Recently, policy and literature related to education started increasingly emphasizing that teachers have a role to play as agents of social change (Pantić & Florian, 2015).  This idea was strongly supported by research findings showing teachers are the most significant in-school factor influencing student achievement (Hattie 2009; OECD 2005). However, it stays vague what are the mechanisms underlying this teacher’s role or how this role might be developed through teacher education.

One possible answer is offered by social psychology theories. Namely, social psychology research suggests that stereotypes serve to maintain ideological support for the prevailing social system by justifying and rationalizing inequality (Glick & Fiske, 2001; Kay & Jost, 2003; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, Malle, 1994). Therefore, we could assume that teacher stereotypes on students from the marginalized group might play the significant role in reproducing social inequalities in the educational context.

But how could we define stereotypes? The classic theories of stereotypes (e.g. Allport, 1954) define the term as uniform antipathy towards a social group. In this view, stereotypes are unidimensional, falling along a single good–bad dimension. However, in examining how people make sense of each other, researchers have discovered two fundamental dimensions that differentiate groups and individuals (Cuddy, Fiske and Glick, 2008; Todorov et al., 2011). Relying on research findings, authors of Stereotype Content Model (SCM) (Cuddy et al., 2008) argue that underlying stereotypes are more general themes organized along two dimensions – competence and warmth. The dimension labeled as ‘competence’ involves trait attributes indicative of achievement, ability, prestige, strength, and power versus incompetence, inferiority and weakness, whereas the second, labelled ‘warmth’, involves trait attributes indicating niceness, likeability, generosity, and moral goodness versus badness, malevolence, meanness, insincerity and immorality. Based on their position on the dimensions warmth and competence, groups have been placed in one of four clusters, arousing one of four unique emotional responses: admiration, contempt, envy and pity (Cuddy, Fiske, Glick, 2007; Harris & Fiske, 2006; Lee & Fiske, 2006). Besides that, the theory predicts that certain stereotypes produce the certain type of behavior (BIAS map). These behaviours are organized along dimensions active-passive and harm-facilitation (Cuddy et al., 2007).

The scarce research on teacher stereotypes and behaviors toward students from marginalized groups suggest that teachers behave differently towards students from different marginalized groups. For example, research conducted by Duvnjak and associates (Duvnjak et al., 2010) shows that teachers often place Roma students in the last row, call them insulting names and do not make evidence on their presence. On the other hand, students with disabilities are often placed in the first row, sitting alone and presented with assignments which usually underestimate their capacities. Having in mind that teachers’ behaviors differ toward students from different marginalized groups it could be assumed that stereotypes underlying these behaviours are neither univalent nor unidimensional.

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