Leaders in education face many challenges as society enters the 21st century. Worldwide economic and political struggles have radically changed the nature of the school population. The school population is increasingly diverse. Schools must devel op curriculum and instruction aligned to meet the needs of this diverse population, all the while facing an eroding faith in and decreased funding for public education. Calls for school reform and restructuring propose radically different school organiza tions, instructional practices, and alternative assessments.

Educators play important leadership roles in critiquing, designing, and implementing their own visions of schools as leaders in designing and implementing these changes.

Educational leaders of tomorrow can be expected to draw upon a variety of knowledge bases in order to face the challenge of educating all children.

Effective leadership calls for an understanding of the historical, social, and political forces that have influenced curriculum, teaching, and schooling in the past and present as well as insights from current research and theory. More important ly, educational leaders need research skills that will allow them to take a reflective and ethical stance toward the exploration of educational issues.

Curriculum and instruction, a major field of study within education, exists at the intersection of research, policy, and practice. This is evidenced by a number of recent developments at the national level including

• four major divisions of AERA (Division B: Curriculum, Division C: Learning and Instruction, Division G: Social Context, and Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education;
  
  
• a number of new and/or thriving professional journals and organizations; a spate of handbooks of research on teaching, teacher education, curriculum and policy, and subject-specific areas; and,
  
  
• several new major grant initiatives that support school and school-university partnerships designed to provide professional development opportunities for teachers.

Two very broad areas of research, practice, and policy in curriculum and instruction have been pursued:

• the intersection of teacher education (preservice/inservice), school reform, and curricular/instructional reform; and
  
  
• school and curricular reform, in response to the changing demographics of America’s schoolchildren and teaching force.