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During our extended present, educators as a class – people working through knowledge communities and intellectual institutions, through schools and universities, through community centers and the press – all are shaping the course of cultural innovation, and with it, the dominant quality of life. Education is the work of educators, not movie producers, venture capitalists, or theme-park operators. Educational institutions – schools, universities, museums, laboratories, libraries – are the major factors in the social construction of a new educational system. Worldwide our educational institutions control a huge cash flow, derived from individual, governmental, philanthropic, and commercial sources, a cash flow more than sufficient to underwrite far flung innovation. Furthermore, educators control and produce intellectual property of extraordinary breadth and depth. The holdings of Hollywood are but a pittance compared to those of the world's universities, laboratories, museums, and libraries. And further, the changes wrought by the digital technologies are making precisely the holdings of great cultural institutions more accessible, more productive, and more meaningful in the lives of everyone. It would be a terrible abdication were educators to hold back and let other groups dominate the social construction of a new education.

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If educators do not abdicate, if we assert our agenda well, that agenda can have the primary influence in shaping emerging practice. What might an agenda for innovation be like, one that puts the interests and aspirations of educators into action and draws fully on the strengths of the knowledge communities and intellectual institutions? As a class, educators are a large, diverse group, comprising many elements. This internal complexity makes it difficult for people acting as educators to achieve a sense of cohesion and historical solidarity. Divided, we have been ruled. This complexity, however, is a potential source of historic strength. With an encompassing unity, we can exert great influence for the betterment of life. To draw the main components of an agenda for educators together, let us be comprehensive in considering it. Let us, further, consider it as educators, as people engaged in creating, disseminating, and applying learning, ideals, and competencies in the conduct of life. Let us frame these considerations, starting with distinctions that often characterize intellectual and educational work, constructing a matrix that shows how educators characteristically think and act.

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 Begin with thought. As educators think about how people acquire knowledge, propagate principles, and employ expertise, we generally use an intellectual spectrum that runs from disinterested research – pure achievements of inquiry and reflection in science and scholarship – to the domains of professional learning – codified principles of organized performance based on acquired skill and experience. This distinction – for shorthand let us call it the distinction between the academic and the professional – is the fundamental polarity defining types of thinking essential to the work of educators. Educational thinking encompass both academic ideas and professional principles and in contemplating the educators’ agenda, we should remember Pascal's great maxim – "We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space." [Note 48] Great research universities include departments of sociology and schools of social work, departments of economics and schools of business, departments of political science and schools of public affairs, departments of biology and physiology and schools of medicine. Across every field, education included, people need both pure scholarship and professional learning. An agenda for use in reconstructing the educational system must touch both the academic and the professional and occupy all the intervening space.

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It is not sufficient, however, in characterizing intellectual work to reflect only on the forms of thinking characteristic of it. "Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is burdensome." [Note 49] Education is a form of action, action of the burdensome sort in which thought guides the effort. If, from the perspective of people thinking, educators span a spectrum running from pure to applied, from academic to professional, then a gradient, one that runs from theory to policy to practice, generally serves to describe the forms of action through which educators seek to put ideas into operation.

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Educators use theory, policy, and practice as means for determining how we are to act in diverse situations. Theory shapes action at a very broad level by providing educators with abstractions that enable us to think about the particulars in diverse situations and to develop courses of action that prove to be reasonable, sustained, and effective. [Note 50] Policy controls action, not by providing tools of analysis, explanation, and prediction, but by setting standard procedures that suggest a proper course of action for the situation to which the policy pertains. Practice guides action by assembling reflections on the fruits of experience in a field, codifying what works and what does not, relative to common circumstances frequently encountered in the field. Properly speaking, these are ideal-types, like the poles of pure academic knowledge and applied professional learning. As ideal-types they are intellectual formulations applied to the stuff of experience, not empirical actualities substantially in it. Both sets of ideal types span the activities of knowledge and education. We can use them to form a conceptual matrix that is useful in raising to the full level of awareness the powerful, comprehensive agenda entailed for educators as we engage in social construction shaping a new educational system in our time.

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Let us fill this matrix with the hard questions that educators face. In a systematic work, we could elaborate these questions, laying the groundwork for far fuller responses with respect to each. That is not fitting here; we must concentrate, with point and conviction, on the core matters. In the sections that follow, we explore the heart of the matter in the context of our extended present. We snake through the matrix, starting with "academic theory," across to "professional theory" and down to "professional policy," back to "academic policy" and down to "academic practice," and concluding with "professional practice." Educators understand something along the lines of each response as we integrate digital technologies into education and culture. Here is the educators’ agenda, entailed of us as we become aware of ourselves as a dominant class in twenty-first century life. Determined to act according to our thought, here is our burdensome course.

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Thought     Academic Professional A c t i o n T h e o r y Theory as a form of action combines with the work of disinterested reflection to put comprehensive worldviews into force within a culture. Here is the cultural crucible from which a people cast their standards of knowing, their distinctive values, and their prized skills. Here educators work as public intellectuals, addressing basic beliefs, creating a resonant aspiration through the polity. Hence the question for educators engaged in fully reflective action  –  What controlling principle or reflective worldview determines the overall standards and directions of intellectual and educational activity? Theory as a form of action combines with professional thinking about education to organize and structure educational effort and activity. Here educators generate and manage our characteristic institutions. Hence the question  –  How should educators, reflecting on the ways by which people create, spread, and use ideas, principles, and skills in life, systematically apply our understanding of these processes to structure the overall work of education? P o l i c y Policy as a set of procedures controlling action meets with the work of disinterested reflection to deal with the basic conditions impinging on educational work. Here educators frame our basic rationales and justifications when challenged by internal doubt or external oppositions. Here are the fundamental directing strategies that educators develop to turn conditions to the best advantage. What basic tasks must intellectual and educational policy accomplish if people are to fulfill the educational potentials inherent in prevailing historical conditions? Policy as a set of procedures controlling action meets with the work of professional thinking by educators to implement measures that will bring new pedagogical potentialities to full fruition. Here are the directing strategies  –  the designs and schedules, the tests and measures, the curricular organization, professional standards, and resources allocations  –  with which educators have to put existing educational possibilities into action. Here educators create different procedures for coping with particulars in restructuring education to make full use of new media. How can educators guide educational activity with effective policies that will advance the social construction of a new educational system?> P r a c t i c e Practice as a form of action based on the codified experience of a field combines with the work of disinterested reflection to delineate a pedagogical commonsense that will serve educators dependably under established conditions. Here educators develop ideas by which we orient and sustain educational effort, enabling those engaged in pedagogical work to cope with limiting circumstances. Here is the grounding where educators make our basic assumptions about human potential. Who should do what with whom in the process of education in order for self-sustaining human development to take place? Practice as a form of action based on the codified experience of a field combines with the work of professional thinking by educators to design educational environments that permit people to make optimum use of the pedagogical resources at their disposal. Here educators interact in the daily work of education. Here is the emerging system of digital pedagogy in operation. How should educators organize our conduct to enable people to fulfill the best possibilities inherent in their capacities and their conditions?