The Future Is Open and Shapable: Using Solar Speculative Fiction to Foster Learner Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 238133772110282
Author(s):  
Michelle Jordan ◽  
Jeremy Bernier ◽  
Steven Zuiker
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Energy Research ◽  
Design Based Research ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ecological Theories ◽  
The Future ◽  
Learner Agency ◽  
Sustainable Futures

Speculative fiction is a powerful medium to explore possible futures, inviting literacy researchers and educators to consider the value of futures thinking as a tool for eliciting learners’ hopeful narratives about equitable, sustainable futures for their communities. Yet, when asked to imagine the future, adults and youth alike often envision dystopian stories and fail to consider the interdependencies between technological innovations and the social, economic, and environmental contexts they shape. Moreover, current pedagogic strategies for thinking about the future encourage globalized perspectives rather than stories localized in learners’ lived contexts. Using design-based research methods and informed by ecological theories that assume learners exercise agency through their actions that bring together past, present, and future, our team developed conjectures about how futures thinking might support learners’ agency in relation to sustainability activism and environmental justice. Data analyzed to test our conjectures were 18 solar futures narratives written by adult and youth participants in a solar energy research program. Findings show promise for writing practices that foster sustainability and climate change learning.

The Future of Primary Care

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 186-187
Author(s):  
RITAMARIE MOSCOLA
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Emergency Department ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Emergency Department Visits ◽  
Missed Appointments ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Pediatric Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Physician Relationship

To the Editor.— In the article "Primary Care: The Future of Pediatric Education"1 Dr Alpert addresses many issues facing pediatrics. I agree with his list of problems. However, I doubt that the social, economic, and cultural changes he describes will ever occur. My informal survey of pediatricians in practice is a song of frustration and boredom. The ringing telephone provides the rhythm. How does a patient-physician relationship develop in an environment of missed appointments, 3 AM emergency department visits, and managed care? Many families change physicians whenever employers change health benefits packages.

scholarly journals Strategic planning under the Local Government Act 2002: towards collaboration or compliance?

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Reid ◽  
Claudia Scott ◽  
Jeff McNeill
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Audit Report ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

By July 2006 all 85 local authorities expect to have their 10-year Long Term Council Community Plans (LTCCPs) signed and sealed, and passing muster with an unqualified audit report. The new Local Government Act 2002 (LGA 2002) has provided councils with general empowerment and introduced a new purpose (section 3) for local government: to ‘promote the social, economic, cultural and environmental well-being of communities now and for the future’.

The Future of Love and Sex

2020 ◽  
pp. 220-228
Author(s):  
Elaine Hatfield ◽  
Richard L. Rapson ◽  
Jeanette Purvis
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Future Trends ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

Yale historian Robin Winks once observed that writing history is “like nailing jelly to the wall.” But, he added, “someone must keep trying.” Trying to describe sweeping historical trends and then to predict future trends is even more difficult. This chapter considers futurists’ predictions as to the social, economic, and behavioral advances we might expect in the next 50 years. The predictions are divided into three categories: technological transformations, economic and practical changes, and cultural alterations in general attitudes. The future of love and sex is discussed in the context of these changes, along with trends in globalization. Since we tend to think technology may be the major driver of change in history, the chapter starts there.

Repensar a Cidade Face a Novos Desafios

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Teresa Barata Salgueiro ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Urban Land ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Spatial Form ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Process ◽  
The Future ◽  
The City

We start with the question of city definition and we present the concept as it is normally accepted in geography. That means focusing in concentration, centrality and services, besides the fact that the city is a social-economic process and a spatial form. The first component however raises the question of territorial appropriation and identification of space by users. Urbanization implies transformation, thus in the second part we refer to the most important components of the urban change. They run between opposite trends that almost enable the prediction o f the future for the cityscapes, once they are concentration and descentralization, growth and decline, global homogeneity and place differentiation. We look at them through the modifications they have in the urban land or in the social structure.

scholarly journals IDP and Refugee Return to Northern Iraq: Sustainable Returns or Demographic Bombs?

