Imagining personal and social futures: Representations of secondary school students and the influence of teacher training in education for the future

Abstract

This study analyses the images of the future of Spanish secondary school students (n = 252) from two perspectives. First, from the relationship between representations of the personal future and the social future. Second, the potential influence of the specific training of Geography and History teachers in education for the future on the construction of these representations. From a descriptive, predictive‐correlational and relational design, the results obtained report the existence of significant positive correlations, high effect sizes and optimal statistical power between the ways in which students conceive the social future and their own personal future. They also show the existence of statistically differential proportions between the two representations, less optimistic and progressive when thinking about the future of society. Similarly, the results report evidence of higher probabilities of obtaining positive perceptions about the social future when teachers have previous training in education for the future. The findings also show the need to rethink the concept of the future, in close connection with historical‐temporal awareness, as the core of the aims of social science teaching.