The aim of inclusive education is to “eliminate social exclusion and to arrange school in a more equitable way.” (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010, p. 402). Rich countries provide education for all students, while forms of social exclusion are mainly caused by other frames; e.g. antagonisms between standardization and differentiation (Nilsen, 2010). Such conflicts make it necessary to accept that exclusion processes are also part of the scope of teaching (Hedegaard Hansen, 2012). The central interest of the paper is to discuss, how teachers working in Norway and in Germany construct and address differences between students in their teaching practice and how their practice supports inclusion and exclusion in the classrooms. We work with the theoretical concept that frames cultures of professional teaching based on the sociology of knowledge (Mannheim, 1980), developed along the idea of professional practice by Bohnsack (2019). 30 groups of teachers from schools in different social areas (e.g. urban, country side), who work in different school tracks (e.g. high/low achieving) and teach children of different age (primary/seconday schools), were interviewed in Germany between 2009 and 2014. In 2016, three groups of Norwegian teachers, who work in youth school in an urban area, were interviewed with an exploratory interest. The interviews were analyzed with the Documentary Method (Bohnsack et al., 2010). One result is that differences in academic achievement among students are relevant to teachers in both countries. Despite these similarities, the research shows that German teachers refer to the achievement of students and compare them to one another in a hierarchical way. Their culture of teaching goes along with a lack of learning opportunities offered to specific groups of students (Sturm, 2012, 2013), while the Norwegian teachers adapt their teaching on the basis of differences. The paper helps to understand how teaching cultures are related to the structure of the school system. Germany’s multi-tracking school system provides a much more tensional field for teachers’ professional practice, which is the conflict between grading in order to legitimate students allocation to educational tracks and the idea of adapted teaching. Contrary to the interviews with the Norwegian teachers, the German teachers’ professional habitus is irritated by students who do not meet the expectations.

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