Introduction: The research being presented tries to find out the perceptions and attitudes foreign school students attending linguistic support classes in primary school and their teachers have about the school institution, the students' implication in school practices and the relationships established. Method: The perceptions were obtained through the administration of three questionnaires each of which had four differentiated sections: adaptation to the school setting, learning strategies, relationship with school peers and relationship with adults. One of the questionnaires was completed by 5724 foreign students who had incorporated into the school system in Catalonia from year 2004 and who were using the linguistic support classroom during academic year 2006-2007. The other two questionnaires were completed by the mainstream classroom teachers and by the linguistic support teachers respectively during the months of May and June 2007. SPSS15 was used to analyse the data. Two different variables were used with foreign students: linguistic family and continent of origin. With the answers to the three questionnaires we did a factorial analysis and an ANOVA analysis of each factor obtained with the variables of the students selected. Results: The results show that there is no coincidence between the subjective perceptions Asian and African students have and those of their teachers. On the contrary, the perceptions of students and teachers coincide with students from Eastern and Community Europe. With Latin American students, there are more coincidences than discrepancies between students and teachers. Finally, the data shows that teachers significantly perceive African and Asian students having more problems of integration than European and Latin American students. Discussion and conclusions: The article discusses the mutual perceptions of students and teachers through the students' previous school experiences and the social perceptions about the integration of different groups of foreign people and, at the same time, concludes that teachers' perceptions towards foreign students generally coincide with stereotypes and prejudices existing in society about foreign people. © Education & Psychology I+D+i and Editorial EOS (Spain).

Linguistic and ethnic diversity Linguistic support classes School attitudes Intercultural education Migrant students

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