Education Futuramas: Torsten Husén and Futurological Thinking in Education

Chapter 5 , Education Futuramas: Torsten Husén and Futurological Thinking in Education, examines the Aspen/Berlin seminars in the 1970s as focal points in the study of the role of expertise in solving educational crises. The chapter discusses the function of ‘futurology’ to construct broader norms and understandings about the ‘learning society’. This process required comparative analyses, blue-skies thinking, interdisciplinarity and, above all, the production of a high-level consensus on the purpose of education as a dual endeavour: the making of future citizens and workers. The concept which emerged, the ‘learning society’, became the basis for Husén’s thinking on the role of educational research in informing policymaking.