Educational effectiveness research has proved the importance of teachers’ beliefs and attitudes for student learning. Beliefs strongly determine teachers’ thoughts and actions. A change of beliefs is a necessary prerequisite for changing practices and behaviours (e.g. Woolfolk Hoy, Hoy, & Kurz, 2008; Reynolds et al., 2015).

Teachers’ beliefs and attitudes have been confirmed as the key factors in educational effectiveness with respect to disadvantaged students. According to Benard (2004), the strategies for developing resilience strengths in young people include the quality of the environment, the presence of caring relationships, high expectations, participation, and meaningful contributions within the child’s environment. Apparently, only teachers who believe that those factors really matter can demonstrate them in their daily routines through their relationships with students in schools. Benard (2004) emphasises that “one of the most important and consistent findings in resilience research is the power of schools, especially of teachers, to turn a child’s life from risk to resilience”. A teacher’s interpersonal relationship styles, supportiveness, and mindset with regard to students’ abilities to succeed are found to be predictive of students’ engagement in school, learning motivation, and academic achievement, as well as positive social development.

Beliefs that influence teachers’ attitudes and expectations with regard to students can be conceptualised in many ways. We chose the concept of academic optimism, which seems to be very powerful in explaining teachers’ attitudes towards disadvantaged students. Moreover, the analysis carried out on the TIMSS & PIRLS 2001 data (Strakova & Simonova, 2015) showed that the construct of academic optimism works well in the Czech context. Academic optimism emphasises the potential of schools to overcome the power of socioeconomic factors that impair student achievement and focuses on potential, rather than pathology, with its emphasis on weakness and helplessness (Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006a, 2006b). It has proved to have a positive impact on student outcomes. The concept of academic optimism stems from positive psychology (Pajares, 2001) and consists of teachers’ sense of efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. It encompasses teachers’ beliefs about themselves, their students, and their instruction. Academic optimism is a latent construct comprised of three closely related concepts – teachers’ sense of efficacy, teachers’ trust in students and parents, and teachers’ focus on creating a positive and challenging academic environment for their students (e.g. Hoy, Tarter, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2006a; 2006b; McGuigan & Hoy, 2006; Woolfolk Hoy, Hoy, & Kurz, 2008).

The topic is highly relevant to the Czech education system, among other reasons because the Czech Republic is not able to provide good-quality education to Roma children, who are, in many cases, diagnosed as mildly mentally retarded and educated outside the mainstream system (e.g. Amnesty International, 2015). The policy attempts to move children with mild mental retardation to mainstream classrooms faced strong opposition from Czech schools. We believe that one of the important reasons for the inability of the Czech system to provide Roma and other minority children with good-quality education is teachers’ beliefs related to student motivation, learning capabilities, and trustfulness. Reseach of this topic is relevant also in European context because it enables to explore and appreciate the differencies in the manifestation of this important phenomenon in different societies.

The aim of the paper is to answer the question whether the schools that are able to achieve good results and especially good results with disadvantaged students show a higher level of academic optimism among their teachers. We use the data from the Czech Longitudinal Study of Education that follows the TIMSS & PIRLS 2011 students till the end of their compulsory education (grade 9).

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