SCENARIO PLANNING AND THE TEACHER’S FUTURE ROLE

In a world like the one we live in, characterized by accelerating change and unpredictability, the need to think about the future is urgent and necessary and even more when the object of study is the public school, by its institutional nature contrary to any change. At best, the school is arrested by changes externally determined, having no space to undertake the initiative for a desired change. This paper claims for the need of anticipating the future, using a methodology of Scenario Planning. After a brief explanation of its origins, this paper gives a special mention to Peter Schwartz and his book “The Art of the Long View”, as well as the work of GBN - Global Business Network on projected scenarios on the demand of companies, research centres and country governments. Being the future uncertain, the Scenario Planning stimulates to consider alternative future projections, not necessarily utopias and dystopias, but framed by opposite driving forces. This paper proposes an exercise of future thinking, focusing on Portugal, in a European context characterized by an economic crisis with heavy consequences on the southern countries. From a matrix that crosses neoliberalism and social cohesion, with the high and the low status of the teacher in his/her relationship with the public school, four possible futures are drawn.