This preliminary essay was designed to raise issues for discussion in the International Workshop on Occupational Education and Training for Development held at Stanford University, August 1967, and participants were asked to test and challenge all propositions. The essay offers a conceptual framework and a rational procedure for the planning of occupational education and training in relation to the needs of economic, political, and social development, and gives attention to the following topics: (1) new concepts that appear to be promising and to challenge some old concepts, (2) emerging "best practices," with respect to such things as ways of determining the content of occupational education and training, relations between general and occupational education, respective responsibilities of schools and employers, and provision for feedback between the employment system and the education system, and (3) unsettled issues, key problems and opportunities, and important directions for research and development. While conceived primarily to help development planners in the newly modernizing countries, the essay deals for the most part with principles thought to have wide applicability at nearly all levels of development. (CH)