Behaviour Management and the Role of the Teaching Assistant

A Guide for Schools

Emma Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429614460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Behaviour Management and the Role of the Teaching Assistant draws on the latest research as well as teaching assistants' own views to enable readers to reconsider TA deployment and to maximise the benefits TAs have to offer in supporting children's behaviour. It considers the difficulties facing TAs, summarises the key stages in the evolution of their role in the classroom and highlights the significant challenges of TAs' role definition.

Using current research findings, this book provides guidance and practical activities to support schools in empowering TAs to work with children whose behaviour challenges. Each chapter considers a range of strategies for working with TAs, as well as the strengths and limitations of these approaches. There are also a range of self-/school-auditing and self-evaluation tasks with key points to consider and practical in-school suggestions at the end of each chapter.

This is essential reading for professionals at all levels working in schools wanting to understand how teaching assistants can best be supported to successfully manage behaviour in schools.

Part 1

1 Who are TAs and what do they do?

Part 1 of this book will move on to consider who TAs are and what work they routinely undertake. The aim of this part of the book is to provide some general background information to develop the subsequent chapters. It might be useful to all readers to review some of the basic facts about who TAs are and who they work with. There may be some surprises here for readers as the research that has been conducted suggests that in recent years moves towards more direct teaching roles for TAs is largely under-researched and not clearly understood. Indeed, that is just the tip of the iceberg as research shows a general lack of clarity about what TAs’ roles could, should or might encompass and how their work relates to that of teachers.

As part of the consideration of who TAs are in this chapter, we will also consider the population of TAs and look at how some of the tensions this group experiences might be as a result of the feminised workforce.

The chapter also introduces the research base on TAs and discusses its strengths and limitations. The research covered in this section might be new to many readers but will hopefully begin to make clear how the multiple perspectives on who TAs are and what their role(s) might be in school affects the subsequent discussions about their role in managing behaviour.

This section of the book will also introduce the chapter layout that will become familiar to you over the subsequent chapters and sections. It begins with the aims of the chapter, followed by a consideration of the key research findings. It then moves on to look at what this might mean practically in school and a summary of key findings follows this. The chapter ends with recommended reading.

This chapter considers who TAs are and how we know what we know about the work they do. Its aim is to provide context for the subsequent chapters. This chapter will:

• Consider what characteristics TAs have
• Detail the experiences TAs have in school
• Investigate what research can tell us about TAs’ work
• Look at the limitations of current and extant research on TAs
• Discuss some of the issues TAs face which have made them marginalised in policy and practice

What does the research tell us?

Who are TAs and what do they do?

Although it is not possible to categorically state what an ‘average’ TA is like, drawing on what research tells us, the workforce of TAs has been reported as almost all female (92 per cent in 2014 rising to 95 per cent three years later [DfE, 2014, 2017]). The average TA is suggested to be aged between forty-one and fifty, have a lower level of formal education than teachers (the typical school leaving age of the TA population is sixteen) and with family responsibilities (Bach, Kessler and Heron, 2006; Blatchford, Russell, Bassett, Brown and Martin, 2007; DfE, 2011; HMI, 2002; Quicke, 2003). Blatchford et al. (2007) found from their large-scale survey that 43 per cent of TAs had nine or more years’ experience, and 63 per cent had been in the same school for at least five years, with half of these having more than ten years’ experience in the same school.

As noted earlier, the number of TAs employed in English schools continues to rise significantly, with around 178,000 (DfE, 2017) TAs employed in state primary and nursery schools. To put this into some context, the number of full-time equivalent primary and nursery school teachers stood at almost 215,000 in 2016. This means the ratio of teachers to TAs in primary schools is around 11:9, not quite 1:1 but not a million miles away either. Working with other adults, TAs in particular, is a fact of life for most teachers now with the Education Endowment Foundation research (Sharples, Webster and Blatchford, 2015) stating TAs accounted for over a quarter of the workforce in mainstream schools in England and 35 per cent of the total workforce in primary schools. Looking purely numerically at the statistics this suggests that there are currently more TAs in English nursery and primary schools than teachers. This information might be surprising but it highlights the importance and possibly challenge for schools and teachers of meeting Standard 8 of the Teachers’ Standards (DfE, 2011) which relates to fulfilling the wider responsibilities as a teacher, specifically the importance of deploying support staff effectively.

