Effective Teaching Practices by Teaching Assistants To Support the Education of Children With Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities, 2024

Internationally, teaching assistants (TA) support children with special needs and/or disabilities in completing classroom tasks while teachers manage whole-class instruction. Given the limited training available for TAs, influential researchers recently developed a framework to help TAs effectively design such a relevant practice. This ‘scaffolding’ framework encourages TAs to offer minor, neutral support, such as prompting, to students encountering difficulties completing tasks. This way, TAs maximise children’s thinking and learning.

To further inform the scaffolding framework, this research explored TAs’ views in England. Four primary-school TAs participated in a focus group (Focus Group 1) to discuss the scaffolding framework and examples of effective teaching practices across multiple task contexts, such as open and closed tasks. To facilitate the discussion around effective practices, two videos were illustrated to the participants including a TA supporting a child with SEND; the TAs were particularly invited to use the teaching context in the videos to describe effective strategies that they might adopt in comparable circumstances. Video 1 illustrates a TA supporting the child with SEND completing an open task, namely describing a picture, while Video 2 shows the dyad dealing with a closed task: identifying a grammar mistake in a sentence.

The data drawn from Focus Group 1 were finally thematically analysed. To this end, the author transcribed the data verbatim and then interrogated the transcript in relation to scaffolding theories and practices. This process resulted in a list of thematic codes identifying the co-constructed meaning of effective TA scaffolding practices along with practical examples and the factors (such as types of tasks) influencing the applicability of the scaffolding framework. These research findings drawn from Focus Group 1 were finally shared with the participants in a second round of focus group discussion, Focus Group 2, for confirmation and further elaboration.

Drawing from this research, this dataset includes pseudonymised transcriptions of the two focus group discussions. Video 1 and 2 and their transcripts are excluded from the dataset. Additionally, the dataset contains demographic information of the participating TAs gathered through a questionnaire.<p>This research programme aims to increase awareness of my PhD and its use amongst multiple audiences (e.g., politicians and scholars). To this end, academic publications, conferences, and podcast talks are used. Before describing the next project’s aims, an abstract of my PhD is produced.
My PhD explored the classwork of teaching practitioners (TAs) internationally playing a crucial role in the mainstream education of children with SEND while teachers manage whole-class education. Whilst much of the existing research has targeted countries using TAs with limited training and a role focused on only assisting children with SEND, my study was carried out in a context (Italy) providing TAs with wealthy training and whole-class responsibilities equally to teachers. Drawing from classroom observations of a TA and interviews with 31 other TAs in Italian primary schools, the study suggested that:
a) The TAs instructed children with SEND and infrequently managed whole-class instruction.
b) Regardless of being well trained, they did not effectively scaffold the thinking of children with SEND – namely, they supplied children with answers to solve tasks, limiting their thinking and learning. Also, the TAs demonstrated a lack of awareness of a key sociocultural principle as to how children best learn, such as fostering their thinking by transferring them the responsibility of task completion.
Hence, the project’s plan of sharing this PhD contributes to existing knowledge of a relatively unexplored research context. Moreover, the dissemination produces guidelines for TAs as to how to design effective instructions, known as ‘scaffolding’, in Italy and beyond according to the sociocultural tenet above. Despite being based on the experience of a few TAs, sharing the PhD findings might also have important implications for Italian policymakers due to uniform employment conditions and training of Italian TAs, whereby negatively impacting the teaching of highly trained TAs like the PhD participants. Among these is the seeming need to include more training on sociocultural principles of child development in the training of TAs, alongside its existing ample provision of courses on teaching methods. This might improve TAs’ awareness of the effect of their practice on children's learning and their teaching in practice. Though this policy implication is germane to the Italian context, countries reviewing the training of teachers and TAs might also benefit from this (e.g., the UK).
Finally, this research programme includes new research addressing this question: ‘What do primary-school TAs perceive as effective scaffolding practices?’. To deal with this, I rely on the following:
a) An unexplored collaborative research design, wherein four primary-school TAs and I have focus discussions (FG) on the research question topic. Firstly, I use the FGs to present an influential scaffolding framework informing TAs on how to design effective practices. Next, the TAs describe examples of their effective teaching practices to update this.
b) The analysis of a different research context than in my PhD (UK primary education), thus potentially promoting nuanced TA classwork and findings.</p>

国际上，教学助理（Teaching Assistant，TA）会在教师开展全班教学时，辅助有特殊教育需求与残障（Special Educational Needs and Disabilities，SEND）的儿童完成课堂任务。鉴于教学助理的培训资源相对有限，近期有知名研究者开发了一套框架，助力教学助理有效设计相关支持实践。这套“支架式（scaffolding）”教学框架鼓励教学助理为遇到任务困难的学生提供适度的中性支持，例如提示性引导，以此最大化激发儿童的思考与学习效果。

