Within the last years students in Germany became more heterogeneous due to developments such as structural changes in society and the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilitiesin 2009 (United Nations 2006). These changes pose big challenges as teachers are asked to carry out individual learning support in their classrooms. Teachers’  professional competence and teachers’ performance in class influence students‘ learning outcomes (Hattie, 2009). In successfully addressing heterogeneous classes teachers can compensate individual differences in learning developments and minimize unequal educational chances. In their theoretical model Baumert and Kunter (2013) list self-efficacy as one component of teachers’  professional competence. According to Schwarzer and Jerusalem (2002, p. 35) self-efficacy conforms to the subjective certainty to manage new and difficult requirements due to one‘s own competence. Bandura (1997) considers four sources which potentially contribute to the development of self-efficacy: mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological activity. Transferred to the school context (Gebauer, 2013; Holzberger, Philipp & Kunter 2013) mastery experience can be seen as the degree of teacher’s previous success in certain situations, vicarious experience as the view of one’s own competence depending on the social context, verbal persuasion as evaluating feedback and physiological activity as the emotional reaction to success or failure in specific situations. Self-efficacy as a self-regulating component affects teachers’ performance in class. One important aspect of teachers’ performance in coping with heterogeneous classes is individual learning support. The term individual learning support is used in multiple contexts. Consistently, two central aims of individual learning support are: realization of equal opportunities for all students and improvement of students’ school achievement (Dumont, 2018). There are many different concepts of individual learning support in school such as Adaptive Instruction and Individualized Instruction. Recent international studies examine the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and individual learning support. They show that teachers with high self-efficacy beliefs execute individual learning support in class more often (Bosse, Jäntsch & Spörer et al., 2015; Gebauer, 2013; Holzberger et al., 2013; Zee & Koomen, 2016). With regard to influences on teachers’ self-efficacy, studies discovered relationships between self-efficacy and cooperation with colleagues, principals’ management, working atmosphere and strain in the sense of work load (Bosse et al., 2015; Gebauer 2013). Characteristics such as age, professional experience, gender and school environment, in turn, were not associated with teachers’ self-efficacy (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007). Most studies that analysed the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and individual learning support, investigated general teacher-related self-efficacy. Holzberger et al. (2013) emphasize: “In order to yield a powerful predictor, any assessment of self-efficacy should be tailored to the behaviour it is intended to explain” (p. 783). Thus, Holzberger et al. (2013) highlight the demand for further research on specific self-efficacy. To conform to this demand for further research, the present paper focuses on the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy with respect to individual learning and their use of teaching practices supporting individual learning. Furthermore, the four sources for self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) mentioned above are analysed in relationship to teachers’ self-efficacy and individual learning support. Altogether, this paper addresses three main research questions: Research Question 1 investigates individual and institutional factors related to self-efficacy in heterogeneous classes. Research Question 2 focuses on the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and individual learning support in class. In Research Question 3 self-efficacy is expected to mediate between individual and institutional factors on the one hand and individual learning support on the other hand.

This paper is based on data of the empirical evaluation of a teacher training programme in Germany called JIB – Jeder ist besonders (i.e., everyone is special). JIB was developed by the German School Academy and is based on six school quality criteria considered important by the German School Award (Beutel, Höhmann, Pant & Schratz, 2016). The teacher training programme JIB consists of eight modules in the course of two years and intends to professionalize teachers for inclusive school development. From 2017 to 2019 JIB takes place in 25 schools throughout Germany. A longitudinal mixed method study evaluates JIB’s implementation and effects. This paper analyses the data of the first measurement point at the beginning of JIB in autumn 2017. Teachers who participate in JIB as well as their colleagues answered an online survey on aspects of school and class arrangements and gave autobiographical information. The sample consists of N = 367 teachers, 79.6% female. 52.5% of the participants were between 41 and 60 years old, 42.6 % younger than 41 years and 4.9 % above 60 years old. The average years of professional experience were about 13 years (SD = 10.02). All items were rated on a 4-point Likert-scale (1 = I disagree, 4 = I agree). The Cronbach’s alphas of all study scales as indicators of reliability were above .84, except for the scale of work load (α= .67). The teacher self-efficacy scale (Kopp, 2009; 5 Items, M = 3.08, SD = 0.58, e.g. “I am sure that I can organise class in a way that all children can achieve the aims at their own pace.“) focuses on arrangements of instruction acknowledging the heterogeneity of students. The individual learning support scale (ISQ 2017; 11 Items, M = 3.38, SD = 0.44, e.g. “In my class I take account of different preconditions for learning of all students.”) enfolds aspects of different concepts of individual learning support in class (Dumont, 2018). Referring to the theoretical models of Bandura (1997) and following Gebauer (2013) four sources of teacher self-efficacy were integrated as independent variables: years of professional experience as mastery experience, diagnostics at school (ISQ, 2017) as vicarious experience, principals’ management (ISQ, 2017) as verbal persuasion and workload (Gerecht, Steinert, Klieme & Döbrich, 2007) as physiological activity. Gender and school type were included as control variables. Data analyses rely on correlational analyses as well as on a series of multilevel analyses (Baltes-Götz, 2013) to account for the nested data structure.

With regard to Research Question 1 the analyses showed that neither gender, school type nor professional experience were associated with teachers’ self-efficacy. Teachers with higher self-efficacy beliefs, however, reported a higher level of individualized diagnostics at school (r = .45, p < .01), a higher level of principals’ management (r = .26, p < .01) and a lower level of workload (r = -.30, p < .01). Focussing on Research Question 2, multilevel analyses revealed that teachers who describe themselves as highly self-efficacious in coping with heterogeneous classes more often execute individual learning support in their classrooms. Addressing Research Question 3, Model 1 specifies the influence of the four predictors mentioned above on individual learning support. The multilevel analysis reveals important relationships between individual learning support and diagnostics at school (B = 0.40, p < .01) and workload (B = -0.17, p < .05), but no relationship with principals’ management and years of professional experience. As self-efficacy is added to these variables in Model 2, the relationship between individual learning support and diagnostics is reduced (B = 0.27, p < .01) and the relationship between individual learning support and workload dissolves (B = -0.07, n.s.). In conclusion, this paper confirms the result of previous research that highly self-efficacious teachers more often put individual learning support into practice (Zee & Koomen, 2016). Furthermore, the paper suggests that the realization of individual learning support is less dependent on perception of workload and diagnostics in the school context if teachers view themselves as highly self-efficacious. Further research in the course of the evaluation of JIB will analyse the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and individual learning support longitudinally, so that components of effective teacher training can be specified and elaborated.

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