In Austria, segregated German language support classes (GLSC) were introduced in the school year 2018/19 to intensively support students who had previously little or no contact with German, the official language of instruction. These classes have been widely criticised; however, a formal evaluation of their effects has yet to be published. In absence of this evaluation, this article describes the language support model as it currently exists in Austria and reviews existing evidence about its efficacy. The literature review synthesises findings from educational research undertaken in other contexts that offer insight into features of ‘good practice’ in language support models. The article then explores the extent to which GLSC comply with these features. As such, this review allows insights into ways of ensuring students’ language and socio-emotional development – all central aspects of academic success – in language support models. It therefore allows research-informed understanding of the effects of the newly implemented model of German support classes in Austria and makes recommendations for further development.

The number of school-aged refugee background children on Turkish soil was estimated to be over 2 million in 2022. Acknowledging the importance of quality education for these children to achieve equity in Turkish-only public schools, this study examined pre-service teachers' self-efficacies in teaching refugee-background students (RBS). Data were collected from 437 pre-service teachers studying at eight different teacher education programs via the adopted Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) and analyzed with the Tukey multiple comparison test. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers rated low self-efficacies in teaching the RBSs. A comparison of mean scores based on the programs indicated that pre-service teachers in the early education programs scored the lowest self-efficacy while the pre-service teachers in Physical Education programs scored the highest. Moreover, the self-efficacies of bilingual pre-service teachers differed significantly from monolingual Turkish proficient pre-service teachers implying a positive correlation between pre-service teachers’ self-efficacies and bi/multilingualism. Lastly, senior pre-service teachers rated higher self-efficacies than freshmen, junior, or sophomore pre-service teachers. The study implied a need for culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies and differentiated instruction in the teacher education curriculum to prepare pre-service teachers better for the RBSs in Turkish public schools.