  Observations of star-forming regions by the current and upcoming generation
of submillimeter polarimeters will shed new light on the evolution of magnetic
fields over the cloud-to-core size scales involved in the early stages of the
star formation process. Recent wide-area and high-sensitivity polarization
observations have drawn attention to the challenges of modeling magnetic field
structure of star forming regions, due to variations in dust polarization
properties in the interstellar medium. However, these observations also for the
first time provide sufficient information to begin to break the degeneracy
between polarization efficiency variations and depolarization due to magnetic
field sub-beam structure, and thus to accurately infer magnetic field
properties in the star-forming interstellar medium. In this article we discuss
submillimeter and far-infrared polarization observations of star-forming
regions made with single-dish instruments. We summarize past, present and
forthcoming single-dish instrumentation, and discuss techniques which have been
developed or proposed to interpret polarization observations, both in order to
infer the morphology and strength of the magnetic field, and in order to
determine the environments in which dust polarization observations reliably
trace the magnetic field. We review recent polarimetric observations of
molecular clouds, filaments, and starless and protostellar cores, and discuss
how the application of the full range of modern analysis techniques to recent
observations will advance our understanding of the role played by the magnetic
field in the early stages of star formation.
