Teaching assistants reflect: the way forward?

Abstract

If teaching assistants are to be successful in helping schools to address the Government’s standards agenda as well as meet the needs of the workforce reform it seems self‐evident that the employment, development and deployment of teaching assistants is of extreme importance. Following the publication of the Common core of skills and knowledge for the children’s workforce, ‘clarity of roles’ and knowledge of ‘how to reflect and improve’ are identified as core knowledge for the development of all staff working with children. The paper suggests that skills and performance are valued implicitly in the new arrangements in England, but there is a danger of the power of reflection not being recognised as a mechanism for the enhancement of such qualities. The issues raised in this paper are illustrated from evidence collected during a series of semi‐structured interviews with a group of eight bilingual teaching assistants who work in the same large multicultural primary school in the centre of England. The paper concludes by citing a number of specific questions for further empirical work.

Notes

1. The term teaching assistant is used throughout this paper as a generic term intended to include all support staff working with children in primary schools. For a further discussion of the titles and roles of support staff, see Hancock and Colloby (2005).