Three DU researchers recently released Advancing Global Education, the second volume of the Patterns of Potential Human Progress series.
Each year, the series provides a thorough analysis on an array of issues, such as poverty and health, and then predicts trends based on the data.
“We look at what’s going to happen over the next 50 years,” says Barry Hughes, series editor and director of DU’s Pardee Center for International Futures.
When the center was established in 2008, Hughes helped start Patterns to support the center’s mission of improving the human condition.
Patterns is modeled after a United Nations publication, the annual Human Development Report. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund produce similar reports, but according to Hughes, nothing projects as far into the future as Patterns. These other forecasts only look three to 10 years ahead.
“We’re filling a big hole. Absolutely nobody has developed a forecasting system for looking at long-term global change across multiple, interacting issue areas,” Hughes says.
The volumes are written and published in rapid succession; Volume 1: Reducing Global Poverty, was published last year. Because each book takes three to four years to complete, there is an ongoing team of four faculty and up to eight graduate students working on the next three volumes. Volume three, which concerns global health, is expected to be published in late fall 2010.
Hughes and his team will focus on global infrastructure and global governance for the next two volumes, including improvements in environmental sustainability and management of conflict within societies.
Hughes hopes Patterns will get worldwide exposure in the coming years. Two publishers — Paradigm Publishers in Boulder, Colo., and Oxford University Press in New Delhi, India — were used for volumes one and two to increase circulation in more countries. Hughes and his team have given away more than 500 copies of Volume two, which also is available on the Internet.
Choice magazine recently named volume one an “essential volume,” meaning it is strongly recommended for U.S. libraries. Choice reviews academic material for higher education.