Research, part of a special feature on Seeds of Good Anthropocenes: Envisioning and Exploring Pathways toward Transformative Futures

INTRODUCTION

Higher education is a powerful site of societal change in the field of sustainability. Every year, countless students are taught new skills and perspectives that can contribute to the technical, social, economic, and political shifts needed for more sustainable futures. Teachers aim to educate students to become active citizens and change agents working for a better future (van Rijnsoever et al. 2023). But this means that students are faced with multiple interacting crises of overwhelming proportions: climate change, biodiversity loss, global inequality and suffering, political turmoil, and more. In some cases, it means learning about the details of this crisis for years on end, when many students already struggle with climate and eco-anxiety (Whitlock 2023). The idea that “there is no alternative” to our current exploitative, colonialist, and hyper-capitalist global reality is part of the way in which this dominant reality expresses its power (Fisher 2009). But potential alternative practices emerge everywhere all the time, or they are resurrected from previous times and traditions (Wright 2010, Graeber and Wengrow 2021). Dominant systems are upheld collectively by citizens who often do not realize that they have the power to make or break their societies.

A review of education approaches to sustainability shows that students are rarely engaged on the level of deeper personal and collective transformation, and are instead mainly taught instrumental skills (Moyer and Sinclair 2020). This can create a mismatch between what the students themselves understand and feel and what they are taught. There is a need for sustainability education that empowers students in terms of their ability to actively imagine and contribute to better futures (O'Brien et al. 2013) and that engages “head, hands, and heart” (Sipos et al. 2008).

This paper is a co-creative effort between teachers, teaching assistants, students, and focus country experts involved in a course on sustainability transformations, all of whom are the paper’s authors. We reflect on an approach to sustainability education that seeks to instill a sense that sustainability transformations are possible, though difficult. It is very important for students seeking to contribute to sustainability transformations to understand not only that change is possible, but how change really happens, in terms of politics, social and cultural shifts, economic and technical dimensions, and more (O'Brien et al. 2013, Miller et al. 2014). Understanding that change is possible, and how it comes about practically can be a key source of inspiration and hope. In addition, we believe it is important for students to learn that they are not the only ones interested in creating change, but that people all around the world are working on it in active and original ways. At the same time, it is important to educate students on how challenging sustainability transformations truly are, how deeply rooted systems of exploitation and inequality are in their material and ideological aspects.

Our case study in this paper is a second year bachelor’s course that uses “seeds,” or radical niche initiatives, projects, or technologies that exist presently and that can inspire new future pathways (Bennett et al. 2016), as a way to open up students’ thinking about the possibilities of the future. The seeds of Good Anthropocenes (SoGA) approach has been used extensively in participatory settings, but it has mostly been researched in the context of multi-stakeholder workshops rather than in educational settings (Preiser et al. 2024). We ask: how do students describe the learning effects of the SoGA approach? This also includes changes to students’ affective orientations toward the future, an important dimension of change, as will be discussed.

THEORY

Education for transformative futures, prefigurative power, and critical futures literacy

The societal role of education in sustainability transformations is a topic of in depth discussion in different literatures. O’Brien et al. (2013) provide a history of different perspectives on sustainability education, from more human-centered and arguably technocratic approaches to transformation that focus on ecological connection, critical politics and power analyses, and inter- and transdisciplinarity. Ideas about transformative education run from reformist to critical to citizen-focused and the social to “perspectivist,” which highlights that many perspectives are needed. O’Brien et al. (2013) propose that new types of knowledge necessary to address global challenges include knowledge that is integrated across disciplines, truly co-productive with society and students, embraces indigenous perspectives, and combines theoretical knowledge and practical know-how.

One key element recognized by O’Brien et al. is futures literacy, as first developed by Miller (2007). In Table 1 we outline our framing of futures literacy, which we will describe below.

Prefigurative futures literacy

De Geus et al. (2023) describe prefigurative power, or the ability to imagine and start to enact desired futures, as one of the key forms of transformative power. When the goal is to support students as “agents of change” (van Rijnsoever et al. 2023), bolstering their prefigurative power seems crucial. Understanding the prefigurative power side of futures literacy emphasizes the need to imagine new, radical futures that provide viable, inspiring, and imaginable alternatives beyond current mainstream imaginaries (Milkoreit 2017).

Specifically, students should engage with the question: how do transformations work, from the deepest leverage points like paradigm shifts (Leventon et al. 2021) to the quiet transformation of shifting everyday practices (Wertheim-Heck and Spaargaren 2016)? How do changes in meanings, connections, and the framing of power play a role in creating agency for action (Vervoort et al. 2024)? Moreover, students need creativity and imagination to be paired with this understanding of the workings of systems change. An increasing interest in creative practices (Vervoort et al. 2024), science fiction (Canavan and Robinson 2014), game design (Vervoort et al. 2022) and more has fed this recognition that transformative imaginations have to be bolstered. The making of new future worlds out of present day realities is a continuous, collective process (Vervoort et al. 2015). Present day action and imaginative practices are also intimately connected (Streeby 2018).

Critical futures literacy

There is a temptation to describe what we want to give students entirely as prefigurative power, adopting that term to replace futures literacy, because it is more focused on action and empowerment. But part and parcel of developing futures literacy is also to engage critically with futures, described by Godhe and Goode (2018) as critical future studies, by Barendregt et al. (2024) as critical pedagogy for design, and as “critical anticipatory capacities” at the 2022 Anticipations conference. We describe such critical futures literacy as the ability to engage with futures from a perspective that recognizes their inherent power dynamics and blind spots. This includes seeing power associated with the processes and performance of different “techniques of futuring” as they play out in society (Oomen et al. 2021) and in education, and with the underlying discourses and ideologies that support different futures (Muiderman et al. 2020, Mangnus et al. 2021). Core to critical futures literacy is a decolonial dimension on futures, that understands that potential futures are entangled with a plurality of differently experienced present worlds and different histories (Escobar 2020), many of which have been mostly silenced by colonial power (Mitchell and Chaudhury 2020). These different accounts of present, past, and future hold strong potential within themselves for new, transformative pathways that place decolonial narratives at their core (Beling et al. 2018, Terry et al. 2024).

