Creating discomfort is key
“We have recently organised a Futures Week together with Erica Bol of Teach the Future Europe. During this week we mixed students from our regular teachers program with those of our Teachers College and also from different year groups to get the creative juices flowing and get them out of their comfort zone. We started off with exploring societal trends and developments, trying to understand why these are happening and explore future scenarios. Our Teacher College students are more used to this type of thinking than our students from the regular program, so these felt quite uncomfortable.
The next session however made our Teacher College students a bit more uneasy because it zoomed in on the realistisch implications, challenges and threats of scenarios in the educational domain. While getting more concrete and practical was more in-tune with the mindset of the students from the regular program, who also had more practical experience because they are in a higher year group. This cross-pollination was an experiment for us as organisers, but it turned out very well and it got discussions to a higher level.”