Professor Lyn Yates is the newly appointed Chair of Curriculum at the University of Melbourne. This article is an edited extract from her inaugural professorial lecture for the Faculty of Education Dean’s lecture series. In part one, published this week, Professor Yates outlines a range of issues facing curriculum researchers, policy makers and leaders within schools. Challenges are posed by the changing forms of knowledge, work, and social identities; by schools' role as 'social fixers'; by demands that schools achieve equal outcomes for all students while also ranking and selecting them for higher study or work; and by demands that schools prepare flexible, autonomous lifelong learners.