We welcomed and have learned from the opportunity to read and respond to the seven chapters in this monograph, although neither of us is a physical education practitioner or researcher. Both of us were competitive athletes-Heather, a Golden Gloves boxer and now a boxing coach, and Steve, a college football player and wrestler-and one of us is the child of a physical education teacher. Both of us are philosophers of education by training, versed in a Western philosophic tradition with strong roots in Classical Athenian educational values that integrate body, mind, and spirit.

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Teachers have long been expected to be agents of change. They are expected to evoke change in the students they teach. They are expected to carry out the broad missions of public education in the United States, including specific agendas for social change, and they are also expected to implement programs, policies, and innovations. Now, increasingly, they are expected to assume leadership of school reform.It is one thing to expect teachers to be agents of change and yet another for them to perform this role successfully. Goals for teaching and for schooling are vague and often contested. The means to achieve those goals-the "technology" of teachers' work-are also ambiguous and uncertain. The entire enterprise is fraught with dilemmas that pit highly valued alternatives against one another. To be effective agents of change, teachers must be able to confront and manage these dilemmas. They must make meaning out of ambiguity; they must act in the midst of conflict.It is often assumed that teacher educators know what capacities teachers need to be effective agents of change and can help them to develop these capacities. The research on preservice and inservice teacher education indicates, however, that these assumptions are not necessarily valid. Despite decades of effort to improve learning opportunities for teachers, the manner in which they are typically prepared and supported on the job falls short of developing the capacities they need to evoke change. If the expectation that teachers should be agents of change is taken seriously, the capacities this work requires of them must be considered more closely. Current practices of preservice and inservice teacher education must be examined more critically. And ways to enhance teachers' learning across their careers should be explored more thoughtfully.

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