Refuge ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
David Romano
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Displaced People

Regime change in Iraq has opened the door to the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), the majority of whom were expelled from Kirkuk and other areas in northern Iraq. The Iraqi case presents three broad, readily identifiable categories of displaced persons: refugees in Iraq's neighbouring states, internally displaced persons, and refugees and migrants in third countries further afield. The first two categories include the largest numbers of displaced people as well as the majority of those with a great desire or pressing need to return to their homelands in Iraq. Although some of those displaced have succeeded in making a good life for themselves in their new new homes, those who did not manage well after their displacement generally long to return to their original towns and homes. However, the following general problems, in order of gravity, impede the success and sustainability of returns to northern Iraq: (i) sectarian competition over political structures and power distributions in post-Saddam Iraq; (ii) increasing lack of security in Iraq; (iii) insufficient preparations and slow policy implementation by the former CPA and Coalition Forces; (iv) insufficient financial resources to deal with the full magnitude of the displacement problem in Iraq; and (v) high expectations of returnees vis-a-vis continuing lack of opportunities and the slow rate of positive developments in the social, economic and political situation in Iraq. However, the emerging political contests over the future of the new Iraq greatly complicate effective and comprehensive return programs; the ultimate test of success and sustainability of return to Iraq will depend on the future of post-Saddam Iraq itself.

scholarly journals The Rise of Nazism and Militarism

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
Anping Yang
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Economic Depression ◽  
Social Upheaval

The essay discusses the rise of Nazism and Militarism during interwar Germany and Japan. It compares the similarities and differences that existed in the social, economic, and political environment of the two countries. The essay approaches the topic by analyzing the cause and effect of economic depression, social upheaval, and unique political propaganda. The paper intends to provide information about circumstances when extremism revives, and thus to avoid similar conditions in the future.

scholarly journals Education of values: Marketizing the aging population in urban China

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Yifan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Aging Population ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Paradigmatic Shift ◽  
Demographic Aging ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Sales Strategies

In this article, I examine some of the marketing and sales strategies at Gardenview, a newly established eldercare company that ran a few residential eldercare facilities in Nanjing, China. There, like elsewhere in urban China, the projected aging demography was mobilized to push for an industrialization (chanyehua)—marketization and professionalization—of eldercare, transforming ideas and experience of eldercare by putting forward a new set of knowledge of aging. To this end, I first ground the rising eldercare industry in the transitioning paradigm of conceptualizing China’s population from population control to demographic aging. Then I explore ethnographically how Gardenview participated in the eldercare industry in a rapidly aging China. In particular, I look at the floorplans and the marketing stories as devices of the education of values—as prices, the good and desirable, and differentiators—to understand the social, economic, and ethical dynamics instigated by a transitioning demography. These values, as I show, are crucial in linking everyday life and choices with the paradigmatic shift of China’s population. Finally, I discuss how understanding the very processes of marketing and sales as an education of values could shed further light on what anthropologist Michael Fischer calls “literacies of the future” as a socially and economically elaborated and contested world of an aging China.

scholarly journals Cities & States: Challenges for the Next Century – Conversations with Donald J. Borut and Raymond Scheppach

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Catlaw ◽  
Lauren Grover ◽  
Nicholas Samuels
Keyword(s):  
Executive Director ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
National League ◽  
Changing Economy ◽  
Federal Preemption

The social, economic, and technological changes of the coming century present significant challenges with which states and cities will have to contend. Policy Perspectives engaged Donald Borut, Executive Director of the National League of Cities (NLC), and Raymond Scheppach, Executive Director of the National Governors Association (NGA), in separate conversations to learn how they see these issues playing out for their member states and cities. Their answers expand on the nature of these issues, what strengths these levels of government bring to the task of addressing them, and in what areas collaboration can be enhanced. Both Borut and Scheppach agree that the changing economy is a central consideration for states and localities as they look to the future. Addressing federal preemption, in particular, seems an area ripe for further collaboration between the two levels of government.

Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Shifting the Social-Business Paradigm?

2021 ◽  
pp. 254-271
Author(s):  
Iria Paz-Gil ◽  
Alberto Prado Román ◽  
Miguel Prado Román
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Consumer Behaviour ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Social Business ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Business Market ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future

Crises show all the aspects that surround a society, demonstrating whether society is equal to the demands or not. The current COVID-19 pandemic is creating a challenge for all market agents, be they politicians, entrepreneurs, or individuals, where the difficulties are presented every day from different perspectives: social, economic, educational. Therefore, both companies and individuals are implementing numerous solidarity strategies to help society and combat the effects of the health crisis. The question contemplated in this research is if this is the beginning of a new social-business paradigm, in which the results do not take precedence over the social aspects around the business market. And it is in this framework where this research focuses on studying this paradigm shift, analysing the future impact that these solidarity measures of companies will have on society, and therefore on consumer behaviour.

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