Globalisation has led to increasing diversity in school contexts, in terms of students' backgrounds and nationalities, cultures and languages (Rijkschroeff et al., 2005). This new reality poses unprecedented challenges to schools, in their attempt to achieve equity  through teaching-learning environments, to improve contextualised, multicultural settings and student-centred strategies. It is also necessary to consider the perennial social and economic inequality structure, which continues to generate inequalities in academic achievement (Broer et al., 2019). Socioeconomic inequalities are evident in most European cities, segregation is increasing, and the gap between upper and lower classes is widening (Musterd et al., 2017). There is a clear danger that education may reflect this imbalance and once again become a platform for reproducing economic and social inequalities. To counter this tendency, schools are increasingly expected to innovate, to develop effective strategies and methods, and to redesign organisational changes. All these efforts aim at transforming diversity into an asset, increasing students' motivation and engagement in learning, and empowering the whole student community in the acquisition of knowledge.

What we intend to bring to this presentation is a qualitative case study, conducted in two elementary schools in Portugal, that addresses how teachers and other members of the educational community regard interventions that are being implemented, for targeted, disenfranchised, groups of students. The selected schools depict a variety of socio-economic, ethnic and immigrant backgrounds. They face a number of challenges, dealing with low SES groups, as well as a wide range of new immigration arrivals, that present linguistic differences. These interventions, which aim at reducing both long-standing and recent inequalities, are described, analysed, and evaluated by the research participants.

These case studies intend to understand the meaning and specificities of these interventions or measures in the perspective of the participants. The collection of data consists of fifteen individual interviews with teachers and headteachers, education staff (school psychologist and social workers) and parents. These materials have undergone content analysis, as systematic description of phenomena (Breakwell, 2012) allowing for the organization of content into several categories, that structure the strategies developed in these school contexts. More specifically, the research questions focus on: what has been created in this school over the last few years to achieve greater success for all pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged groups? What features seem to be producing more transformative teaching and learning? What does not seem to be working as expected?

Seeing that the research is ongoing, we still do not have many specific results on the perceived efficacy of these strategies. However, we expect to depict a vast array of interventions. The findings, so far, reveal different types of interventions, which can be organized into pedagogical, classroom tailored strategies, as well as school level organization policies, following the implementation of new legislation acts in education. These strategies connect with the research questions, in their description and evaluation of more or less effectiveness, in the participants perspective, that is, these discourses about strategies and measures are being subjected to a content analysis treatment of their perceived efficacy and barriers. Some concrete examples of innovative interventions implemented by these contexts are, considered by the participants as transformative, could be: the creation of interdisciplinary classes (DACS), coordinating several subjects in the same classroom; a project designed to teach the national language to immigrant students; new school organisation policies to improve attention and discipline (timetables, mobile phone use); strategies for closer links between family and school, among others.

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