Cultivating a Critical Attitude Towards Digital Artifacts Through a Future-Oriented Science Education Approach

This chapter presents a futures-oriented approach to science education for secondary school students that was developed within the European Horizon 2020 project FEDORA. The chapter begins with a discussion of how this approach implements the dimension of complexity. It then goes on to explore how the futures-oriented approach can contribute to cultivating a broadly critical stance toward the use of technological artifacts. This is achieved by leading students to shift their positioning toward a given digital tool from a technological perspective to a more collaborative, peer-like relationship. The approach is exemplified through the teaching module Towards New Future Scenarios: The Role of Physics in the Challenges of Climate Change, in which students engage in scenario-building activities using the En-ROADS simulator. Through a custom-designed board game called FyouTURES, students experience decision-making processes, critically analyse climate policies, and explore the societal roles of digital simulations. The simulator, rather than being a neutral solution provider, is positioned as a peer-like partner in exploring systemic interactions and uncertain futures. Grounded in the epistemology of complexity and the values of the European GreenComp framework, the module fosters anticipatory thinking, sustainability literacy, and transformative agency. It challenges students to consider sustainability not as a fixed outcome, but as a dynamic process involving the negotiation of ethical, social, and environmental values. Empirical results from two studies reveal the module’s transformative potential and students’ difficulties in rethinking their relationships with technology. The collected data show how students moved from deterministic assumptions to more nuanced understandings of the complexity underlying climate decisions and technological systems. The authors argue that embracing uncertainty, complexity, and futures literacy within science education allows students to imagine and formulate more equitable, sustainable, and critically informed futures, thus contributing to the broader goal of reconfiguring science education to respond better to accelerating change and uncertainty.