Preface to Studying the Future

This publication responds to a clear need, the need for a general introduction to an area of curriculum development which remains unknown or exotic for most teachers. Its forerunner was a collection of articles assembled for teachers in the Bicentennial Futures Education Project lighthouse schools. The general response was so positive that we decided to develop the collection further and present it to a wider audience.

The general aim remains, but in the process Richard Slaughter, who edited both the initial collection and this revised publication, has assembled one of the most comprehensive introductions to futures education available anywhere. The articles are deliberately varied – some are aimed at immediate practical purposes, some attempt to fill behind this practice with a coherent theory and thus set futures education in its wider social and economic context. As Richard Slaughter says in his introduction, both newcomers to the field and the small group of cognoscenti should find something useful.

Gerry Tickell
Project Manager
Bicentennial Futures Education Project
Commission for the Future, Melbourne, 1989.

SLAUGHTER, R. A. (ed) Studying the Future, Bicentennial Futures Education Project. Commission For the Future, Melbourne: xiv + 82 pp (1989) ISBN: 0-642-14281-5

Out of print.