We would like to introduce a research study about teacher's beliefs and attitudes toward dealing with heterogeneity in school classes. Beliefs of teachers are important because of their influence on learning (processes and results) (Lipowsky et al, 2003). Beliefs play a role in discussions of teacher professionalism as well (Baumert/Kunter 2006). Apart from subject-matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and other things are considered to be important for understanding the professional behaviour of teachers. Often heterogeneity is perceived as a burden by teachers (Morris 2005, Magos 2006, Gehrmann, 2003), but it can be perceived as an opportunity in regard to learning processes as well (Preuss-Lausitz, 2001, Reh, 2005; Dupriez, 2006). However, questions about opportunity and/or burden of heterogeneity are seldom at the centre of academic studies. For that reason, we have asked teachers in both an Austrian and a German district what beliefs and attitudes they have about heterogeneous learning groups. We chose primary schools for our research because, in Germany and Austria, they are the only school types that don't select their pupils, and because the heterogeneity of their school classes is seen as ‘normal’. The widespread heterogeneity of children and classes in the early years of German ‘Grundschulen’ is confirmed in research (see e.g. Martschinke/Kammermeyer, 2003). We first wanted to evaluate the field in order to make sure that the schools used met our criteria. We selected specific schools in which heterogeneity is greater than in other primary schools (further studies are planned). We approached teachers of schools that have more than 20% of pupils with migratory backgrounds (Migrationshintergrund) and/or that regularly arrange mixed-age learning groups and/or that teach all pupils in an integrative and inclusive manner without regard to special needs status. Both the nation and the school type in which specific heterogeneous groups are taught are possible influences on the beliefs and attitudes of teachers. The educational policies of the Austrian and the German districts examined and the challenges of the specific learning groups could cause differences, but it is also of interest to look at similarities between the nations in order to avoid cultural simplifications (Kampshoff, 2007).

The study has an evaluating bias. Because there are no other studies in this special direction of research, we designed a new questionnaire. First, it includes questions about general beliefs on heterogeneity, beliefs about heterogeneity's impact on performance, different groups of pupils, mixed ages and so on. Second, there are questions on attitudes about dealing with heterogeneity in the classroom for every group involved (e.g., girls and boys, pupils with different performances, mixed ages, etc.). The attitude survey takes aim at the didactical reflections of the teachers. Questionnaires about didactical reflections of teachers are generally seen as valid (Kunter u.a., 2005; Pauli/Reusser, 2003). Other questions address the definition of heterogeneity and the conditions of dealing with heterogeneous learning groups in the schools surveyed. Besides the teachers, we asked the head teachers of the schools for further information about the schools involved.

Because of the evaluative character of the study, we first looked at the descriptive results. There are many similarities between the two nations and between the different school types. However, there are some significant differences as well. The Austrian teachers seem to have a richer understanding of heterogeneity than the German ones. Moreover, they seem to have more positive attitudes towards teaching heterogeneous groups of pupils. The comparison of different school types shows that for the teachers of mixed age groups, instruction is more likely to be a burden than for the other teachers. The reason for this could be that classes with mixed ages are not desired by the teachers of our study or that mixing of ages doesn’t fit to educational policies such as selection, standardisation and so on. However, these early outcomes have to be validated in further studies.