Head, heart, hands

When we consider the need for students to be change agents (van Rijnsoever et al. 2023), there is a need to consider how education can go beyond intellectual engagement and instrumental skill learning. Futures literacy should be mobilized beyond analysis only, and into action (Sterling 2001). Moyer and Sinclair (2020) conclude from their review of sustainability education studies that there is a need to focus on values and personal transformation. Futures literacy needs to engage with the students’ affective orientations toward the future: how do students feel about the future, and how do these affects interact with their orientations toward possible action (Rosa 2019)? The need to focus on affective orientations is especially important in the face of widespread climate and eco-anxiety (Whitlock 2023, Ágoston et al. 2024). We are therefore interested in exploring what nourishing, supportive, and empowering orientations toward the future look like in educational settings, and how these “hearts” aspects tie to experience with the “heads” and “hands” aspects of learning with transformative futures (Sipos et al. 2008). Finally, there is the aforementioned desire to inspire in students the sense that they are “not alone” in wanting to enable change, that they are part of a global movement of people hoping to create a better world, and they do not have to change the world by themselves. This realization is often where social change starts (Summers-Effler 2002).

Combining prefigurative and critical aspects of futures literacy with the head, hands, heart model gives us a useful and multidimensional frame through which to understand education for sustainable futures (Table 1). When it comes to prefigurative futures literacy, students need to be able to understand how desirable or possible futures can be imagined that break from current mainstream imaginaries (head). They need the sense of agency, inspiration, and hope to want to do so (heart). And they need the skills, tools, and imaginative capacities to do so (hands). Pairing with this prefigurative capacity is a critical capacity to see the systemic challenges and hidden power dynamics inherent in different futures (head), feeling concern and care for the future and the emotional capacity to face conflict when power dynamics come into play (heart), and having the skills to integrate such critical perspectives in futures work (hands). A sense of being “not alone” supports the affective sides for both the prefigurative and critical aspects of futures literacy.

The Seeds of Good Anthropocenes approach and the X-Curve

Originally presented in Bennett et al. (2016), the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes (SoGA) approach was developed as an alternative to existing methods for imagining sustainable futures. The SoGA approach aims to offer a novel way of constructing futures by drawing on the diversity of futures that can be said to already exist in the present in the form of real initiatives. “Seeds” are sustainability-focused practices, technologies, social innovations, projects and more that currently exist, but that are not (yet) part of dominant regimes or systems (Bennett et al. 2016). They should represent a better future, at least according to someone in society. This last part is important: the seeds approach sees value in investigating a diversity of desired futures (Preiser et al. 2024). A seed can be used alone to imagine a pathway toward a better future; but what is arguably a better way to get to novelty using this approach is the combination of multiple seeds that are diverse in their approaches and their assumptions about change (Pereira et al. 2018, 2019, Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2020). The seeds approach is useful for developing bottom-up futures when top-down, technocratic foresight is often dominant (Pereira et al. 2021). Recently the notion of “disruptive seeds” has been developed to focus on those seeds that actively go against and challenge current systems (Rutting et al. 2023). Seeds themselves, however, are only inspiration for the starting point of change. They should be combined with an approach to conceptualizing the larger system transformation. For this, we use the X-Curve, developed by the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (Hebinck et al. 2022). The X-Curve has the benefit of focusing strongly both on the development of an alternative regime, but also on the breakdown of an existing regime, and the conflict and chaos that goes along with this breakdown. The X-Curve is becoming more common in use as part of the SoGA approach (Preiser et al. 2024). Finally, explorative future scenarios were used to “crash test” the pathways that students create, helping to ask difficult questions about how each pathway might behave under unexpected circumstances (Vervoort et al. 2014).

We investigate the combination of the SoGA approach, the X-Curve, and scenarios as a way to mobilize the head, heart, and hands of futures literacy. This combination of methods offers specific potential in this regard. Seeds are existing projects, and are therefore inherently prefiguring a potential future in the now. This also means that they are concrete enough to be practically engaged with by students in terms of head, heart, and hands, by focusing on their real details, or even by directly talking to the people involved. Emphasizing disruptive seeds and using the X-Curve and scenarios to critically examine change processes was expected to be a strong approach to developing critical futures literacy: it allows a strong focus on asking the difficult questions of how power and structural injustices can be shifted.

CASE STUDY

We investigate the application of the SoGA approach supported by the X-Curve and scenarios in a second year bachelor’s course for the Utrecht University interdisciplinary BSc program Global Sustainability Science. The course, titled Global Transformation Project (GTP), brings together over 150 students per year from the four tracks of the BSc program: Water, Climate and Ecosystems, Governance and Societal Transformation, Business and Innovation, and Energy and Resources. The students are, on average, 70–75% Dutch students and 25–30% international students. GTP as a course comes at the end of the second year of the BSc program. In the first year of the program, students learn the fundamentals about sustainability sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, methods and systems thinking, and finish the first year with an integration project. In the second year, students deepen their knowledge through track-specific courses. GTP is a mandatory course, which impacts the course design; it seeks to be reasonably accessible and engaging for a wide variety of students who must pass it to finish their BSc program. The course focuses on a project-based collaborative effort in which the students integrate their track backgrounds to develop transformation pathways for national contexts around the world. The course takes 10 weeks; students follow other courses alongside GTP. The design of Global Transformation Project has evolved over seven years in which the course designers (led by the lead author) have been able to experiment with different approaches to the development of transformation pathways. The project structure described below covers the entire length of the course. For more details about the course structure, please see Appendix 1.

Each student team focused on the development of a national transformation pathway for a specific focus country outside the Netherlands. This international focus exists because the BSc program has an explicitly global orientation. Each tutorial group of 30 students (consisting of six project groups) focuses on one country, with six national experts involved from that country who were in contact not only with the students, but could also connect with each other if this networking was valuable. Through peer review and group presentations, the students learned about the other projects focusing on the same country; and national experts would receive not one but six projects for their country focus. The focus countries in 2024 were Costa Rica, South Africa, Kenya, India, Indonesia, and Hungary, countries selected to provide a global diversity of perspectives, and because the teaching team had personal connections to these countries, which would help guarantee appropriate expertise.