The book will consider in detail, in Part 2, and in Chapter 13 specifically, the range of different methods of deploying TAs and the advantages and disadvantages of each. As a result, we will just touch on some of the aspects of TA deployment here to provide an overview. Although TAs can be deployed in a number of different roles, they mostly continue to work supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) including those with behavioural difficulties (Blatchford, Russell, Bassett, Brown and Martin, 2004; Groom and Rose, 2005; Ofsted, 2008; Sharples et al., 2015; UNISON, 2013; Webster and Blatchford, 2013; Webster, Blatchford and Russell, 2012). Blatchford et al.’s research (2007) – which developed into the largest piece of research worldwide into the work TAs do – showed that of the 658 TAs they sampled working in Key Stage two (KS2 7–11 year olds) in England and Wales – on average they spent 60 per cent of their time working to provide support for specific groups, or individual children who had some form of additional need, either educational or behavioural.

This shows that many TAs (and in Blatchford et al.’s [2007] study most TAs in KS2) work with children who have some form of SEND, which may well include behavioural difficulties. The Department for Education (DfE, 2012) highlighted the link between pupils identified as having SEND with what they suggested were higher levels of self-reported or observed misbehaviour and significantly higher rates of both fixed term (nine times more likely) and permanent (eight times more likely) exclusions. As a result, this means many TAs are regularly, if not exclusively, working with children who have problems with behaviour. Although this in itself may not necessarily be a specific issue, it is the often-unplanned nature of this deployment that is problematic. Often TAs are expected to support children who have some forms of SEND academically and the behavioural support they provide is either a secondary consideration, or more often, not an explicit consideration at all.

As we progress through this book, a range of other issues which impact on TAs will be considered that highlight why this unplanned work with children who may be showing challenging behaviours is difficult for TAs. The key message in this book, therefore, is that if TAs are deployed to work with children with behavioural difficulties this is a clearly planned strategy and that the necessary support (for the child, TA and teacher) is put into place. The book also aims to reinforce how this way of working with TAs needs to be clearly considered in a range of whole-school documentation and policies to support TAs in fulfilling this role.

Pause point

This chapter so far has considered some of the key information research shows us about TAs and their role in schools. Think about:

• How closely do the research findings tally with your own setting and experiences of TAs?
• What differences (if any) have you identified between your own experience and setting and these?

What do we know about TAs?

Although the amount of research on TAs’ work has increased in recent years, almost all of it has investigated how they support children’s academic outcomes rather than the support TAs offer children in other ways, and these ‘soft skills’ have largely remained unexplored. The largest study of TAs’ work was conducted by Blatchford, Russell and Webster (2012) and much of what has been used in schools, for example ‘Making the Best Use of Teaching Assistance’ guidance by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (Sharples et al., 2015) had been drawn from this. Although this research is unrivalled in terms of the range of data collected, the number of participants and scope, there are aspects which are challenging. The key aspect that makes the study problematic is that the research team did not actively speak to any TAs during the study or gather any of their perceptions or perspectives on the roles they undertake. TAs have, by and large, had very little opportunity to inform research from their perspective and this may, in part, be due to the roots of the TA role which has been considered from the deprecating view of them as a ‘mum’s army’ of ‘paint pot washers’ (Bach et al., 2006). Despite a significant shift in attitudes, it has been argued by many that TAs are still marginalised in wider educational discourses and policies and that a ‘feminised’ perspective persists in research on TAs. This ‘feminised’ view can be argued to be a result of the TA role being almost exclusively female and this in itself has been suggested to be the cause of a range of persisting difficulties for TAs, including their status and power in schools. These will be explored and discussed in detail as we move through the chapters and the book.

Parallels can be drawn between the research that exists on TAs and that on children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). Armstrong (2014) noted in his analysis of research into SEBD that work in what he described as a small field of study was similar to research on TAs, which is often practice-based and small-scale. Giangreco, Suter and Doyle (2010) also suggested that the studies on TAs at that time did little to help answer questions specifically related to the appropriateness or effectiveness of TAs’ deployment and the work they undertook.

Pause point

• Have you seen any marginalisation of TAs in any of the schools or settings you have experienced?
• What impact might the lack of wider research on TAs supporting children outside their academic work have?

What this might mean in school

As we have discussed, much of what we know about TAs and their work in school focuses on their impact on children’s academic progress. Much of this research, aside from the Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) report is relatively small-scale and has focused on describing the work TAs do at the classroom level (Cremin, Thomas and Vincett, 2003; Devecchi, 2005). This means that actually, as has been argued, few answers exist ‘related to questions about the effectiveness’ of TAs’ work due to the ‘limited available research base’ (Giangreco and Broer, 2005; Giangreco et al., 2010; Giangreco, 2013).

1. Although studies into TAs’ work are growing, they are not always enough to base sound evidence-based decisions on. Existing research might be best used as a suggested guide rather than a prescri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Index