Futures literacy for research impact in universities

Highlights

• Pressure for Higher Education Institutions to demonstrate research impact.

• Futures literacy is important for academic research impact.

• Development of Futures Literacy Laboratories for Research Impact (FLL-RI) in Universities.

• Re-orient research impact to include an anticipatory agenda.

• Position research impact as futures literacy praxis.

Abstract

University-based research is an inherently future-oriented activity and plays a unique role in shaping futures in diverse domains. Despite the push for academic research to demonstrate ‘societal impact’, there is surprisingly little thought to the need for, or development of, futures literacy as a core capability within research impact in higher education. Futures literacy – notably the ability to imagine and prepare for changes that may occur – has the potential to transform current trajectories in academic research impact. In this paper we argue that futures literacy has been neglected in the research impact agenda in universities and call for more action-learning and training on it using Futures Literacy Laboratories for Research Impact (FLL-RI). Drawing on exploratory research, we sketch five key principles which together highlight the need to re-orient research impact as an anticipatory agenda for futures literacy praxis in higher education.

Introduction

Research is an inherently future-oriented activity. Generally conducted within the modernist convention of “the project”, research sets out to change knowledge about a topic and generate various other outcomes. Contemporary interest in the real-world impact of research has only intensified this future-orientation, even if it has also often shortened the timescale over which research is expected to have an effect. Within higher education the so-called ‘research impact agenda’ has started to drive significant changes and is altering how research is funded and conducted. Universities are expected to justify their societal role and funding support by demonstrably helping tackle shared challenges and contributing to public value, however the latter is defined (Bozeman & Sarewitz, 2011). With attention increasingly devoted to “the making of” and “achieving” research impact within universities, research impact training, development and evaluation are now widespread. In these and other ways, the research impact agenda is generating new objectives, relationships, initiatives, practices and discourses in the sector. The upshot is an intensified focus on how research contributes to the future.

Despite the central place of “the future” in the concept of research impact, there is surprisingly little sustained attention given to futures literacy as a core capability or critical area of competency in university research impact discussions. Although foresight has influenced research and innovation policy (Georghiou & Keenan, 2006; Harper, 2016) and the World Future Society and the World Futures have introduced futures and foresight approaches to school and university systems (Urry, 2016), futures literacy among university academics is generally limited (Urry, 2016) and has not been incorporated into the push for research impact.

How to generate research impact is increasingly recognised as a professional development need within academia (Bandola-Gill, 2019; Bayley & Phipps, 2019; Weißhuhn et al., 2018). There is a proliferation of initiatives designed to build researchers’ capabilities and capacities in generating research impact. However, such efforts tend to remain narrow in scope. In particular, there is surprisingly little engagement with futures literacy within research impact training, despite overlapping areas of interest – such as the value of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research - between university research impact efforts and futures studies. The benefits of knowing how to “use-the-future” and thinking critically and imaginatively about it are increasingly recognised in other sectors (Kuosa, 2011; Miller, 2018; Poli, 2011; Sardar, 2010). There is need to bring insights, principles and frameworks from futures studies into university research impact professional development.

In this paper we seek to deepen the dialogue between research impact and futures studies within universities through a specific focus on the potential of futures literacy (notably the ability to imagine and prepare for changes that may occur) to transform current approaches to academic research impact. We argue that futures literacy has been neglected as part of the university-based research impact agenda and call for more action-learning and action-research work on co-developing futures literacy through the development of Futures Literacy Laboratories for Research Impact (FLL-RI).

We begin by providing a broader context beneath the need for research impact and futures literacy integration through a brief, focused literature review of both fields. Encompassing academic and grey literature, we outline the main factors and characteristics of the contemporary push for research impact in higher education. We then turn to focus on futures literacy and the emergence of Futures Literacy Laboratories (FLL) as a critical pedagogical frame for re-thinking research impact. We expand on Miller’s (2018) methodological framework of Futures Literacy Laboratories that deploys “action-learning and collective intelligence to co-create the meaning of sustainability, peace and inclusion where people live, work [and play]” (see https://en.unesco.org/futuresliteracy/about; UNESCO, 2017).

In the third section of the paper, we outline our methodology, which utilised exploratory, pilot research into academic perceptions and experiences of research impact. Drawing on the guiding questions of the FLL, we identify and describe three co-existing research impact cultures, as well as the absence of, and need for, greater levels of futures literacy. Finally, we sketch five key areas that we suggest may help to re-orient university-based research impact processes and practices around a futures literacy praxis to help ‘change the conditions of change’. This framework is not intended to be a panacea nor a prescriptive plan or blueprint for how to overcome society’s grand challenges, but rather a heuristic to encourage reflexive awareness and critical praxis around ‘why’ and ‘how’ the future is actively being imagined, if at all, within university research impact work. We conclude by highlighting the concomitant role for futures studies to actively engage with the research impact agenda within the university sector in order to deepen its own positive impact in the world.