To help connect the student teams’ international focus to the realities of focus countries and make their research useful for those contexts, students worked with focus country experts. These experts participated in online calls with the students twice, once to frame the research and once to review the draft results. Students were offered one expert contact by the teaching team; they were required to find a second expert themselves to encourage research independence and networking (though this could be done through the first contact if possible). Focus country experts tended to be people working in innovative sustainability practice in the country in question, in NGOs, governments, or sustainable businesses, or, in some cases, academics who are close to sustainability practice. They were asked by the teaching team, often through personal connections of the teachers who might be familiar with or even from the focus countries they are guiding the teams on. This helped make sure the connection was valuable for all involved.

Key elements of the group project

The group project consists of a 16,000 words max document created by 4 or 5 students. The following three elements are the most important components of the group project. For more details about the various elements involved in the project, please see Appendix 1. For an example of a project, please see Appendix 4.

1. Using the seeds approach

The seeds approach was core to the course. Transformation pathways were developed entirely based on a selection of 3 of 4 seeds by each project team. The definition of what seeds could be considered was kept quite open, following that basic framing of niche practices that are happening now, not yet mainstream, and with potential to lead to a sustainable future according to someone in society.

Students were provided the https://goodanthropocenes.net/ database as a starting point. Student teams were recommended to find at least some seeds in their case study country contexts, to help contextualize the pathway in its national setting; but they were also encouraged to use seeds from outside the country context, to introduce novelty to the pathway. Furthermore, they were encouraged to use a combination of seeds that represented their educational track perspectives, so a combination of social/political, economic, and ecological/biophysical/technological seeds.

Though the core seeds framing was used based on Bennett et al. (2016), it was further supported by the encouragement to also look for disruptive seeds as framed by Rutting et al. (2023), seeds that seek to actively challenge existing systems. These include activist groups, political movements, shareholder activists, groups organizing lawsuits, and more.

Based on the selection of these seeds, students were asked to develop a combined idea for a pathway by combining the selected seeds. They were asked to describe how the different seeds were complementary, if a common theme emerged, and whether there were common drivers leading people to engage with these practices. Technical seeds could complement more social or political seeds; seeds focusing on creating alternatives could complement more disruptive seeds. They were encouraged to take the seeds as inspiration and not to stick too rigidly to their features, in order to truly create a new pathway. They were asked to give the pathway a name to support its own identity.

2. The X-Curve

For the development of future pathways, seeds offered only one part of the puzzle. What was also needed was a structure to help imagine what needs to happen to help grow the combined pathway, and to understand where resistance and conflict might come from. The X-Curve was used for this purpose (Hebinck et al. 2022). The X-Curve in its basic framing is fairly abstract. To provide more detailed questions and more of a focus on the actions of different system actors, we adapted a detailed version of the X-Curve created by DRIFT for a wall poster version for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) in 2022 and later published in the event’s book (Loorbach et al. 2024; see Fig. 1). The focus in this version of the X-Curve is on the agency of specific actors, and on connections between the different X-Curve elements. We rephrased some connections to this X-Curve version slightly for the sake of accessibility, and removed the connections that focused on the next cycle/transition, for the sake of simplicity. This adapted version of the X-Curve provided an overview and backbone for the project, with its elements forming the basis for different questions and project sections; and these sections were further supported by secondary literature. More background on this adapted version of the X-Curve has been published online (Vervoort 2025).

3. Future scenarios

The third methodological element for the project was the use of explorative scenarios (Wiebe et al. 2018). Such scenarios are not meant to create desirable futures, but to offer challenging “what-if” stories about the future that can be used to question the assumptions, of plans, strategies, and, in this case, pathways (Vervoort et al. 2014). Students were guided in the development of future scenarios into multiple scenario sets. Each group chose four most relevant scenarios to test and improve their pathways. By the time students created their scenarios, they had developed complete transformation pathways. Each scenario would be used to investigate the core assumptions of the pathway; and changes to the core pathway text would subsequently be made, with clear indications from which scenarios these changes originated.

METHODS

The core research tool in our course analysis was the creation of a qualitative, open survey. This was done in the second-to-last tutorial rather than in the last tutorial, when students would be working against a deadline and needed all the time to finish their project. This decision has some downsides: students would perhaps not have developed a complete mastery of their projects yet, and might still be confused about some aspects. On the other hand, getting an image of the experience while students were still in it is valuable as well, potentially highlighting some valuable difficulties or challenges.

Students were informed that the survey was for a research paper, and the survey information stated that by filling it in, students consented to this. The survey was not mandatory, and was made anonymous. In addition, a feedback group was organized with representatives of all tutorials in the middle of the course (6 in total). After the feedback group was done, the lead author proposed to involve the feedback group members in the development of this paper, to provide the student perspective across all groups on all aspects (writing and survey coding). The feedback group’s main focus was to improve the course, rather than answer our research question. However, it still provided helpful general contextualization for the students’ experiences reported in the survey, so we have added it in Appendix 2 and will refer to it in the discussion where useful.

The survey was designed to be open in terms of inputs, allowing students to write shorter or longer paragraphs. This approach was chosen because we were interested in the details about what student learned from the SoGA approach.

We asked the following three core questions, which will be discussed in the results section.

1. Did you learn anything from working with the seeds you selected? What was it?
2. How has working with seeds, the X-Curve, and the scenarios impacted your understanding of what futures are possible?
3. How has your work with seeds, the X-Curve, and scenarios impacted your feelings about the future?

