“To set up a prognosis means to have already altered the situation from which it arises.” (Koselleck, 2004, p. 263)

Future seems to be an idiosyncratic feature of education. Apparently, education is meant to reach individual and social goals, which need to meet anticipated and possibly projected demands of the future. The understanding of educational needs is very much dependent on how the present is perceived, the future is imagined and the link between them is drafted (Beckert, 2013; Tröhler, 2017, p. 221; Waldow, 2019, p. 8f). Therefore, to justify present action in education policy discourse, which inevitably has social, material, and practical consequences, coherent pictures of the future based on historically established cultural frames must be drawn (Beckert, 2013, p. 222 & 234f).

This paper presents analytical insights into how futures are imagined or told in the field of global education policy. First findings are discussed along argumentative topoi (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016, p. 35; Boukala, 2016, p. 258f), which are inductively reconstructed from the discourse and represent general rationales framing the reasonings. The topoi are introduced with quotes from empirical material and discussed in relation to the broader social and historical context. The paper is part of a broader study aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the (re)production of global education policies by relating the discourse to future imaginaries. Therefore, it also discusses first indications of how this level of broader discourse on social reality to become relates to the programmatic level of education policy ideas.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its current project “Futures of Education” serve as concrete entry points into the global education policy arena. UNESCO appears to offer access to both dominant and especially marginalised perspectives in contrast to other more neoliberal actors in the global governing space. Inspired by the discourse historical approach (DHA) (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016), the analysis of material published between the project’s launch in 2019 and the end of 2020 – like working papers, background papers, meeting reports, and statements – as well as historical commission reports and an expert interview exemplifies how futures are imagined in global education policy discourse. The European Union (EU) as UNESCO’s partner in joint objectives and efforts collaborates with the organisation and currently constitutes UNESCO’s third largest donor (UNESCO, n.d.). Analysing the discourse around UNESCO, means to include European perspectives in relation to the wider global governing context.

International organisations (IOs) as central soft governance actors in global education governing field produce, manifest, and diffuse especially norms and by that affect the discursive level (see for example Jakobi, 2012; Lind Christensen & Ydesen, 2015; Elfert, 2018; Ydesen, 2019; Grek, 2020). There is potential to investigate closer how IOs construct and legitimise the norms, ideas, and recommendations somewhat before they diffuse globally (Jakobi, 2012). That is without implying that IOs portray the departure points of policy ideas (Lind Christensen & Ydesen, 2015). Moisio (2014) shows for example with her concept ‘policy spin’ how IO “Member States (or other national actors) may influence the policy formation process at the Commission [or in an IO] to advance initiatives beneficial to national policy.” (p. 222) The overall study intends contributing to open further parts of the ‘black box’ of global education policy (re)production by understanding decision-making based on future imaginaries (Beckert, 2013, p. 223). This paper sets the scene with a first glimpse into how the future is narrated in UNESCO’s “Futures of Education”.

The overall research project aims to gain a deeper understanding of the (re)production of education policies in global governing discourse. Based on sociology of expectations (see for example Borup et al., 2006) and sociological fictionalism (Beckert, 2013), I analyse the relation of the discourse to future imaginaries. The study adopts the approach of previous sociological research “[s]tudying the contest for the future” (Beckert & Suckert, 2020, p. 11) for the analysis of education policies in the global governing space. Considering hereby how topics, narratives and actors are situated deepens the understanding of the discursive power relations. Embedded in this overall project, this paper discusses first findings on how futures are narrated in UNESCO’s initiative. The analysis is inspired by the discourse historical approach (DHA), which offers a methodological framework and concrete research steps for the critical analysis of the discourse and its power relations. Language constitutes and transmits knowledge, organises social institutions and the performance of power (Wodak & Meyer, 2016, p. 7). Discourses are “constitutive as well as socially conditioned” (Ibid., p. 6) representing simultaneously prerequisite and outcome of the social. “[T]he discourse historical approach views ‘discourse’ as structured forms of knowledge and ‘text’ refers to concrete oral utterances or written documents” (Ibid., p. 6). Texts constitute extracted fixed meanings but are still “sites of struggle in that they show traces of differing discourses and ideologies contending and struggling for dominance.” (Ibid., p. 12) The texts, chosen for the analysis presented in this paper, are different types of publications of the first year of UNESCO’s “Futures of Education” project. That includes texts, which should inform UNESCO’s project and its international commission, and texts, which document preliminary discussion outcomes. Also, historical commission reports and an expert interview are considered. The critical gaze of the study covers mainly ‘text or discourse immanent critique’ and ‘socio-diagnostic critique’ aiming to explore text internal inconsistencies and dilemmas as well as discursively (re)produced manifest or latent power relations (Ibid., p. 25). The findings presented in this paper are gained through two main analytical steps guided by inductive coding strategies (Schreier, 2012): First, all discourse topics, which occur in the data corpus, are mapped; secondly, an analysis of discursive strategies followed (Reisigl & Wodak, 2016, p. 34ff). The findings are discussed along reconstructed topoi, which represent general rationales framing the topics and arguments in the discourse.

The topoi identified so far in the selected texts of UNESCO’s “Futures of Education” are for example the topoi of increasing elusiveness, strategic openness, plurality, crisis, disruption, and threat. The topoi relate to each other and occur partly simultaneously but differ regarding their positioning or centrality in the texts. For example, increasing elusiveness seems lose its centrality due to the certainty and presence of a global multi-layered disruption caused by the corona virus. The topoi of crisis, negative disruption and threat come to the foreground and the topos of openness – representing the expectation that challenges and opportunities occur simultaneously – changes. The global challenges caused by the pandemic prevail, but the possibly impending loss of future opportunities is framed as the actual central threat, underscoring the allegedly intrinsic double-edged nature of the future. This strategic openness and ambivalence regarding future seems to portray the central departure point of UNESCO’s project. Instead of building the initiative on a certain negative or positive thread, openness and plurality are framed as central features of the future. By that, the initiative implies reflexivity and therefore adequacy of the undertaking. It creates the impression that preparing for the future is not about knowing what exactly is coming but being aware that it could be both negative and positive (or maybe complex). It is about being able to identify challenges and opportunities and deal with them accordingly through the ability to adapt. This paper presents the topoi in depth with respective quotes from the material and discusses the topoi critically in relation to the broader social and historical context.

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