Teaching Assistance in schools

The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) Project suggests that the way we use TAs may need to change.

The key differences are that “teachers generally ‘open up’ the pupils, whereas TAs ‘close down’ the talk linguistically and cognitively”:

• Teachers encourage students to think for themselves,
• Teachers explain concepts; TAs’ explanations sometimes inaccurate
• TAs use closed questions to support pupils to complete tasks but with minimal exploration of concepts
• Teachers use prompts and questions to encourage thinking; TAs more frequently supplied answers and completed work for pupils.

It would appear that TAs are creating a dependency culture and closing down opportunities for a pupil to think for themselves.

This meant that “the more TA support pupils received, the less academic progress made.” There was a significantly negative effect on progress in every year studied in English, in every year but year 10 in Maths, and in every year but years 1, 3, 7 and 10 in Science. No year group and no subject made significantly positive progress.

The only objective positive findings were that TA support improves pupils’ Positive Approaches to Learning but only in year 9.

Notes

‘TA’s include Teaching Assistants, Higher Level Teaching Assistants, Classroom Assistants, Learning Support Assistants, LSAs for SEN, Nursery Nurses and Therapists

References

 Blatchford P, Bassett P, Brown P, Martin C, Russell A, Webster R, Babayigit S, Haywood N, Koutsoubou M, & Rubie-Davies C 2010 The Deployment and Impact of Support Staff (DISS) Project available at www.schoolsupportstaff.net