Forecasting Social Work Practice as a Base for Curriculum Development

Abstract

This paper, one of a series of reports on Michigan State University experiments in curriculum design, describes an initial attempt at formally forecasting social work practice of the future. The purpose of the forecasting is to provide a rational base for curriculum development. The paper reports on results with a technique for forecasting that was drawn from work in predicting technological change and is primarily concerned with introducing the force of the idea of systematizing substantive decisions through formal techniques that make use of the subjective knowledge of experts.