This book aims to help educators improve their understanding of minority students within the American social context. It contains seven chapters, each written by different authors. The introductory chapter, "The Education of Language Minority Students: A Contextual Interaction Model" by C. Cortes, provides an overview of a theory for how the many sociocultural factors influence language minority education. The next chapter, "Ethnic Minority Issues in the United States: Challenges for the Educational System" by S. Sue and A. Padilla, looks at historical explanations for why some groups do better in school than others. "Understanding Sociocultural Factors: Knowledge, Identity, and School Adjustment" by J. Ogbu and M. Matute-Bianchi analyzes sociocultural factors such as group attitudes toward education, self-identity, historical experiences, cultural values, and job ceiling. The next chapter, "Sociocultural Contexts of Language Development" by S. Heath, stresses the inclusion of mother tongue and second language education in language minority educational reform. "Sociocultural Resources in Instruction: A Context-Specific Approach" by S. Diaz, L. Moll and H. Mehan provides a detailed illustration of how language development (reading and writing) can be improved, based on a positive link between the home and school. "Cooperative Learning and Sociocultural Factors in Schooling" by S. Kagan describes cooperative learning as an educational innovation for improving students' acquisition of both academic and humanistic skills. The concluding chapter, "Educators' Responses to Sociocultural Diversity" by M. McGroarty facilitates educators' understanding and use of the hypotheses and approaches proposed in the earlier chapters. The book contains approximately 200 references. (KS)