Leadership in Career and Technical Education: Beginning the 21st Century is the third edited book published by the University Council of Workforce and Human Resource Education (UCWHRE), formerly the University Council of Vocational Education (UCVE). The previous books, Beyond Tradition: Preparing the Teachers of Tomorrow's Workforce (Hartley & Wentling, 1996) and Beyond Tradition: Preparing Human Resource Development Educators for Tomorrow's Workforce (Stewart & Hall, 1998) reported trends in their respective fields and also addressed issues that are perennial to workforce education. This publication is somewhat different in that it represents a collaborative effort among members of the UCWHRE, the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education and the National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education. This collaboration symbolizes efforts to link theory and research to practice and practice to theory and research.

In this book, the authors offer three different arenas of nontrivial information seeking for our consideration: "Submarine Chasing" explores the thoughts of a highly decorated Cold War submarine hunter. "Bounty Hunting" involves a long and convoluted search for a reported bond skipper. "Engineering Design" presents a content analysis of the few works in epistemological foundations of engineering design activity. These stories, told at great length and in considerable detail, are framed within a foundational model that links the simple act of document seeking to the broader issue of making one's way through life in the physical world. In each case, the authors ramble, mull, and stumble upon ideas without the least prior constraint, developing some threads quite fully and leaving others to tease us, but never ever throwing us to the lions.