and comfort

• Anchored in local issues and student interests

Educators can start small, with one activity or discussion. The key is to frame the future as open, co-constructable, and worth shaping together.

Frameworks for Futures Thinking in K-12

Learning new instructional approaches can feel like one more demand on educators who are already overloaded. Our approach—which we encourage other educators to consider—is to approach Imagining Preferred Futures with curiosity and self-compassion, recognizing that imagining the future can be implemented at various scales and scopes. 

Don’t worry - give it a try! 

Although few instructional resources currently exist to assist teachers and students with imagining preferred futures, there is a growing movement to integrate future thinking in schools. Some organizations are developing frameworks and materials to support this mission. Here are a few resources to explore. 

• ASU’s Imagination and Futures Thinking in K-12 Collaborative  

• The Standord. D. school’s K12 Futures Toolkit 

• https://www.teachthefuture.org/about 

• Teach the Future: Futures Thinking Playbook

• YFOEE Visions Toolkit 

• Futures Thinking Teachers Pack

• PBS Futures Literacy Collection 

• Future Before It Happens Toolkit

• Games for the Future

• Scenario planning or interrogation: Scenarios can range from brief oral descriptions to longer stories; They can be identified by an educator identified by students themselves. For instance, educators in one climate-focused summer program invited youth to identify and curate creative media artifacts (e.g., films, music videos, visual artworks) that they saw as representing hopeful climate futures for themselves and their community. The learners then used these artifacts for inspiration to co-develop imagined innovations and co-produce futures narratives about “transitions toward post-carbon energy systems.” 

• Simulations: Futures by Choice-Futures by Chance is one example currently being tested in K-12 classrooms. Working in groups, students are invited to construct a timeline projecting fifty years into the future. Together, they explore how disruptive events, societal/climate trends, and innovations have consequences for what lies ahead. This simulation encourages them to reflect on how personal choices and collective actions can play a role in shaping the outcomes of these larger influences.   

• Counterfactual thinking:  One example is Coyote & Crow, a tabletop roleplaying game set in a First Nations alternate future where colonization never happened.

• Futures wheel:  Editable templates can be found here. 

• Assumption testing: An Exercise for Examining Assumptions about the Future will help identify assumptions you or others have about prospective change (prevailing wisdom); then, reverse these assumptions to identify bias, ‘break out’ of conventional thinking, and come up with new ideas for taking action to shape the future in preferred ways.

• Backcasting: imagine a desired future (perhaps an outcome based on a sustainability solution you are considering); then, work backward to determine what steps and actions led to success; helps determine feasibility and barriers to implementation. 

• Futures narratives/world building: For instance, Postcards from the Future uses visual prompts to invite learners to write mini-stories about their preferred climate futures in the form of messages to someone in “back in the present” about this future. Futures narratives can also be created in different multimodal medias. For instance, high schoolers were invited by their teachers to explore possible climate futures through creative musical engagement. 

• Develop a community timeline map: Co-produce, analyze, and present a shared history in negotiation with intergenerational and intersectional members (using 32D visuals or 3D objects to represent important places). By facilitating this experience, educators can help students understand “important moments, pivot points, and shifts” in the life of the community, while also deepening a sense of place, identifying assets and resources, and building community.  (adapted from an activity described by Laura Jarjo in Spiral to the Stars) 

• Foresight Training Modules – Provides materials to better understand foresight and incorporate it into the policy process, produced by Policy Horizons Canada. Their foresight method involves seven steps: framing, assumptions, scanning, systems mapping, change drivers, scenarios, and results.

• Strategic Foresight – Discusses six different strategic foresight methods, often used when there is no or little quantitative information available, and how they align with the policy process.

• Futures Tools workshop – Summary of a two-day training workshop on Futures Tools hosted by the NZ Ministry of Science