One focus of our work in the context of school heterogeneity has been the topic of attitudes and approaches towards inclusion. For this purpose, we conducted a study on implicit attitudes of student teachers towards inclusion (Kessels, Erbring & Heiermann, 2014). For the first time, attitudes toward inclusion were collected using a reaction time-based, non-reactive method, which has the advantage that responses are less influenced by social desirability than in interviews or questionnaires. In multiple sequential studies we also examined the extent to which teachers experience the implementation of inclusion as contradictory to the implementation of educational standards, as these two reforms may require very different teaching behaviors (Holder & Kessels, 2018, 2019).

Selected publications:

Holder, K. & Kessels, U. (2019). Unterrichtsgestaltung und Leistungsbeurteilung im inklusiven und standardorientierten Unterricht aus der Sicht von Lehrkräften [Teachers’ perspectives on instructional quality and performance evaluation in the context of inclusion and educational standards]. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 22, 325–346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-018-0854-7

Holder, K. & Kessels, U. (2018). Lehrkräfte zwischen Bildungsstandards und Inklusion: Eine experimentelle Studie zum Einfluss von „Standardisierung“ und „Individualisierung“ auf die Bezugsnormorientierung [Between educational standards and inclusion: An experimental study on the effects of “standardization” and “individualization” on teachers’ reference norm orientations]. Unterrichtswissenschaft, 46, 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42010-018-0013-0

Kessels, U., Erbring, S. & Heiermann, L. (2014). Implizite Einstellungen von Lehramtsstudierenden zur Inklusion [Student teachers’ implicit attitudes towards inclusion]. Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht, 61, 189 –202. http://dx.doi.org/10.2378/peu2014.art15d