This special issue was designed to facilitate futures-oriented planning, focused on identical, similar, and unique practice and policy priorities. Formal planning aimed at desirable futures is a practical necessity for every helping profession because rapid, sometimes dramatic, societal change continues nonstop. Like all futures-oriented analyses,…

Background: Engineering play is an emerging framework for understanding young children's constructive block play as an engineering design process. Few studies have evaluated engineering thinking, language, or behavior in preschool-age children, especially quantitative evaluations that systematically document specific early engineering behavior.…

Dr. William Serrata has been President of the El Paso County Community College (EPCC) District since 2012. Dr. Serrata serves as an advisory board member of the Higher Education Research and Development Institute (HERDI), and was recently appointed to the Executive Committee for Board of Directors for the American Association of Community Colleges…

In the fifteen years of working in higher education (with the vast majority of those years in the registrar's office), the authors have participated in all types of emergency planning--a registrar staple--including earthquakes, fires, severe weather, floods, bomb threats, and even H1N1 pandemics. But none of that planning truly prepared them for…

School leaders' resilience is best built as a collective effort, write Soraya Sablo Sutton and Nate Gong. The "Change Makers" program at UC Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute gave school leaders across California the opportunity to work together to solve problems of practice and build their collective resilience--a key to…

The pandemic's impact on enrollment is best documented by timely reports issued by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Their reporting as of December 2020 showed that overall enrollment in fall 2020 declined by about 2.5%, although it was down more among undergraduates, about 3.6%. While students from all racial/ethnic groups had…

Kay Psencik, Frederick Brown, and Stephanie Hirsh explore how school leaders can apply a learning lens to achieve their ambitious goals for educators and students in "The Learning Principal," their new book for Learning Forward. Chapter 3, "Managing Change," details how leaders can create the conditions and learning…

As physical educators, our goal is to develop a curriculum that helps students' master skills and prepare them for a lifetime of physical activity. According to SHAPE America, "Physical education provides students with a planned, sequential, K-12 standards-based program of curricula and instruction designed to develop motor skills, knowledge…

As institutions grapple with the challenges of keeping students from contracting COVID-19, classroom scheduling and space analysis have become central to assigning courses to physical classrooms. One question institutional leaders ask is whether some courses create a higher risk of exposure based on the number of students who are directly or…

Courses: Business Communication, Public Relations, Organizational Communication. Objectives: This activity provides students with an accessible case study to craft an internal communication change plan focused on tactical changes to run-the-business objectives and constitutive goals that foster a renewed sense of organizational culture and…

This resource provides recommendations for methods, tools, suggested (not endorsed) sample solutions, and tasks trainers can use to increase participant engagement in professional learning experiences. It also outlines connections between adult learning principles and steps in the "Adult Learning Framework." This resource includes: (1)…

This qualitative study explored factors that supported teachers in their efforts to promote students' critiquing, communicating, and collaborating skills. Despite the various challenges that public schools face today, they are most likely the very institutions to play a critical role in individuals' civic skills development. Individual in-depth…

Information Technology (IT) and Institutional Research (IR) units working together with planning, a focus on collaboration, and a willingness to create partnerships can help accelerate their institution's efforts to improve the data landscape. This chapter includes an overview of the challenges facing these two functional areas, the benefits of a…

Background and Aim: Thailand's higher education institutions have several problems arising from demographic shifts, digital disruptions, geopolitical transformations, and environmental vulnerabilities. These circumstances call for the implementation of strategic foresight and flexible crisis management strategies, particularly in light of the…

After years of pandemic, lockdowns, remote learning, and anxiety, it is no surprise that high school students are feeling stressed. But how does that stress affect them as they search for colleges? To answer that, RNL and ZeeMee went straight to the source and polled high school seniors about the stress, anxiety, and worry they felt. The…