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Teachers’ epistemological beliefs, that is, their beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how it is learned, appear to be highly influential in their classroom practices. To date, the exploration of teachers’ epistemological beliefs has been complicated by philosophical and methodological disputes. A method is presented here for inferring the epistemological beliefs of elementary school general education teachers through their descriptions of their work with students with disabilities. Evidence to support the reliability of this method is also presented. Differences in teacher belief constructs are related to differences in instructional practices – a relationship which holds for instructional interactions with both individual students and the whole class, and which predicts instructional practices for students both with and without disabilities. We therefore speculate that differences in teachers’ beliefs about students with disabilities might be related to their larger epistemological theories about knowledge and learning. In speculating about the source of differences in beliefs and practice, it is notable that the normative school beliefs, that is, the prevailing beliefs in a school about teachers’ roles and responsibilities for students with disabilities, appear to influence the beliefs of individual teachers. The potential for differences in teachers’ beliefs and practices to influence student outcomes is also considered, with some preliminary evidence from student self‐concept data.

The conversational interactions of 9 teachers and their third-grade students were recorded during individual seatwork time in academic lessons. teachers' views about their responsibilities in working with students who are exceptional or at risk of academic failure were quite divergent and were related to their instructional discourse strategies. teachers who saw themselves as instrumental in effective inclusion engaged in more academic compared to nonacademic interactions. this group also exhibited greater use of techniques to extend students' thinking, compared to those teachers who held contrasting views. they also interacted more with their students who are exceptional and at risk than with their typically achieving students, and at higher levels of cognitive extension than did the other teachers, who seldom interacted with the students who were in the exceptional and at-risk group. the results shed light on how teachers differ in adapting instruction for students in inclusive classrooms, and how instruction might be differentially delivered as a function of teachers' views about inclusion.