Leading educational researchers focused on education in the 21st century in a discussion of their ongoing work. Discussion was initially limited to the issue of cognitive strategies, skills, or styles that might be relevant to the year 2050. Subsequent discussion turned to consideration of aspects of ongoing research that hold the greatest promise for effective schooling in the future. Discussants were asked to identify research questions they would pursue if their objectives were to develop the best ways to teach cognitive skills. The transcript of participants' comments is organized under the following headings: (1) problems, solutions, and progress; (2) skills for the future; (3) school and real life contexts; (4) resistance and receptivity to educational change; (5) redefining achievement; (6) access to information; (7) goal-based education; (8) testing, textbooks, and teacher development; (9) transition from the present to the future, in terms of transfer of learning skills, teaching thinking strategies, developing schemas, undoing educational bureaucracies; (10) business, education, competition; (11) global education; (12) families, school, and community; and (13) future research. Supplementary materials describe the ThinkAhead Project of San Francisco's Whitman Institute, a project designed to serve as a catalyst for developing educational models that will prepare people to think creatively in the world of the future. (RH)