Francisco Rios' book sheds light on current scholarship around teacher thinking in cultural contexts and identifies promising practices that take into account context specific influences. He provides a theoretical and conceptual framework for understanding why teacher cognition as a context specific phenomenon is important, how it is studied, what can be learned, and how these learnings inform the preparation of culturally responsive educators. The contributors look at how teachers think about students of color and/or a multicultural curriculum and explore opportunities for reconstructing teacher knowledge of the cultural context.

Rather than focusing on ways in which the students are "deficient," or on the behavioral elements of effective teaching, this book starts with the how and what of teacher thinking as a central element in the teaching-learning relationship. It places the teacher at the center of instructional activity. While teacher thought influences what happens in instructional settings, teacher thought is also influenced by the people and activity critical to those settings.