Paper short abstract

Presented as an autoethnographic, hybrid academic narrative, the study asks: To what extent do Futures methodologies function as practices of building and repairing educators’ sense of agency within a measured system, and under what conditions do they reproduce or resist dominant narratives?

Paper long abstract

Starting from the premise that practices of creating the past, present, and future are interconnected, this paper reframes Futures methodologies as practices of building and repairing human capacities within education systems shaped by neoliberal metrics and performative norms. Drawing on the STS understanding of repair, the research explores how Futures methods operate not only as speculative tools for imagining alternatives, but as practical interventions through which educators rebuild agency, repair damaged professional identities. Education is treated as a site of ongoing, largely invisible maintenance work, where practitioners continuously adapt, improvise, and repair themselves in response to systemic pressures.

The research employs a mixed‑methods framework combining Causal Layered Analysis, the Futures Triangle, and Speculative Design. Qualitative reflective journals are complemented by quantitative measures of agency, hope, and locus of control, enabling analysis of Futures practice as both experiential and structural capacity‑building.

Findings reveal a productive paradox. Futures methodologies do not inherently disrupt or reinforce dominant systems; they amplify existing contexts and intentions. When co‑opted by managerial agendas, they become acts of cosmetic construction, reinforcing metrics while obscuring repair work already underway. When applied reflexively, however, Futures methods function as repair practices: making breakdowns visible, surfacing sedimented assumptions, and enabling a shift from individualised survival toward “architecting resistance” through playful, imaginative, and values‑aligned interventions.

Positioned within debates on building and repairing, the paper argues that Futures praxis in education can be understood as building by repairing, contributing to more resilient ways of acting in and on the future.

Paper short abstract

The study examines how TVET students in Nigeria imagine futures beyond employability, emphasizing sustainability and innovation. A cross-sectional survey and interviews will sample 600 of 25,750 students. Statistical and thematic analyses will reposition TVET as transformative.

Paper long abstract

The lack of imagination has been clearly pre-destined to instill in the minds of students of TVET in Nigerian universities how they perceive their future and potential beyond employability. The study draws on existing literature on African futures, decolonized education, entrepreneurship, and indigenous apprenticeships. It examines how TVET students understand alternative socio-technical possibilities grounded in innovation, sustainability, and social justice. Qualitative interviews will be complemented by a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. The population comprises approximately 25,750 TVET students from publicly owned universities in Nigeria. A sample of 600 students will be selected using a multistage stratified random sampling technique across six geopolitical zones and programme specializations, with 100 students from each zone and specialization. Data will be collected through a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews focusing on students’ imaginaries of the future, institutional support, and exposure to innovative and indigenous learning models. The study is guided by perspectives from Science and Technology Studies concerning alternative futures and participatory imagination. Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, while qualitative responses will be examined through thematic analysis. Ethical considerations will include institutional ethical clearance, voluntary participation, anonymity, informed consent, and confidentiality of responses. The research seeks to address empirical gaps in reimagining TVET as a transformative space that enables Nigerian students to visualize and collaboratively produce plural, contextually relevant futures by exploring what futures are imagined and how educational structures shape them.

Paper short abstract

Educational practices that “bring nature into the classroom”, such as school farms or plant and animal adoption programs, miniaturize and isolate living beings from multispecies networks. Nature becomes domesticated, mediated, and pedagogically staged, appearing familiar yet unsettlingly artificial.

Paper long abstract

Educational practices aimed at “bringing nature into the classroom” - such as school farms, plant or animal adoption programs, and environmental education initiatives - have become increasingly common. While intended to connect students with nature, these practices mediate and radically simplify its complexity. Nature is miniaturized and staged through isolated elements - a plant, a chick, a small controlled ecosystem - detached from the multispecies ecological networks to which they belong. This produces a pedagogical uncanny: removed from context and transformed into an educational object, nature appears simultaneously familiar and artificial. Its dimension is domesticated, and narratively stabilized, producing a reassuring, moralized image of the environment. Yet this very artificialization generates an effect analogous to Masahiro Mori’s “uncanny valley”: like artificial entities that resemble, but do not fully replicate, living beings, these pedagogical forms of nature provoke unease by imitating life without conveying its relational complexity. Through a feminist and multispecies lens, particularly drawing on Donna Haraway, these practices can be interpreted as devices of epistemic domestication. Contrary to Haraway’s vision of the world as a network of situated, non-hierarchical multispecies relations, such pedagogies risk reproducing an anthropocentric and simplified view of ecology. They may be read as forms of ecological simulation, akin to the “most photographed barn” in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, where the barn becomes a hypermediated simulacrum of nature. Similarly, pedagogical nature emerges as a hyperreal, mediated version of the living: familiar yet unsettling, domesticated yet revealing contemporary tensions between ecological experience, cultural mediation, and simulacra.

Paper short abstract

Rushed AI adoption in education systems ignores the technical gap in standard education. Critical AI literacy must draw on vocational training models and promote an active engagement with functionality by shifting the focus from simple use to critical engagement with concrete technical operations.

Paper long abstract

Innovations in the field of AI have motivated a profound reappraisal of contemporary education systems. With AI technologies being poised to redefine future workforce competencies, policymakers have identified AI literacy as a strategic priority and the education sector as its key enabler. However, the push for AI adoption marking recent policy initiatives and the rush to address AI literacy skills has led to the uncritical incorporation of AI-based EdTech into classrooms, e.g., Estonia’s nationwide deal with OpenAI. The quest for pace in AI integration has not only subjected students to a risky experiment, but also sidesteps one major factor at the basis of the current competency gap: the absence of technical education in standard education curriculum.

Drawing on approaches to technology education and on experiential learning theories, this contribution posits that the challenges brought about by AI technologies should prompt a broader reflection on the role of technics in education. It argues that traditional approaches to vocational learning can provide important models and insights on how to develop critical AI literacy skills among students, which promote an active engagement with functionality and not merely AI use. Rather than being understood as an exceptional technology, AI should be placed in the context of its techno-historical evolution, alongside early paleolithic tools and industrial machinery. In this manner, one can not only deflate AI as a panacea but bring concreteness and materiality to the study of algorithmic and digitally encoded technical operations, building critical AI pedagogies.

technology education, vocational training, experiential learning, technicity