We also asked the following six supporting questions:

1. Did you learn anything about working with seeds from your national expert? What was it?
2. Was there something about a specific seed that stood out to you in particular that made it different from other seeds in terms of the insight you gained from it?
3. Did you learn anything from combining the seeds into a single strategy/pathway? If so, what insight stands out for you?
4. Did you learn anything from using the X-Curve for your pathway development? If so, what insight stands out for you?
5. Did you learn anything from making and using the scenario sets? What was it?
6. What was/is most difficult or frustrating about using seeds, the X-Curve, and scenarios for the development of your project?

Main question 1 was asked first, followed by all the supporting questions, which were meant to help prepare for the answers of main questions 2 and 3, because students would have considered the process and its benefits and problems in depth by the time they would answer the two questions about changes to understandings and feelings around the future.

We phrased the questions about learning in the “did you learn anything” format to allow the students to also say that they did not learn anything. This was emphasized in the text and explanation, to avoid implying to the students that they would have to answer something in the positive. As we will see, some students did answer in the negative. With the questions about how working with the approach changed students’ understandings and feelings, there was also clear space given for students to answer that they did not change their feelings or understandings, and indeed, some students did answer in this way.

We received 92 responses to the questionnaire from a class of 156 students. This means that 64 responses were missing, most likely because students were also working on their research projects in the meantime in the class in which the survey was presented and the survey was not mandatory. What bias this introduced becomes speculative. It is hard to say whether students who kept working on their projects struggled more with the course, or were more focused on getting a higher grade, and whether students were just disengaged rather than focusing on their own work in the first place. Some students were also absent that day because of illness and other personal reasons.

Analysis of survey results

The responses collected by the questionnaire were analyzed by content analysis. Given the large body of results created by 92 responses to a large number of qualitative questions, we organized a coding team: two authors paired up to each code one question. This author team would go through all responses for that question, and create codes as they encountered more answers, until there were codes for all answers, including codes for specific aspects of answers because students often wrote paragraphs that would contain multiple aspects. When new codes were introduced, old codes would also be reviewed. These proposed codes were then shared by the coding duo with all other coders to be agreed upon. Then, the two coders would code the answers, checking each other’s work. When a single text element was relevant for two codes, it was coded for both. Codes were applied to an entire answer, because most replies were a few lines long and all were coherent enough for this. Consequently, each code could only be applied to an answer once. This allowed us to keep track of how many of the answers from the 92 participants corresponded to a specific code. The lead author checked the work by all coding teams.

RESULTS

Ninety-two students provided answers to the questionnaire. For all answers collectively for each question, a number of codes were generated to cover the diversity of answers, ranging from 6 to 24 unique codes per question. The full set of results for all questions is presented in Appendix 3. For sets with fewer codes, we will present all answers. For sets with more codes, we will present all codes that were populated with four answers or more for the sake of brevity. In this results section we will present the three questions whose answers connect most directly to insights about how students were impacted by the course in terms of our definition of futures literacy. We will present the top five codes for each question, with three examples of answers per code for illustration.

Question 1: Did you learn anything from working with the seeds you selected? What was it?

Table 2 shows the top five answers for question 1, focused on learning from working with seeds, with three answers per code as examples. Out of 92 answers, 82 reported “having learned something.” This coding was more a general check, and less meaningful by itself, because this learning encompassed a wide variety of answers, including concrete skills around the use of seeds (1.1), an awareness of innovations (1.2), learning about how to create change/positive impact (1.3), inspiration from seeds (1.4), specific country contexts (1.5), and more.

Question 2: How has working with seeds, the X-Curve, and the scenarios impacted your understanding of what futures are possible?

Table 3 shows the top five codes for answers to main question 2 about whether working with the seeds, the X-Curve, and the future scenarios has changed students’ understanding of the future, with three examples per code. Students discussed how these approaches gave them new tools to work with potential futures (2.1); opened up their perspectives on what is possible (2.2); helped them understand that change is possible, but multifaceted and complex (2.3 and 2.4), and that specific scenarios can be imagined. A number of other elements were also mentioned, while a few students also said it had not impacted their understanding.

Question 3: How has your work with seeds, the X-Curve and scenarios impacted your feelings about the future?

Table 4 shows the top five codes for answers to the final question about how the work with the course’s methods has impacted their feelings about the future, with three examples for every code. An increase in hopefulness is often reported (3.1), but this code also includes answers that elsewhere in the answer talk about being more worried or seeing more problems than before (3.5); and with an awareness that change is hard (3.3). Contrasting or complicated feelings are mentioned about this (3.4). A number of students mentioned explicitly that they found it heartening, encouraging, or inspiring to know that there are many initiatives out there (3.2). A number of students simply mentioned that the project had not impacted their feelings about the future; while other students said that it was a net zero because they gained more positive perspectives, but also saw more problems; which we do not see as the same thing as having complicated or more intense feelings about this opposition.

Summary of answers to supporting questions

The coding and analysis of answers to the six supporting questions can be found in Appendix 3; key results are summarized here. On question 4 on the connection between seeds and focus country experts, an image emerges of the focus country experts offering a complementary role to the work with seeds. Experts often offered local contextualization in terms of politics, geography, and more, and/or advice for practical implementation. On question 5 about what seeds stood out to students, the answers were very diverse, from community empowerment to education, technology, conservation, and more. On question 6 about what students learned specifically from turning seeds into an integrated pathway, students discussed the need to think about the complementarities of seeds across domains and disciplines, and the process of combining seeds as one that brought inspiration for a future pathway, something that needed creativity and ambition.

The answers to question 7, about what students learned from working with the X-Curve, stand out because the X-Curve offers a complement to the seeds component. What stands out is that many students emphasized that they found thinking about the chaos and breakdown phase especially novel and relevant. Frequent answers also included the way the X-Curve structures thinking about transformation, but also answers that describes how it highlights the complexity. More students indicated being frustrated or struggling with the X-Curve than with the other elements, because they felt it was restrictive in its detail or difficult to answer. On question 8, about the use of scenarios, students frequently discussed the creativity needed to make scenarios, the uncertainty of scenario creation, and the engagement with complexity and their own worldviews that the scenarios offered. Finally, question 9, about frustrations and difficulties showed that students had most frustrations about working with seeds, particularly finding good seeds and deciding if something is a right fit. There were also frustrations with the general project structure into detailed elements, or with the abstractness of the approach.

