During the next two decades, vocational education will face a major challenge to keep up to date with technology. National crises usually lead to new technologies. The United States today faces major problems in the areas of energy, productivity, and foreign trade. Solutions to these problems will generate new knowledge and technology that will change skill requirements for many jobs and create many more new ones. Methods that can be used to identify the emerging skills that will be needed include the following: use of advisory committees, creative insight, the DACUM process ("Developing a Curriculum"), the Delphi process, evaluation studies, industrial work experience, labor market surveys, conferences, and task analysis. In order for vocational education to keep pace with changes in technology, it must become more proactive and involved with the transfer of new technology from research and development laboratories to practical use in business and industry. Vocational education curriculum development processes must become more flexible and assist vocational educators in using a variety of data for making curriculum and instructional decisions. (Author/KC)