This is a study of teachers' conceptualizations of multicultural education (MCE) and their implications for practice in both schools and university courses. Through survey and interview data, the results reveal that teachers associated multicultural education with demographic diversity rather than with social justice, strategies for instruction rather than with theory, and that patterns of communication within the school precluded school-wide implementation of multicultural education. The implications for bridging the gap between university courses grounded in social justice and school practice are explored.