What are the reigning theories of human development and cognition? How are human development and culture related? How does identity development intersect with achievement motivation? What is intelligence? How can our knowledge of human development inform our work as educators working with an increasingly diverse student population? What is known about how to work successfully with families from non-dominant cultural groups? This volume of The Teacher's Guide to Diversity: Building a Knowledge Base, tackles these questions and more. The four sections described collectively point to a vision of schooling that is both an ideal and a possibility. It further approaches the process of addressing the needs of learners from a wide range of backgrounds as an ongoing process of exploration and constructive conversation among the professionals who serve such students and between professionals and students' families.