Dissertation Project: Futures before Decisions

Vocational education and training is essential in shaping societal visions of the future. This is not only because most young people in Switzerland begin vocational education and training after lower secondary school. VET is part of the social imaginary (Taylor), meaning it involves normative ideas and images of the future. Specifically, VET sits at the intersection of education, work, society, politics, the economy, and technology, and aims to develop knowledge, skills, values, and ethics.

My dissertation project examines the concept of future imaginings as an analytical category. The colonization of a single future is highly debated and filled with conflicting interests, which is why the future of VET, as an essential part of society, becomes a site of struggle. In this pursuit of realization, representations of the future shape what futures are considered possible—while simultaneously dismissing or blocking others. By focusing on futures-making, this project aligns with the trend of emphasizing the power inherent in imagining the future. Future imaginings gained greater importance during the Postwar period. After World War II, the discourse on the future took on a new quality due to the belief in its predictability and, therefore, its feasibility. At the same time, the future in 1945 was a largely empty category that needed to be filled with new meanings through imagination.

Methodologically, imaginings of the future are reconstructed using approaches from intellectual history and the history of knowledge. These imaginings will be examined in three cases: (1) vocational training teachers, (2) vocational training policy experts (also in the context of the futurology of the time), and (3) VET youth, to finally compare and contrast their future imaginings of the time.