Teaching with scenarios: A social innovation to foster learning and social change in times of great uncertainty

Abstract

Learning strategies are social innovations of the past. To help us cope with problems in the past, they were developed, imitated, spread and codified into practices, rules and institutions. They lose their usefulness if the conditions of the present differ markedly from those of the past that gave rise to the then successful strategies. Our world is markedly different from the past. Thus, we need to introduce new learning strategies to be able to cope with the conditions of the present. And since one key characteristic of the present is a fast turbulence, we need to accelerate our rate of introduction of social innovations. We suggest scenarios as tool to do so.