Closing the U.S. academic achievement gap is as complex as it is comprehensive due to the disproportion of instructional opportunities available to underserved student populations. Underserved student populations are defined as minority and/or students of color from low-socioeconomic families and communities, English language learners and recent…

This paper discusses pre-service teachers' (PSTs) resistance to some of the core concepts of multicultural education in a large Midwestern university. The data collected from document reviews, observations, and interviews with a selected group of PSTs point to cultural-ecological factors as major sources of the resistance. The paper examines these…