This paper draws together knowledge about teaching and learning in diverse classroom. It begins with mixed age classes where there are pupils of different ages or grades (see Cronin, 2019 for a discussion on terminologies). Where mixed age teaching is forced upon a school due to circumstances such as small pupil numbers, it can be seen as problematic. However, where mixed age classes are intentional, the perceived benefits to pupils, their families and wider communities are well documented (Cronin, 2019). There is an extensive literature about teaching and learning in mixed age settings that can be drawn together with knowledges of diversities more traditionally associated with equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) groupings such as ethnicity, socio-economic status and disability. Amalgamating these literatures offers opportunities for new theoretical engagements, potentially offering enrichment of the understandings of diversity in classrooms and informing development of pedagogies. Teaching and learning in diverse classrooms often draws on ideas about inclusive approaches, practices and organisation. Inclusive approaches to education are informed by a number of one or more theoretical positions. These include psycho-medical models, the celebration of individuals and their differences (eg the UN Sustainable development goals), children’s rights (eg Rustemeir, 2002) and the valuing of democratic and collaborative actions in schools and their communities (eg Fielding, 2011). The perspectives of those who extol the benefits of mixed age classes, tend to be informed by theoretical positions that value collective acts and community (Vincent, 1999; Little, 2001) and there are resonances here with ideas being used in democratic and collaborative approaches to inclusive teaching and learning. These include the need to recognise individual identity in the context of collaborative learning (Hargreaves, 2009), ideas of belonging (Slee, 2019) and The Common School (Fielding and Moss, 2011). The domination of individualism in contemporary education (Hargreaves, 1980), with its associated standardisation and decontextualization of pupils, curricula etc feeds into the development of inclusive teaching and learning which tend to focus on the acknowledgement of difference rather than similarity. However, there are bodies of theoretical work in the inclusion and mixed age literature associated with ideas of collaboration and collective acts - see for example the work of the Victoria Government in Australia (2017) and STEP4SEAS (2019) in Europe. This paper explores how theorising of mixed age and inclusive teaching and learning can be put to work in developing pedagogies and educators.

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