Responsibilities, preparedness, and job satisfaction of paraprofessionals: working with young children with disabilities

Abstract

To support teachers with their classroom responsibilities, schools have increasingly turned to paraprofessionals for assistance, with the largest numbers of paraprofessionals employed in the field of special education. Owing to this important role that paraprofessionals now perform in the education of children with disabilities in the USA, we set out to investigate the responsibilities that paraprofessionals working with young children with disabilities had. We were also interested in identifying how paraprofessionals and the teachers with whom they work alongside perceived the paraprofessionals' level of preparedness for their roles and their job satisfaction. Fifty‐two paraprofessionals and 59 teachers of young children with disabilities participated in the study. Overall, both paraprofessionals and teachers indicated that paraprofessionals were generally well prepared for activities they frequently engaged in and both viewed themselves as collaborative members of an educational team.