This text provides preservice teachers the historical background, basic terminology, and social science concepts of multicultural education to assist them as they enter the field.

Comprehensive Multicultural Education provides a curriculum model with six goals and numerous lesson plans illustrating how each goal can be implemented in the classroom. The text includes conceptual frameworks from the social sciences and historical backgrounds. Both theory and practice in the text present interdisciplinary content through primary source material and vignettes of actual teachers and students, and encourage interactions between students' cultural and individual differences.

Bennett aims to foster the idea that understanding and valuing students' individual differences allows teachers to encourage each student to reach his or her fullest potential.