DISCUSSION

In this paper we focus on the potential of the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes (SoGA) approach for transformative education. We presented and investigated insights and lessons reported by students involved in a 10-week second year mandatory bachelor’s course organized around a group project where 162 students used seeds to develop transformation pathways for six countries (India, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Costa Rica, and Hungary). We researched the course through an anonymous survey with a number of open questions, answered by 92 students. Here, we will briefly discuss the limitations of our research approach.

Reflecting on limitations

First of all, it should be acknowledged that conducting a survey on students from the position of leading a class has its potential biases. Even though the survey was anonymous, students may still feel inclined to answer questions more positively because of their desire to please teachers or because they do not want to be overly critical of their work. Secondly, conducting research on a class can be limiting in terms of the time available for reflection. This was a busy class where the students’ time was very precious, especially toward the end of their projects. A survey was the more time effective way to get many answers in a comparable format, but the results offer less context than other formats such as interviews and focus groups; though our reflection discussions with students reported in the appendix help provide context. With more time, more in-depth focus groups would provide mode depth to contextualize the answers. However, the involvement of students as co-authors in the research project and paper has also helped to provide further context on the student experience.

Head

The results indicate that working with seeds as an educational approach, supported by scenarios and the X-Curve, is valuable for a number of reasons. In terms of the prefigurative side of futures literacy, many students see more possibilities for alternative futures, supported by concrete initiatives that already exist. They understand that change can be bottom-up, and that it involves not only technical but also social, cultural, and economic innovations. The encounter with so many initiatives that already exist opens up their understanding both of the present and what is possible in the future. The X-Curve supports this opening up of possibilities by offering a structure to help think about the complexity of trying to go from seeds to fully changed systems. Scenarios further support the opening up of possibilities. This goal to help students understand and see a bigger possibility space using the methods from the course seems to be the most straightforwardly achievable. Students reported on experiencing the comparing and connecting of seeds as something that also opened up possibilities, and as a way to connect and integrate disciplines.

In terms of critical futures literacy students spoke about how the X-Curve made it possible to look at changes in power in transformations in a more ordered fashion; but at the same time there were many comments about how the X-Curve highlighted the complexity of transformations. The work with scenarios similarly highlighted future possibilities, but also complexity, uncertainty, and the challenging of previous assumptions. Students remarked on the many factors that come into play in changing systems, and the high uncertainty associated with changing them. The focus on chaos and breakdown in the X-Curve and the notion that current regimes have to be dismantled was experienced as new. There is often a blind spot in sustainability work around the “unmaking” aspects of transformations (Feola et al. 2021, van Oers et al. 2021).

There is less of a sense of clarity in the answers about how to overcome this messy, political, and systemic challenge of systems change. On the one hand, reflecting on the course, we believe this potentially points to a need to offer more than the X-Curve as a guide to how change happens. The course already offers examples and strategies of how people change unsustainable systems and dismantle current power structures. But a clear typology of such strategies with strong change mechanisms might help counteract the emphasis on difficulty and challenge offered by our adapted use of the X-Curve. This is a difficult question of balance, however, that directly connects to our next topic, the emotional components of futures literacy.

Heart

Our question focusing on affective orientations indicated that the SoGA approach bolstered reasons for hope, inspiration, and optimism and new potential pathways, but also new reasons to be worried and feel overwhelmed or pessimistic about change possibilities. On the one hand, this combination of hope and concern is valuable to see and in line with what was hoped in terms of affective shifts as a result of the course. Systems change is very difficult and we are living in highly uncertain times. If students come out of a course with a simplistic sense of optimism, we would see this as a miscalibration and a lack of critical futures literacy. It might mean that students underestimate the deep ways in which current systems are entrenched in unjust power structures and how difficult it is to change them. Concern, care, critical consciousness, and seeing injustice are also motivators for action (Summers-Effler 2002, Adam and Groves 2011). If students can feel agency, hope, and inspiration as well as being concerned, feeling care and frustration with injustice, this is a potentially powerful combination. However, there is a danger that encounters with the injustices and immovability of current systems simply become overwhelming and demotivating, as shown in research on climate anxiety in education (Khalaim and Budziszewska 2024, Servant-Miklos 2024).

This is where there is a risk of focusing too much on seeds as a way to motivate and inspire in the absence of other sources. The seeds are, after all, only seeds; they are small projects in the present that offer potential in the future. They are not focused, macro-level strategies to build new forms of power and dismantle current systems. Some students commented that the seeds gave them hope, but on the other hand, the fact that these seeds already exist and yet the system is what it is also discouraged them. We see a risk in focusing too much on bottom-up change through seeds in a way that neglects larger scale strategies that focus directly on shifting power.

To counter this risk, the course offered a few elements. First of all, there is the encouragement to focus on “disruptive seeds” (Rutting et al. 2023), seeds that directly challenge current power structures. These are social movements, protests groups, divestment campaigns, and more. However, the inclusion of such seeds could go beyond being “encouraged” to being made a standard requirement. Furthermore, keeping this to the category of seeds still focuses on bottom-up change, when macro-level examples such as the Lula campaign and victory in Brazil might be important to include more explicitly and structurally. Another element of the course that offers insights to students about how system change can be done is the presence of eight practitioner lecturers working in all sectors, government, business, journalism, NGOs, and more, who speak about their experiences of enacting shifts in existing systems, and talk honestly about their personal journeys and struggles attempting to make change happen. These lectures are highly appreciated by the students, but there is currently no explicit link between the lectures and the group assignments. Such an explicit link might help strengthen the internalization by students that systems change is possible.

There is an argument to be made, however, for simply creating the space to be with the emotions of frustration and overwhelmingness associated with the difficulty of systems change more consciously, for “staying with the trouble” (Haraway 2016). There is organic space for this in the course, in the lectures especially, and there is a focus on the value of difficult emotions in society. But a dedicated session focused on the value and challenges of certain mixes of emotions specifically for the students themselves could be powerful, and it could be inspired by other examples (Servant-Miklos 2024).

