The shape and purpose of teacher education is affected by what happens in schools, and what happens in schools is largely the result of the shape and purpose of four message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and discipline. Seven social issues are important in bringing about significant changes to the message systems of schools. They include: (1) the disorder of information; (2) symbolic analysis of information and the ordering of disorder (3) economic convergence and stratification; (4) the crisis of political ecology; (5) social diastrophism; (6) environmental degradation; and (7) the inequalities suffered by women. Teacher education for 2007 will need to develop in prospective teachers a holistic and global understanding of education; an understanding of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment as socially constructed and continually contested; and a commitment to engagement with not only classroom practice but also with the various agents and interests that shape the context of practice. (SM)