Teacher expectations and emotions concerning students with special needs or immigrant background

Teachers are faced with increasingly heterogenous student groups, whereby the successful inclusion of all students largely depend on teachers´ competence and attitudes. Attitudes are understood as a multifaceted construct with cognitive, affective and conative components. In the current study we investigated to what extent teachers´ expectations concerning students´ academic performance - reflecting the cognitive component of attitudes - varied as a function of specific student characteristics (special educational needs and immigrant background). In addition, we assessed teachers´ emotions - reflecting the affective component of attitudes - concerning the inclusion of these students in mainstream education. Result confirmed previous findings that teachers´ expectations and emotions vary as a function of student characteristics. Teachers had lower expectations of the academic performance of students with learning difficulties than students with challenging behaviour, whereby the estimates of German proficiency were also affected by the immigrant background of the student. Teachers felt however less positive about the inclusion of students with challenging behaviour than of students with learning difficulties, regardless of the immigrant background of the student. Results will be discussed in relation to theory and their practical implications.