One powerful aspect that modifies hope, concern, and overwhelmingness is the sense that students are not in it alone (Summers-Effler 2002). Students often report on variations of this feeling. Working together with national experts plays a part in this. The series of guest speakers also stimulates this sense, as we have seen from reflections by students. Similarly, in the middle of the course a “seeds festival” was organized where students presented their work on posters to 40+ practitioners from all across the Netherlands and beyond in an open, informal marketplace. This is often experienced as an emotional boost and a high point of the course. We want to build on this “you are not alone” element because we believe it is key to empowering students further while placing less of a burden on them as individuals. Communities and social movements can be a source of great emotional energy (Summers-Effler 2002). For instance, it is our ambition to try and involve not only groups of national experts but also groups of students from the course’s focus countries to enhance opportunities for connection and mutual learning.

Hands

The “doing” component of the course is important to consider in terms of futures literacy as well as the students’ sense of agency. The course focused strongly on learning futures methods, and on group work to make new pathways in collaboration with societal actors. The survey results, supported by the feedback groups, indicate that students were unused to a “futuring” mode of education, where things had to be actively imagined into the future instead of analyzed in the present or past. With working on the future comes a kind of indeterminateness that was experienced as difficult, and the sense that so much of the project is about making judgements about what the boundaries of systems are, how things can be connected, and so on. Students and teachers saw this challenge as at least partly a “good problem to have”: learning the futuring mode of working is likely to bring some discomfort (Scager et al. 2014).

Regarding the seeds approach, students reported enjoying looking for seeds and learning about everything that is going on. They also reported on challenges regarding the finding and using of seeds. Some students reported on having trouble identifying seeds, in particular when they were still in the middle of the course. The feedback sessions (Appendix 2), which were held around the time when students identified seeds, provide more context for this. Students working on specific country contexts where English was not the primary language sometimes felt like they were missing out on the best seeds because they could not navigate other languages as effectively. On the other hand, many students were able to create a mix of country-specific seeds and seeds that had been developed elsewhere but that were relevant for the topic and the context. Students sometimes indicated that it was harder to find seeds that were more about storytelling or changing the political landscape. Databases focused on such practices, social movements, protest tactics, and so on, do exist such as Beautiful Trouble (https://beautifultrouble.org/), the Environmental Justice Atlas (Temper et al. 2015), and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/). These could be offered to student teams to complement the seeds database. The combining of seeds into a pathway was a mode of learning that students reported as inspiring, but challenging, and sometimes frustrating.

The international character of the course has the challenging aspect that students have to gain familiarity with their focus country and sometimes feel out of their depth speaking about an unfamiliar context. Working with country experts was valuable for this, as it was in a manner complementary to the finding and working with seeds; the country experts provided context and suggestions for political, geographical, and community organizing and implementing.

However, the international setup of the course also made the “hands” part more limited. Students could not easily go into field work or live environment. This more local scope is already covered in other courses and the international component is important in the curriculum. However, given these limitations, it is worth thinking about more ways to increase the hands-on and experiential elements of the course.

Pedagogical considerations for education on futures literacy

The SoGA approach seems valuable from a head, heart, hands (Sipos et al. 2008) perspective as well as from a desire to enhance the students’ prefigurative power (de Geus et al. 2023) and transformative skills and capacities (O'Brien et al. 2013). But how easy is it to apply the discussed approach to teaching futures literacy to education at scale? Our experience has been that structures and instructions can be standardized to give enough support within which students can find their own creative solutions. The seeds, X-Curve, and scenarios elements are all highly structured. The existence of the Seeds to the Good Anthropocenes database further helps with the availability of existing resources. The combination of these methods can be overwhelming, so giving students enough time to iterate on the various elements is important. An element of the approach that is less easily scalable is the contacts with national experts, because these depend very much on the networks of teachers. One solution for this that does provide less support for students but that is more easily scalable is to leave the contacting of national experts up to the students. The viability of this also depends on the maturity of the students, to what degree they are comfortable with building their own contacts for a project. In our course, as mentioned, we gave them one contact and asked them to find another.

There are also some limitations to the focus on bottom-up initiatives in that they themselves do not offer examples of macro-scale system transformation. Other methods such as scenarios and the X-Curve help complement this, but based on our results we encourage a more explicit focus on good examples of macro-scale movements to create system transformations as well.

Seeds education as a source of inspiration and action for society

Finally, it is worth discussing what education using a mix of seeds and other futures methods can mean for wider society. Thirty-six national experts volunteered to participate in the course, with the expectation of positive engagements with inspiring students, but also with a hope that the course’s research would be of interest to them. To maximize this possibility, we have shared not only the reports that students developed for their own expert, but also the reports of all 36 groups across six countries with all experts. Similarly, the seeds festival was experienced by the 40+ visitors as an evening of inspiration, seeing all the work the students were doing on seeds, but more generally being around young aspiring sustainability change agents and getting to connect with the next generation, a “you are not alone” experience for the visitors to the festival. Seeds collected by students and developed into pathways can therefore be a source of intellectual and practical inspiration as well as the process offering emotional energy and connection for those working with the students. More practically, having a group of around 150 students find and analyze seeds is a unique opportunity for the development of seeds databases. We are planning to submit these Seeds to the Good Anthropocenes database. Moreover, the lessons from the use of seeds in this educational context can be valuable for other societal engagements outside of research contexts as well.

CONCLUSION

The SoGA approach has a growing number of empirical cases where it has been used in research to analyze a large number of seeds from the database or to undertake participatory visioning or scenario exercises. Here, we unpack the usefulness of the seeds approach in a completely different realm, that of tertiary education, in the context of stimulating futures literacy in both prefigurative and critical dimensions and related to “head, heart, and hands.” We showcase how the seeds approach, while sometimes being frustrating and complex, was a useful pedagogical tool in building futures literacy in students, and giving them a sense of what change might be possible. The bottom-up character of the seeds approach also created some limitations. Futures literacy is critical to navigate the uncertain futures in the Anthropocene. By reflecting on seeds in education, we are able to expand the seeds toolbox outside of research, capacitating students as active citizens and future change makers. We aim for our findings to offer insights to a global community of lecturers and teachers in sustainability science, and to inspire others to engage with the seeds approach in ways appropriate to their context.

