Overall, this book most impressed me with its pioneering attempt to explore teacher cognition in light of influential variables such as race, ethnicity, and culture. Readers interested in teacher thinking will gain a great deal from many of these chapters. This is not a small compliment for an edited volume and the editor is certainly to be commended. However, the work is not without any limitations. First of all, using the term cultural in the title to refer to school settings with diverse populations can be misleading.
All contexts reflect a culture of cultures.
Chapters 2 through 5 focus on case studies of educators working with students who are different from themselves. However, what is less known are specific ways in which urban schools can become places wherein students' backgrounds are respected and enhanced. This is indeed valuable information. The author suggests that implicit theories of teachers can be identified by using and talking about classroom scenarios. One main problem, acknowledged by the author, is that this study is about what the teachers say they would do and not what they actually do.