The purpose of this paper is to present the rationale and principles that guided the design and development of PARENTS, a multimedia case-based environment. Following a development research approach, the tenets of constructivist learning, and the advantages of case-based instruction, we developed a multimedia program in which we utilized and incorporated the findings of the longitudinal study Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE). EPE focused on parents in high-poverty urban communities and the roles they play in elementary schools that are active in implementing reform-based science education. The main purpose of the multimedia program PARENTS was to help preservice science teachers to explore and reflect on themes of parental engagement in high-poverty urban school settings. In this paper, we present the design and conceptual framework behind the first prototype of PARENTS. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)