LITERATURE CITED

Adam, B., and C. Groves. 2011. Futures tended: care and future-oriented responsibility. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 31:17-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467610391237

Ágoston, C., Á. Buvár, A. Dúll, Z. Á. Szabó, and A. Varga. 2024. Complex pathways from nature relatedness and knowledge to pro-environmental behavior through eco-emotions. Journal of Cleaner Production 468:143037. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.143037

Barendregt, L. E., R. Bendor, and B. F. Van Eekelen. 2024. Teaching for transformation: lessons from critical pedagogy for design futures education. Journal of Futures Studies 28:123-128.

Beling, A. E., J. Vanhulst, F. Demaria, V. Rabi, A. E. Carballo, and J. Pelenc. 2018. Discursive synergies for a ‘Great Transformation’ towards sustainability: pragmatic contributions to a necessary dialogue between human development, degrowth, and buen vivir. Ecological Economics 144:304-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.025

Bennett, E. M., M. Solan, R. Biggs, T. McPhearson, A. V. Norström, P. Olsson, L. Pereira, G. D. Peterson, C. Raudsepp-Hearne, F. Biermann, S. R. Carpenter, E. C. Ellis, T. Hichert, V. Galaz, M. Lahsen, M. Milkoreit, B. Martin López, K. A. Nicholas, R. Preiser, G. Vince, J. M. Vervoort, and J. Xu. 2016. Bright spots: seeds of a good Anthropocene. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14:441-448. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.1309

Canavan, G., and K. S. Robinson. 2014. Green planets: ecology and science fiction. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut, USA.

de Geus, T., F. Avelino, M. Strumińska-Kutra, M. Pitzer, J. M. Wittmayer, L. Hendrikx, V. Joshi, N. Schrandt, L. Widdel, M. Fraaije, M. Iskandarova, S. Hielscher, and K. Rogge. 2023. Making sense of power through transdisciplinary sustainability research: insights from a Transformative Power Lab. Sustainability Science 18:1311-1327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01294-4

Escobar, A. 2020. Pluriversal politics. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

Feola, G., O. Vincent, and D. Moore. 2021. (Un)making in sustainability transformation beyond capitalism. Global Environmental Change 69:102290. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102290

Fisher, M. 2009. Capitalist realism. Is there no alternative? Zero Books, Winchester, UK.

Godhe, M., and L. Goode. 2018. Critical future studies - a thematic introduction. Culture Unbound 10:151-162. https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.2018102151

Graeber, D., and D. Wengrow. 2021. The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, New York, USA.

Haraway, D. J. 2016. Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, USA. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q

Hebinck, A., G. Diercks, T. von Wirth, P. J. Beers, L. Barsties, S. Buchel, R. Greer, F. van Steenbergen, and D. Loorbach. 2022. An actionable understanding of societal transitions: the X-curve framework. Sustainability Science 17:1009-1021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01084-w

Khalaim, O., and M. Budziszewska. 2024. “It should not only be technical education.” Students’ climate anxiety experiences and expectations toward university education in three European universities. Journal of Environmental Education 55:308-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2024.2339824

Leventon, J., D. J. Abson, and D. J. Lang. 2021. Leverage points for sustainability transformations: nine guiding questions for sustainability science and practice. Sustainability Science 16:721-726. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00961-8

Loorbach, D., V. Patteeuw, S. van Stein, L.-C. Szacka, and P. Veenstra. 2024. It’s about time: the architecture of climate change. nai010 publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Mangnus, A. C., J. Oomen, J. M. Vervoort, and M. A. Hajer. 2021. Futures literacy and the diversity of the future. Futures 132:102793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2021.102793

Milkoreit, M. 2017. Imaginary politics: climate change and making the future. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 5:62. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.249

Miller, R. 2007. Futures literacy: a hybrid strategic scenario method. Futures 39:341-362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2006.12.001

Miller, T. R., A. Wiek, D. Sarewitz, J. Robinson, L. Olsson, D. Kriebel, and D. Loorbach. 2014. The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda. Sustainability Science 9:239-246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-013-0224-6

Mitchell, A., and A. Chaudhury. 2020. Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’ of ‘the world’: white apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms. International Relations 34:309-332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820948936

Moyer, J. M., and A. J. Sinclair. 2020. Learning for sustainability: considering pathways to transformation. Adult Education Quarterly 70:340-359. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713620912219

Muiderman, K., A. Gupta, J. Vervoort, and F. Biermann. 2020. Four approaches to anticipatory climate governance: different conceptions of the future and implications for the present. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11:e673. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.673

O'Brien, K., J. Reams, A. Caspari, A. Dugmore, M. Faghihimani, I. Fazey, H. Hackmann, D. Manuel-Navarrete, J. Marks, R. Miller, K. Raivio, P. Romero-Lankao, H. Virji, C. Vogel, and V. Winiwarter. 2013. You say you want a revolution? Transforming education and capacity building in response to global change. Environmental Science and Policy 28:48-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.11.011

Oomen, J., J. Hoffman, and M. A. Hajer. 2021. Techniques of futuring: on how imagined futures become socially performative. European Journal of Social Theory 25:252-270. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431020988826

Pereira, L., G. R. Asrar, R. Bhargava, L. H. Fisher, A. Hsu, J. Jabbour, J. Nel, O. Selomane, N. Sitas, C. Trisos, J. Ward, M. van den Ende, J. Vervoort, and A. Weinfurter. 2021. Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives. Sustainability Science 16:1907-1922. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01013-x

Pereira, L. M., E. Bennett, R. Biggs, A. C. Mangnus, A. V. Norstrom, G. Peterson, C. Raudsepp-Hearne, M. Sellberg, and J. M. Vervoort. 2019. Seeding change by visioning Good Anthropocenes. Solutions Journal 10.

