According to Gogolin (2019, 81), one of the significant merits of international comparative school performance research is to have brought the topic of language and education in the context of migration and multilingualism back on the agenda in educational science, educational research, educational policy, and educational practice around the turn of the millennium. In the course of this development, migration, multilingualism, and German as a second language have been anchored as obligatory topics in the curricula of teacher training programs. However, the analysis of Schrammel-Leber et al. (2019) shows a low scope of the respective obligatory modules for Austria, so that it can be assumed that in many places a thematization, but not an intensive examination can take place.

Public, educational policy, and educational practice discourses on migration, multilingualism, and German as a second language in Austria are characterized by an assimilationist pejorative perspective (Döll 2019). For a contemporary pedagogy that reduces the disadvantage of migrant multilingual pupils, it is necessary to reflect on this perspective and to support pupils in developing an attitude in terms of "Pedagogy of Migration" ("Migrationspädagogik", Mecheril 2015). The evaluation of the courses on German as a second language at the University of Paderborn (Döll et al. 2017) has made clear that this is only possible to a certain extent within courses with a workload of 6 ECTS.  After completion of the courses, the students were dominated by the foreigner education paradigm (assimilation through compensatory German support) and a pronounced expectation of deficits with regard to migration-related multilingual pupils became apparent.

Following on from the Paderborn study, the StuPa*L project investigated in the academic years 2016/2017 and 2018/2019 at an Austrian university of teacher education what attitudes and perspectives students in the first semester of the bachelor's degree program for primary level teaching have on the topic of (migration-related) multilingualism of pupils and whether or how these attitudes and perspectives change in the courses over two semesters in which the topics of German as a second language, migration, multilingualism are covered with a workload of only 3 ECTS. The theoretical framework of the study are migration theory, Pedagogy of Migration (Mecheril 2015) and its central concepts (assimilationism, ethnicization, culturalization, linguicism, othering, racism and power).The surveys for the two cohorts had different foci, with the results of the qualitative portions of each being used to interpret the quantitative results in greater depth, as well as to expand the quantitative inventory (item and scale development).  The focus for the first cohort was biographical experiences with German as a second language and multilingualism, while the second cohort focused on attitudes towards (inner) multilingualism.

At all survey times and for both cohorts, a particular focus was on the expression of the prospective teachers' deficit perspective on migrant multilingual children. Due to the low workload allotted to German as a second language, migration and multilingualism, it is not to be expected that the students acquire or measurably develop competencies in dealing with linguistic heterogeneity and other forms of migration-related difference in the course of the module. On the other hand, the acquisition of specialized knowledge to a moderate extent as well as possible irritations of existing orientations and presuppositions were expected. In this context, it should be clarified to what extent the efforts to initiate an awareness of the disadvantaged position of multilingual pupils and a pragmatic-appreciative handling of migration-societal diversity lead to a reduction or possibly to a reinforcement of the deficit perspective, since the module structure provides space for the imparting of corresponding knowledge, but an intensive reflexive examination is not possible.

Our data collection was conducted as a full survey in two cohorts (n= 114 and n = 119) of primary teacher education students and with two survey time points each, i.e., in a pre-post design, and with a concurrent mixed-methods approach. In the first cohort, scales for deficit orientation to migrant multilingual pupils (based on Gogolin 1994) and free-written texts about one's own experience in the context of German as a second language and multilingualism from a biographical perspective were used, among others. After the analysis of the quantitative data revealed qualitative shortcomings of the chosen scale, the qualitative data were used to develop and pilot new items. In the course of analyzing the piloting data, a "Deficit Perspective Beliefs" scale (Döll, Guldenschuh, Sonnberger 2021) consisting of a total of nine items emerged, which has a single-factor structure and good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .840). Two-dimensional scaling with PROXSCAL clearly shows how the evolved scale unfolds into two facets analogous to James Calderhead's model of teachers' beliefs (1996: 719ff.): Beliefs about multilingual children and beliefs about teaching multilingual children. The refined scale was subsequently used in the second cohort surveys. Analysis of the scale confirmed its single-factor structure and good internal consistency.

Since the StuPa*Linz project data were collected primarily for the purpose of module evaluation and the populations of the two cohorts are of such a small size that anonymity of the respondents, who repeatedly encounter the surveyors in the context of university teaching, cannot be guaranteed, the collection of sociodemographic data was largely omitted. Multifactorial analyses are therefore unfortunately not possible. In our presentation, we would therefore like to describe the process of item and scale development based on our qualitative data on the one hand, and present the descriptive results on the development of students' deficit orientation and deficit perspective beliefs on the other. Our data clearly show that students strongly associate migration and multilingualism with deficits in German. The quantitatively recorded deficit orientations and deficit perspective beliefs about multilingualism remain at a medium level longitudinally. For the samples studied, it can therefore be stated that the deficit orientations and deficit-perspective beliefs about multilingualism do not increase in the course of participation in the topic-related course offerings - however, an increase in appreciation and resource orientation cannot be determined either.

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