Teachers’ Beliefs as Resources for Inclusive Teaching

Insights into a Long-Term University Study

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_15How to use a DOI?

Keywords

teachers’ beliefs; inclusive teaching; ESD; teacher training

Abstract

Teachers play a key role in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). They equip learners with the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, foster a culture of respect and belonging, and ensure equitable and quality education for all. Their beliefs also influence the way and the content they teach in a postmigrant and inclusive society. As well as imparting expert and didactic knowledge, teacher training in higher education needs practical application phases and needs to encourage students to reflect on their own beliefs. Using long-term observations from a pilot study, this article reflects how diversity-sensitising intervention seminars with an intersectional focus and practical school experience in university teaching have an impact on the beliefs of prospective German teachers at Master’s level for grammar schools. In particular, non-religious or less religious students with multilingual experiences have positive attitudes towards multilingualism, intercultural education, and sexual diversity even at the beginning of the study. Within one year, we see a tendency in changing beliefs in the positive sense. However, the data also indicate that, in the short term, university seminars do not lead to students becoming better at recognising everyday racism, though this does not hinder their attitudes towards cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and acceptance.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Karina Becker
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - Teachers’ Beliefs as Resources for Inclusive Teaching
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 177
EP  - 187
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_15
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_15
ID  - Becker2026
ER  -