Pond life that ‘know their place’: exploring teaching and learning support assistants’ experiences through positioning theory

Abstract

Teaching and learning support assistants (TLSAs) are notoriously underpaid and undervalued as members of school workforces in England and elsewhere in the world, where the discourse of support has worked to legitimize their poor status. This article reports and explores empirical findings through the lens of positioning theory. This theoretical approach has revealed ways in which the positions occupied by TLSAs are consolidated in social acts and discursive practices that contribute to a narrative that is shared and understood by those positioned and those positioning. The multiplicity of, and sometimes competing, positions occupied by TLSAs are revealed through different readings of the collective storylines of pond life and knowing one’s place that determine a set of social and occupational practices. These serve to illustrate the discursive fights TLSAs were engaged in to assert their professionalism in schools and to challenge their low status.

Keywords:

• positioning theory
• discursive practices
• teaching and learning
• support
• professional identities

Notes

1. The term ‘Teaching and Learning Support Assistant’ (TLSA) was agreed to by the teachers and teaching and learning support staff in this project in order to overcome some of the linguistic confusion surrounding their titles in different organisations: 48 different titles have been identified nationally (Whitby 2005).

2. Pond life (in the British slang use of this term) is used to mean a life form regarded as being very low on the evolutionary scale. Knowing one’s place denotes a position in school and professional hierarchies.

3. Physical education.

4. TLC is a colloquial acronym for ‘tender, loving care.’