Different culture, different beliefs: the case of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about Mathematics

Aiming at unfolding possible cultural differences concerning pre-service teachers’ beliefs towards mathematics and its teaching, this paper presents a comparative study between nearby regions: Italy and Germany. The sample is composed by 460 pre-service teachers from three universities, one in Germany and two in Italy, one of them close to the Austrian border and multilingual. Using a clustering technique, we analyse responses to two multiple-answer questions, and we compare the composition of the obtained clusters in terms of linguistic background and origin. Relevant differences are evidenced and explained, at least partially, in terms of cultural differences.