Describes graduate students' personal genograms as an exercise to facilitate training in systems thinking. Discussion covers the objectives, the assignment, evaluation of the students' work, and evaluation of the exercise. (Author/MKA)

Summarizes the successful reengineering of business processes to take full advantage of new functionality in a vendor system upgrade at Western Iowa Tech Community College. Suggests that to truly benefit from implementing new systems or major system upgrades, an institution must streamline processes, eliminate duplication of effort, and examine…

To implement a new resource-management methodology for determining nurse staffing based on expert opinion, a national education program was designed and used to train 172 health care facility coordinators using a systems approach. (SK)

Describes development of an "enrollment management organization," an approach to establishing optimum enrollment at a college or university. The approach integrates assessment, planning, and budgeting on an institution-wide basis to determine and achieve enrollment goals. Presents the step-by-step process to move toward such a system. (EV)

Responses from 369 of 500 extension professionals reflected a shared vision for sustainable agriculture and recognition of a need for environmentally sound farming practices. There was less unanimity about endorsing the social aspects of sustainable agriculture, though they agreed on the need for more systems research. (SK)

Responds to comments made in three articles critiquing the authors' earlier article on counselor trainee impairment. Builds a more systematic picture of trainee impairment. Discusses evaluation, power, organized psychology, professional impairment, and prevention within a systems perspective. (Author/MKA)

Considers the need for information literacy in the workplace and discusses ways to achieve it. Highlights include using a systems approach to information literacy education; technology-based learning systems; assessment through technology-based interactive systems; and knowledge management support systems. (LRW)

Adults over the age of 65 are the fastest growing segment of computer users. Due to this increased demand, effective training programs are essential. Although previous research findings illustrate the importance of older adults' goals, abilities, and experience levels in learning to use computers, these factors are often neglected in the…

In order to set the stage for this special issue, the prime concepts are defined: i.e. "chaos," "complexity," "learning" (individual and organizational), "learning organization," and "chaordic enterprise". Also, several chaos-and-complexity-related definitions of learning and learning organizations are provided. Next, the guest editors' main…

The experiential humanistic family systems approach of Virginia Satir lacks a theoretical structure and is thus vulnerable to losing its experiential nature and being reduced to a mere collection of creative techniques. A way to effectively keep Satir's transformative presence alive is to integrate her approach with a model that is solidly…

This article begins by identifying a close relationship between the image of children generated by several sociologists working within the new sociology of childhood perspective and the claims and ambitions of the proponents of children's autonomy rights. The image of the child as a competent, self-controlled human agent are then subjected to…

The Systems Theory Framework (STF) is presented as an integrating and organising concept for the predominant theories of career. In order to test the integrative capacity of the STF, this research merges the STF's theoretical element of story with the Theory of Dialogical Self's model of personality. Implications for the practice of career…

An in-depth understanding of human factors and human error is lacking in current research on seniors' falls. Additional knowledge is needed to understand why seniors are falling. The purpose of this article is to describe the adapting of the Integrated Safety Investigation Methodology (ISIM) (used for investigating transportation and industrial…

The implementation of programs and practices that reflect the best available research and evaluation is a new and very promising development in the out-of-school time field. However, successfully implementing a new, evidence-based program or practice is a major challenge for practitioners. This challenge is due, in large part, to a lack of…

Intuition usually is defined as the capability to act or decide appropriately without deliberately and consciously balancing alternatives, without following a certain rule or routine, and possibly without awareness (Gigerenzer, 2007; Hogarth, 2001; Klein, 2003; Myers, 2002). It allows action which is quick (e.g. reaction to a challenging…