The opportunity to learn in rural schools is a major topic on the priority list of the research agenda for rural school improvement according to Arnold, Newman, Gaddy & Dean (2005). The contributions in our symposium aim to give research-based insights into the practices of teaching and learning in multi-age classes of rural schools. In such classes the question arises how to deal with the greater age-diversity within one group of learners. Small schools were long seen as not being educationally adequate. Meanwhile, this opinion has changed. Besides good teacher-student relationships, small schools offer the possibility to provide more individually adapted instruction and learning (Hargreaves, 2009). Differentiated instruction is seen as one method to improve learning in small schools (Smit & Humpert, 2012). Especially the Scandinavian countries seem to have continually improved multi-age teaching in rural schools (Aberg-Bengtsson, 2009; Kalaoja & Pietarinen, 2009). Dowling (2009) and Hargreaves (2009) report that in Scotland and England not all of the rural schools use the potential of multi-age classes. Similar results can be reported from an Austrian-Swiss study into mixed-age learning, where only a few of the small schools involved use the potential of mixed-age classes (Raggl, 2012). This symposium involves four contributions from four different countries – Austria, Finland, Spain and Switzerland - with different approaches that have been developed to facilitate student learning in heterogeneous learning groups with different needs and competences.

One of the aims of our symposium is to look deeper into the creative practices of teachers in multi-graded classes in order to identify successful teaching and learning approaches. From a didactical point of view mixed-age teaching is characterized by the following features: Multi-age grouping, where teachers structure learning activities to meet individual student needs (Hoffman, 2002), the role of the teacher as a facilitator (Hoffman, 2003), cooperative and peer learning and formative assessment (Hargreaves, 2001).

In exploring the approaches used by the contributors (Raggl, Domingo, Hyry-Beihammer and Smit), to enhance multi-age teaching, it is possible to tease out a number of themes that will be discussed within the symposium. These include:

(i)           Innovations that can help to improve learning and teaching in rural communities;

(ii)         The utility of mixed-age practices to include all children in fruitful learning activities;

(iii)        Criteria of mixed-age didactics, that enhance the quality of learning;

(iv)        Constraints that hinder successful implementation of innovative practices for teaching multi-graded classes in rural schools;

(v)         Importance of developing teacher understanding and training in mixed-age and differentiated learning practices as well as those of students;