UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School – along with California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) and the Center for Education Research on Literacies, Learning, and Inquiry in Networking Communities (L2INC, UC Santa Barbara) – co-sponsored the Teaching for Long Term/Futures Thinking Conference held in San Francisco on July 27, 2015.
This conference shared the work and research of the CSUEB Long Term/Futures Thinking in Education Project. The mission of this project is to foster the development of thoughtful engaged citizens for whom critical, creative, and long-term thinking are habits of mind. Panelists from higher education (who included Gevirtz School doctoral candidate Monaliza Chian), K12, and long term/futures thinking contexts, together with conference participants, considered what needs to be in place in order to support the integration of long term and futures thinking into instructional design at different educational levels, within and across disciplines, in existing courses and curriculum. For K12 participants, the conference also considered how and in what ways long term/futures thinking habits of mind are consistent with and complement Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards and practices.
The Teaching for Long Term/Futures Thinking Conference followed and built on the World Futures Society Conference held immediately before, from July 24-26.
“As an institution committed to producing the diverse leaders for our future, this exciting new partnership with the Long Now Foundation and others will help students develop a long perspective in which the last 5,000 years is thought of as ‘last week’ and the next 5,000 years is thought of as ‘next week,’” explains Dr. Stephanie Couch, Principal Investigator, CSUEB, and a Gevirtz School alumna. “Such perspectives are helpful in numerous industries with heavy research and development efforts. In the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, for example, decision makers must make decisions today for products and revenues that won’t be realized until many years into the future.”
The Center for Education Research on Literacies, Learning, and Inquiry in Networking Communities supports ethnographic research and innovative curriculum designs and research projects that enhance literacy and inquiry knowledge required in a digital age. L2INC has three interconnected initiatives: research methodologies for exploring literacy and inquiry in classrooms; grounded, interactive, reflexive, action-oriented curriculum designs for literacy and inquiry across disciplines in K-12 classrooms; and, developing approaches to teaching for social justice, building on ethnographic and discourse research on the complex work of teachers, committed to equity of access to disciplinary knowledge for all students.