Dawit Mekonnen (PhD)Zerihun Takele2024-11-202024-11-202024-06https://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/3636Images of the future have a strong influence on the behaviors and decision-making of individuals and groups and are a basis for their actions in the present. However, there is limited empirical research that shows how young students imagine the future and how school curricula help students construct future images in the Ethiopian context. This study examined secondary school students’ future-orientation and future images in relation to personal, national, and global issues. The study also examined the extent school textbooks contribute to shaping students' images of the future. The study was conducted in five secondary schools in Oromia, Ethiopia. The study employed a mixed research method. Data were collected from 443 secondary school (grades 11 and 12) students through questionnaires and content analysis of textbooks. The quantitative data were analyzed using percentages, means, t-tests, and ANOVAs. The qualitative data were analyzed using word narration supported by pictures and figures extracted from the textbooks. The findings of the study show that students’ future orientations were not well developed. The students had more optimistic future expectations for their own future lives, whereas they had pessimistic images regarding national (Ethiopia) and global issues and problems. This shows that students’ spatial awareness is not sufficiently developed to understand the interrelatedness and interdependence of national and global problems with their own current and future personal lives. Furthermore, the findings suggest that students’ personal optimistic future expectations decreased at the critical adolescence age. In addition, the study found that the images of a good (desirable) and a bad (undesirable) person/citizen represented in the textbooks placed more emphasis on promoting students’ images of the interdependent self (social self) awareness than of the independent self (autonomous self). The study also revealed that there is some incongruence between images of Ethiopia presented in the textbooks and images of Ethiopia held by the students. The textbooks mainly narrated Ethiopia as a country that turned from a dark past, present utopia changes to a bright future, whereas most of the students had a pessimistic orientation towards the future of Ethiopia. The study indicates that images of Africa represented in the textbooks could have the potential to cultivate pessimistic dystopian images, disempowerment, and afropessimistic attitudes among students. In relation to global issues and problems, the textbooks represented mainly techno-utopian images of the world. The textbooks have limitations in showing students the negative consequences of technological progress on human health, environmental degradation, and global warming. The study also indicated that textbooks’ learning activities have the potential to serve to deepen images of interdependent self (social self) awareness rather than independent self-consciousness that have the potential to produce conformist individuals who are simply socialized to the existing status quo rather than create critical thinkers and future change agents. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the textbooks should be improved based on the principles of futureoriented education in order to promote students’ desirable images of the future, and empower and prepare them as future change agents to build a better future. Keywords: Images of the future; Future orientation; Afropessimism; Techno-utopian; Dystopian; Utopia; Personal issues; National issues; Global issuesenImages of the futureFuture orientationAfropessimismTechno-utopianDystopianUtopiaPersonal issuesNational issuesGlobal issuesThesis