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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.