Pereira, L. M., E. Bennett, R. Biggs, G. Peterson, T. McPhearson, A. Norstrom, P. Olsson, R. Preiser, C. Raudsepp-Hearne, and J. M. Vervoort. 2018. Seeds of the future in the present. Pages 327-350 in T. Elmqvist, X. Bai, N. Frantzeskaki, C. Griffith, D. Maddox, T. McPhearson, S. Parnell, P. Romero-Lankao, D. Simon, and M. Watkins, editors. Urban planet - knowledge towards sustainable cities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316647554.018

Preiser, R., T. Hichert, R. Biggs, J. van Velden, N. Magadzire, G. Peterson, L. Pereira, K. Mayer, and K. Benessaiah. 2024. Transformative foresight for diverse futures: the seeds of good Anthropocenes initiative. Development Policy Review 42:e12791. https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12791

Raudsepp-Hearne, C., G. D. Peterson, E. M. Bennett, R. Biggs, A. V. Norström, L. Pereira, J. Vervoort, D. M. Iwaniec, T. McPhearson, P. Olsson, T. Hichert, M. Falardeau, and A. J. Aceituno. 2020. Seeds of good Anthropocenes: developing sustainability scenarios for Northern Europe. Sustainability Science 15:605-617. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-019-00714-8

Rosa, H. 2019. Resonance: a sociology of our relationship to the world. Wiley, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA.

Rutting, L., J. Vervoort, H. Mees, L. Pereira, M. Veeger, K. Muiderman, A. Mangnus, K. Winkler, P. Olsson, T. Hichert, R. Lane, B. Bottega Pergher, L. Christiaens, N. Bansal, A. Hendriks, and P. Driessen. 2023. Disruptive seeds: a scenario approach to explore power shifts in sustainability transformations. Sustainability Science 18:1117-1133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01251-7

Scager, K., S. F. Akkerman, A. Pilot, and T. Wubbels. 2014. Challenging high-ability students. Studies in Higher Education 39:659-679. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2012.743117

Servant-Miklos, G. 2024. Pedagogies of collapse: a helpful education for the end of the world as we know it. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350400528

Sipos, Y., B. Battisti, and K. Grimm. 2008. Achieving transformative sustainability learning: engaging head, hands and heart. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 9:68-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/14676370810842193

Sterling, S. 2001. Sustainable education. Green Books for the Schumacher Society, UK.

Streeby, S. 2018. Imagining the future of climate change: world-making through science fiction and activism. University of California Press, Oakland, California, USA. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520967557

Summers-Effler, E. 2002. The micro potential for social change: emotion, consciousness, and social movement formation. Sociological Theory 20:41-60. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9558.00150

Temper, L., D. del Bene, and J. Martinez-Alier. 2015. Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas. Journal of Political Ecology 22:255-278. https://doi.org/10.2458/v22i1.21108

Terry, N., A. Castro, B. Chibwe, G. Karuri-Sebina, C. Savu, and L. Pereira. 2024. Inviting a decolonial praxis for future imaginaries of nature: introducing the entangled time tree. Environmental Science & Policy 151:103615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.103615

van Oers, L., G. Feola, E. Moors, and H. Runhaar. 2021. The politics of deliberate destabilisation for sustainability transitions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 40:159-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2021.06.003

van Rijnsoever, F. J., S. Sitzler, and Y. Baggen. 2023. The change agent teaching model: educating entrepreneurial leaders to help solve grand societal challenges. International Journal of Management Education 21:100893. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2023.100893

Vervoort, J., A. Mangnus, S. McGreevy, K. Ota, K. Thompson, C. Rupprecht, N. Tamura, C. Moossdorff, M. Spiegelberg, and M. Kobayashi. 2022. Unlocking the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance. Earth System Governance 11:100130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2021.100130

Vervoort, J. M. 2025. Using the DRIFT X-Curve to think about agency and future pathways in education and research. Anticiplay, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Vervoort, J. M., R. Bendor, A. Kelliher, O. Strik, and A. E. R. Helfgott. 2015. Scenarios and the art of worldmaking. Futures 74:62-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.009

Vervoort, J. M., T. Smeenk, I. Zamuruieva, L. L. Reichelt, M. van Veldhoven, L. Rutting, A. Light, L. Houston, R. Wolstenholme, M. Dolejšová, A. Jain, J. Ardern, R. Catlow, K. Vaajakallio, Z. Falay von Flittner, J. Putrle-Srdić, J. C. Lohmann, C. Moossdorff, T. Mattelmäki, C. Ampatzidou, J. H.-j. Choi, A. Botero, K. A. Thompson, J. Torrens, R. Lane, and A. C. Mangnus. 2024. 9 Dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformations. Ecology and Society 29(1):29. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-14739-290129

Vervoort, J. M., P. K. Thornton, P. Kristjanson, W. Förch, P. J. Ericksen, K. Kok, J. S. I. Ingram, M. Herrero, A. Palazzo, A. E. S. Helfgott, A. Wilkinson, P. Havlík, D. Mason-D'Croz, and C. Jost. 2014. Challenges to scenario-guided adaptive action on food security under climate change. Global Environmental Change 28:383-394. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.03.001

Wertheim-Heck, S. C. O., and G. Spaargaren. 2016. Shifting configurations of shopping practices and food safety dynamics in Hanoi, Vietnam: a historical analysis. Agriculture and Human Values 33:655-671. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9645-4

Whitlock, J. 2023. Climate change anxiety in young people. Nature Mental Health 1:297-298. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-023-00059-3

Wiebe, K., M. Zurek, S. Lord, N. Brzezina, G. Gabrielyan, J. Libertini, A. Loch, R. Thapa-Parajuli, J. Vervoort, and H. Westhoek. 2018. Scenario development and foresight analysis: exploring options to inform choices. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43:545-570. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-030109

Wright, E. O. 2010. Envisioning real utopias. Verso, London, UK.