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As several countries have committed themselves to the promotion of inclusive school systems, teachers might feel overwhelmed by the additional competencies needed for inclusive teaching. Beyond an increase in specialised knowledge, these competencies include a coherent belief system to facilitate the adoption of inclusive practices. Currently, there is scarce knowledge concerning the foundation of teachers’ beliefs and values and the possible connections between these personality traits and inclusive practices. Based on the theory of cognitive hierarchy, we investigated the predictive ability of the value of universalism in shaping sentiments, attitudes and concerns about inclusive education (RQ1), as well as their links to the anticipated enjoyment of teaching in inclusive settings as an indicator of enthusiasm for teaching (RQ2). Within a sample of 229 biology pre‐service teachers (Mage = 22.9 years, SDage = 3.5 years; 76% female, 68% bachelor) we found universalism to be a direct predictor of sentiments, attitudes and concerns regarding inclusive education. Furthermore, universalism was the strongest predictor of anticipated enjoyment of teaching in inclusive settings, while only sentiments about inclusive education were not predictive for enjoyment. The study illustrates how deeper underlying values like universalism is connected to beliefs about inclusive education and subsequent motivations in the classroom. When teacher educators intend to motivate pre‐service teachers to teach in inclusive settings, these variables should be kept in mind, though further study must be done on the generalisability of the results for pre‐service teachers of other school subjects.

Field trips can provide unique opportunities for authentic, meaningful, and self-determined learning. Capitalizing on these opportunities requires that field trips be structured. A common way to do this is through the use of educational materials such as worksheets. The extent to which the guide's or teacher's autonomy-supportive or controlling motivating style influences learning structured by worksheets has not yet been investigated. We conducted two studies focusing on this specific issue. We hypothesized that autonomysupport is beneficial to intrinsic motivation and cognitive achievement. The setting for our research involved a field trip to the local zoo. The participants were 100 fifth graders (medium achievers) for Study 1 and 106 fifth and sixth graders (high achievers) for Study 2. The classes were divided into two groups for each study. While completing worksheets, some classes were given autonomy-supportive guidance and the others controlling guidance. We assessed the pupils' intrinsic motivation and knowledge using a pre-, post-, follow-up test design. Our research found that autonomy-support appears to be beneficial to motivation and does not seem to impair cognitive achievement. The beneficial effect of autonomysupport was found to be higher for the high-achieving pupils than for the medium achievers.

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