Educational research has long questioned how teachers can work effectively with student diversity in heterogeneous classrooms (Banks & Banks, 2004; Booth & Ainscow, 2002; McDonald & Zeichner, 2008). Differences among students spring from a wide range of specifics, be they social, cultural or health related, as well as other diverse individual educational needs based on academic strengths, pace, learning profiles, readiness, etc. It is precisely this diversity that represents a significant professional challenge for teachers who are frustrated in their attempts at dealing with student diversity, often slipping into a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching (Tomlinson, et al., 1998). Single-paced instruction adapted to the average level of students disregards the different individual educational needs such as learning profiles and interests as well as developmental levels, learning speeds, abilities, attitudes, etc. (Suprayogi et al., 2017). In particular, pre-service teachers need considerable guidance in order to effectively address diversity in the classroom.

Working with the wide-ranging needs of students in the classroom can be learned by pre-service teachers especially during their practicum, which is often considered a key element of teacher education (e.g., Korthagen et al., 2001). Pre-service teachers consider their practicum experience to be the most important part of their professional education (Hoffman et al., 2015). However, difference can also be made by how student diversity is addressed in the university curriculum of pre-service teachers.

In this paper, we explore the beliefs and practices used by pre-service teachers to tackle student diversity during their practicum and the ways this is facilitated by their participation in university courses. Our main research questions are: What are pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices in dealing with student diversity? What are the interconnections of the university and lower-secondary schools regarding their treatment of student diversity?

We can distinguish three predominant approaches in conceptualization of student diversity: the socio-cultural conception, diversity from the perspective of special/inclusive education, and more pedagogically-oriented approaches. While the first perspective emphasizes the role of social categories (e.g., socioeconomic status, race, or gender) of students and their influence on the (re)production of social inequalities (e.g., Gay, 2002), the second perspective focuses on the education of students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND, e.g., students with autism, attention deficit disorder) (Swanson et al., 2013). The third perspective consists of pedagogical approaches emphasizing diversity arising from the learning process itself, stemming from different interests, motivations, learning profiles, etc (e.g., McCombs, 2010). This paper is grounded in the concept of differentiated instruction (DI, Tomlinson, 2001) which represents a nuanced framework for understanding diversity by going beyond selective conceptualizations arising from narrow socio-cultural categories or simple special educational needs designations. We choose the DI concept because of several contextual criteria. Classrooms in rather homogeneous post-socialist countries have recently become more and more diverse as the numbers of pupils with SEND as well as with other individual learning needs have been increasing—in the Czech Republic, namely in connection with legally imposed inclusive education. DI encompasses these different kinds of diversities while simultaneously presupposing that variability exists in any group of students. In DI approach, teachers proactively modify contents, processes and products of instruction to address the diverse needs of students to maximize the learning opportunity for each student (Tomlinson, 2001). Several organizational forms of teaching are typically used by teachers to respond to diverse needs of students effectively—homogeneous or heterogenous grouping or one-on-one instruction (Smale-Jacobse et al., 2019).

In this study we applied an ethnographic methodological design, which allows us to capture in detail the thinking and actions of actors both in the longer term and in everyday contexts (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). The research was conducted both in lower secondary schools where pre-service teachers practiced teaching and at a university where they were enrolled. We are inspired by multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995) where the object of study is a phenomenon that can be studied in multiple places, as its main principle is to follow people, associations, connections and relationships between places. Different sites are chosen in order to provide different information about the phenomenon under study (Falzon, 2009). Our sample consisted of 8 pre-service teachers during 2-year follow-up master’s studies along with their 6 mentors. Data collection took place in three selected lower-secondary schools and 9 different classes located in a larger city in the Czech Republic. We conducted ethnographic observations captured via fieldnotes consisting of detailed descriptive accounts of the interactions and incidents regarding diversity, as well as emotions, atmosphere, characterizations of the actors and settings, and interpretative insights into the events (Emerson et al., 2011). The extensive data corpus consists of fieldnotes of 1) lessons taught by 8 pre-service teachers by themselves or in tandem with their mentors (approx. 120); 2) post-lesson interviews (approx. 93); and 3) other pre-service teachers’ activities at school during their practicum (e.g., observations of mentors’ teaching by pre-service teachers, approx. 40). Besides, we collected approx. 100 video-recordings of lessons taught by pre-service teachers and 93 audio-recordings of post-lesson interviews and approx. 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with pre-service teachers and their mentors. Further data were collected in general education courses taught at the university: the data corpus consists of direct participant observations of on-campus lessons (22 fieldnotes of 41 taught lessons), 17 video-recordings of selected seminars, 11 audio-recordings of pre-service teachers’ group discussions within the seminars as well as 24 entries in reflective diaries of their practicum experiences. Selected fieldnotes and transcripts were analysed in 4 stages: analysis of quotes through coding; reduction of initial codes into more specific sub-codes; exploring relations between codes and sub-codes; and identification of overarching categories. Coding and memoing procedures were facilitated by the Atlas.ti 7 program. Recurrent reading and coding of the data as well as triangulation of different data sources were our analytical strategies of ensuring validity and groundedness of the findings.

We present selected preliminary findings from the ongoing analysis. According to pre-service teachers, student diversity is framed within the curriculum of general education courses at the university mainly through SEND/inclusive education perspective, or by pedagogically-oriented perspective. They meet the socio-cultural perspective solely during their teaching practice. When talking about how the university curriculum reflects student diversity, pre-service teachers usually remember rather episodic examples of how to work with student diversity which are however not systematically interlinked. Although pre-service teachers claim that teacher educators encourage them to address student diversity within general education courses at the university, they do not feel well prepared to work with student diversity in their teaching practice. When turning to the beliefs and practices of pre-service teachers related to their practicum at lower-secondary schools, it is evident that they focus mainly on students with SEND or students without formalized support measures who are “conspicuous” in terms of their degree of disruption, talent or pace, etc. For these types of students, pre-service teachers often use elaborated systems of strategies, in which they are also encouraged by their mentors. Although mentors implicitly model addressing diverse needs of all students in the classroom, they provide explicit advice only for SEND/conspicuous students. As a result, pre-service teachers often tend to focus on individual educational needs of SEND/conspicuous students, while “average” students are overlooked. Pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding working with student diversity are limited and do not meet the requirements of addressing diverse needs of all students in the classroom emphasized by the DI approach. However, the analysis also showed that directing energy to the needs of individual students can foster pre-service teachers’ professional development.

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