The dissemination of concepts of heterogeneity, diversity, and intersectionality within academic and practice-oriented educational discourses points to the increasing importance of observing social differences within and through the education system and its organizations. Common to all three approaches is a canon of categories of difference, whose relevance is claimed both analytically and normatively-programmatically. At the same time, however, heterogeneity, diversity, and intersectionality represent concepts whose context of emergence and genesis are based on functionally specific reference problems and discourse fields (education, economy, science). Against this background, this presentation explores the consequences of the specific observation logics of difference concerning the construction of social reality among the target groups.