Inclusion has taken the spotlight in education and teachers and their attitudes play a decisive role in its successful implementation (Markova et al., 2016). Stereotypes are beliefs about the characteristics and behaviour of members of a social group (Hilton & von Hippel, 1996). With regard to inclusion, stereotypes differ depending on the pupils’ needs: Pupils with Down syndrome, for example, are stereotypically perceived as warm but not very competent (Fiske, 2012). Autistic pupils, on the other hand, are often associated with savant abilities (Bennett et al., 2018). However, there is little research on the relationship between teachers’ stereotypes in the context of inclusion and their diagnostic process or diagnostic decisions. The few existing studies show inconsistent results (Glock et al., 2020). We therefore investigate the stereotypes of pre-service teachers, their diagnostic process/ decision as well as the relationship between them. We will focus on autistic pupils and pupils with Down syndrome as two large groups of pupils with special educational needs that are seen as very different (American Psychological Association, 2023) by investigating the following hypotheses: H1: Pre-service teachers have stereotypes towards autistic pupils and pupils with Down syndrome. H2: Pre-service teachers’ judgements are biased by the existence of a diagnosis in comparison to no diagnosis. H3: Pre-service teachers’ stereotypes influence the diagnostic decision so stereotypes lead to a biased decision independent of the actual information. We investigate this in an online simulation. Data collection is currently still running. An estimated N = 180 pre-service teachers will participate in an online study. The participants are presented with four pupils and different sources of information. The pupils vary depending on whether they have a diagnosis or not and whether they are described in a stereotypical way or not. With limited time, they are instructed to gather information and make a diagnostic decision. We also assess implicit and explicit stereotypes, prior knowledge and demographic data. Premilitary results show both- the existence of stereotypes as well as significant differences regarding the diagnostic decision: Considering the Bonferroni adjusted p-value, there was a significant difference between pupils described in the same way but with and without a diagnosis. Final results will be presented at the conference as we are just finishing data collection. We expect pre-service teachers to have stronger implicit than explicit stereotypes regarding autistic pupils and pupils with Down syndrome; leading to strongly biased decisions in which information related to stereotypes is overvalued.

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