A large body of literature has shown that school composition may have a significant impact on student achievement. Indeed, disadvantaged school composition, such as lower socioeconomic composition or lower average performance, has often been associated with lower student performances (e.g. Condron 2009; De Fraine, Van Damme, & Onghena 2002; Dumay & Dupriez 2008; Duru-Bellat, Le Bastard-Landrier, & Piquée 2004). This phenomenon is known as "school compositional effect" and is defined as the impact of pupils’ aggregated characteristics, once these variables have been taken into account at the individual level (Dumay & Dupriez, 2008). Although the methodological issues related to the operationalization of a school composition effect has been extensively studied, considerably less is known about the underlying mechanisms that could explain this effect. 

The general objective of this presentation is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between school socio-economic composition and student achievement. After verifying the existence of such a compositional effect in our data, we will investigate the mechanism by which school composition impacts student achievement. To do so, we will go beyond the classical "peer group effects" explanation (i.e. the positive or negative influence that pupils can have on each other) by investigating the potential impact of different teacher profiles on student performances. Specifically, we hypothesize that the link between school composition and student achievement is not a direct effect, but rather a (partly) indirect effect, mediate by teacher characteristics. We will focus our analysis on one particular teacher characteristic, namely teacher self-efficacy beliefs. Teacher self-efficacy refers to the teacher’s belief in their capability to organize and execute courses of action required to successfully accomplish their teaching tasks (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Numerous studies have indicated that the beliefs that teachers hold about their teaching capabilities have a powerful influence on their teaching effectiveness (Capara et al., 2006; Guo et al. 2010; Guskey, 1988; Knoblauch & Woolfolk Hoy 2008). Teacher self-efficacy is positively associated with teacher behaviour and attitude in the classroom (Bandura, 1997). For example, teachers who strongly believe in their instructional efficacy are more likely to implement innovative strategies for teaching (Guskey, 1988), to devote more time to academic activities, to have high expectation for student learning or to persist with student who encounter difficulties (Gibson & Dembo, 1984; Bandura, 1997). Teacher self-efficacy also appears to be significantly related to student achievement (Armor et al., 1976; Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998; Hoy & Spero, 2005). 

Because of the most challenging teaching conditions, we expect that teachers in schools with a majority of students from low socio-economic background are more likely to doubt their abilities, and thus their capabilities to make a lot of progress with the pupils they teach. According to the aforementioned literature, this low level of teacher self-efficacy may weaken pupils’ achievement level. Consequently, the impact of school composition on student achievement cannot be interpreted only as a peer group effect but rather as an element in a causal chain in which teacher self-efficacy plays an important mediating role. 

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