The crucial decisions and attitude changes that educators and administrators must make if higher education is to survive into the 21st century are identified using the insights and ideas of Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Gerard O'Neill, and other futures thinkers. (Author/RM)

Advocates of parks and recreation must face the challenge of seeing beyond traditional boundaries, embracing new alliances, and translating hopes into actions. Vision, strategy, and grassroots strength and strong leadership skills are critical to the future of parks and recreation. (CJ)

With new knowledge (obtained from tools that can help to predict the future) and basic assumptions about society and education, educational planners must begin to plan for the future. Futurists and educators should compare approaches and plans for the near future and beyond. (CJ)

To assist vocational educators with long-range planning, the authors discuss understanding needs assessment and defining needs, describe the levels and stages of needs assessment, and present sources and tools for conducting assessments. (SK)

Being able to anticipate future needs for health services presents a challenge for health planners. Using existing population projections, two models are presented to estimate the demand for hospital beds in regions of Manitoba in 2020. The first, a current-use projection model, simply projects the average use for a recent three-year period into…

Findings of a literature review of school policies and procedures for school-based responses to death-related crises are presented in this paper. A rationale and guidelines for policy development and examples of practices for dealing with death-related incidents--such as suicide, homicide, drug overdose, and accidents--are described. Following an…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the field of educational futures. It describes a framework for educational futures that moves from the understanding of global futures data to action planning for dealing with the understanding those data have for education. The paper discusses the future of government, life styles, and…

Discusses the rationale for policy interest in career development services and the way in which this rationale is being strengthened by the current transformations in work and career. Explores the potential roles of public policy in relation to career development services and identifies a range of policy issues related to making career development…

This overview of futurism defines it as a movement believing that a positive future world may be created through wise decision-making and futuristic planning. Present societal conditions have provided an impetus for a futuristic focus, and various authors, think tanks, techniques, and organizations have contributed to the wide acclaim and respect…

The article identifies federal agencies which have been major sources of data for organizations providing services to blind and visually impaired persons, describes recent and possible changes in data collection and reporting, and cites organizations that watch the changing status of federal disability statistics. (MC)

Current governmental policy regarding long-term care of the elderly relies heavily on a medical-model approach that stresses institutionalization. This policy must be redirected to encourage development of viable alternative programs and to support the traditional role of families in caring for their dependent aged members. (Author)

Gives recommendations for both long-range preparation and last-minute preretirement planning. Methods are being developed that can alert those facing retirement to the emotional difficulties they may face and help them plan ways of coping with problems. Difficulties include sense of belonging, socialization problems, achievement problems and…

Needs analysis research and planning projects were reviewed to identify planning concepts, processes, outcomes, and issues regarding the growing population of older adults with developmental disabilities. Themes and issues identified through content analysis of planning documents are presented, along with goals for future planning and public…

Discusses key issues related to availability of valid information to be entered into information systems and to be used in planning such systems. Topics covered include accuracy of information in systems, the importance of geolinguistic ecology (where and how a system's information is made available to people) to system design, and the lack of…

Future dental practice is seen to include not only the electronic dental record (EDR) but a fully electronic clinical dental documentation package, computer-assisted diagnostic support, and digital imaging. The EDR's development since the 1970s is reviewed. Specific suggestions are made concerning hardware, software, administration, and practical…