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If there are truly impermeable walls between objective research purity, applied science research and development, and advocacy for social justice, then the current system of education, tenure, rewards and recognition should be serving society well now and into the future. However, the world has dramatically changed due to three shaping forces in society: (1) technological flattening of the landscape of opportunity, (2) the rise of the inseparable role of technology in creating knowledge and culture, and (3) the development of complex systems science. These three game changers imply a dramatic rethinking of the foundations of knowledge and practice in all fields because they exert new constraints and open up new opportunities for education concerning the knowledge and skills needed to prepare the next generation of leaders for the global competition of ideas, creativity, and human potential. The 21st century educator capable of transforming learning environments is a person who is a master of these three core concepts. This chapter articulates a vision that is aimed to generate thinking and debate, and like an attractor, pull mental models toward the future as scholarly communities in education grapple with their own next steps and the challenging conversations needed for advancement and innovation in response to the globally changing landscape.

Preparing future teachers requires teacher educators to share both theory and its translation to best practice. Traditional approaches to this learning process include textbooks, case studies, role-play, observation, and eventually fieldwork in a classroom. Understanding what their future students need or appropriately responding to situations in the classroom is far different than the reality of teaching in schools. Although case studies provide an opportunity for perspective taking, collaboration, and developing problem solving skills in a safe environment, it is still a relatively passive experience. The use of virtual worlds to create engaging simulations offers a possibility in bridging this gap between theory and practice. The School of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University has designed a virtual world simulation to provide college students with the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual classroom setting in which they take on the roles of avatar teachers and grade school students who may require various modifications/accommodations. This chapter will discuss the design and implementation of this project. Data were collected on the students’ experiences in order to assess possible learning gains, affordances of the technology, and lessons learned for future educators who are considering the implementation of virtual world technologies.

In the first section of the book, Maureen D. Neumann, Laura C. Jones, P. Taylor Webb, and Olga M. Welch examine the ways in which “new” notions of leadership have influenced leadership development programs. Neumann, Jones, and Webb in the chapter, “Developing Teachers Leaders to Transform Classrooms, Schools and Communities,” advocate for, and offer ways that teachers can become cognizant of their leadership and its effects, so that they can develop deliberate commitments towards social justice in schools which are sites of social, political, and economic influence. They propose a model for leadership that is an alternative to traditional allocations of power through positional hierarchies. According to Neumann, Jones, and Webb, “while school leaders may recognize their actions within a single frame of the model, the practice of leadership is the ability to move in and out of three different conceptualizations of leadership, managerial (transactional), professional development (transformational), and social responsibility (critical).” They propose that effective teacher leaders utilize all three aspects of the leadership domains as a way to adapt to, oftentimes, challenging and rapidly shifting political and economic climates within education. Neumann, Jones, and Webb conclude their chapter with a discussion of pedagogy of possibility and argue that pedagogical content knowledge is a marker of professional teaching competence, and teachers must engage students in the moral and ethical issues surrounding the use of knowledge in our democracy for any subject matter.