为进一步完善这套支架式教学框架，本研究调研了英国教学助理的相关看法。本次研究邀请了4名小学教学助理参与第一场焦点小组讨论（Focus Group 1），围绕支架式教学框架以及多任务场景下的有效教学实践案例展开讨论，其中包括开放式任务与封闭式任务。为引导讨论聚焦有效实践，研究人员向参与者播放了两段视频，内容均为教学助理辅助有SEND的儿童开展学习的场景；参会的教学助理被要求结合视频中的教学场景，描述自身在类似情境下可采用的有效策略。视频1展示了教学助理辅助有SEND的儿童完成开放式任务——即图片描述，而视频2则呈现了该师生二人组处理封闭式任务的过程：识别句子中的语法错误。

最终，研究人员对焦点小组1采集到的数据开展主题分析（thematic analysis）。为此，研究者先将访谈内容逐字转录，再结合支架式教学的相关理论与实践对转录文本进行解读。该过程生成了一系列主题编码，用以明确有效教学助理支架式教学实践的共建意义，同时附带实践案例以及影响支架式框架适用性的相关因素（如任务类型）。随后，研究人员将从焦点小组1得出的研究结果反馈给参与者，开展第二场焦点小组讨论（Focus Group 2），以确认结果并进行进一步阐释。

基于本研究，本数据集包含两场焦点小组讨论的匿名转录文本。视频1、视频2及其对应转录文本未纳入本数据集。此外，本数据集还包含通过问卷收集的参与研究的教学助理的人口统计学信息。

本研究项目旨在提升公众对本人博士研究的认知，并推动其在多类受众群体中的应用，例如政界人士与学者。为此，研究团队通过学术出版、会议宣讲以及播客访谈等形式进行成果传播。在介绍下一个研究项目的目标之前，先附上本人博士研究的摘要。

本人的博士研究聚焦于国际范围内教学助理（Teaching Assistant，TA）的课堂工作，这类教学助理在有SEND的儿童的主流教育中发挥着关键作用，而教师则负责开展全班教学。现有多数研究的目标群体为那些培训资源有限、且仅承担辅助有SEND儿童任务的教学助理所在的国家，而本研究的开展场景则为意大利——该国为教学助理提供了与教师同等丰富的培训资源，并赋予其全班教学的职责。通过对一名教学助理的课堂观察以及对意大利小学内其余31名教学助理的访谈，本研究得出以下结论：
a) 教学助理会对有SEND的儿童进行教学指导，且极少开展全班教学管理工作。
b) 尽管接受过良好的培训，教学助理仍未能有效为有SEND的儿童搭建思考支架——具体表现为直接向儿童提供任务答案，限制了儿童的思考与学习过程。此外，教学助理普遍缺乏对关键社会文化学习原则的认知，即儿童如何通过将任务完成的责任转移给自身来实现最佳学习，例如通过引导儿童自主思考来促进其学习。

因此，本次分享博士研究成果的项目计划，将为相对未被充分探索的研究场景补充现有知识体系。此外，本次成果传播将为意大利及其他地区的教学助理提供指导，帮助其依据上述社会文化原则设计有效的“支架式”教学实践。尽管本研究基于少量教学助理的经验，但分享博士研究成果或对意大利政策制定者产生重要影响——鉴于意大利教学助理的就业条件与培训体系高度统一，这一现状可能会对像本研究参与者这样接受过高水平培训的教学助理的教学工作产生负面影响。其中一项关键的政策建议是，需在教学助理现有丰富的教学方法课程体系中，增设更多关于儿童发展社会文化原则的培训内容。这一举措或可提升教学助理对自身教学实践对儿童学习产生的影响的认知，并优化其实际教学行为。尽管该项政策建议针对意大利场景，但其他正在修订教师与教学助理培训体系的国家（例如英国）也可从中获益。

最后，本研究项目还包含一项针对以下问题的全新研究：“小学教学助理认为哪些属于有效的支架式教学实践？”。为解决这一问题，本研究采用了以下研究方法：
a) 采用一种尚未被充分探索的协作研究设计：本人与4名小学教学助理围绕该研究问题展开焦点讨论（Focus Group，FG）。首先，本人通过焦点小组向参会教学助理介绍一套具有影响力的支架式教学框架，指导其如何设计有效教学实践；随后，教学助理将分享自身的有效教学实践案例，以更新该框架。
b) 选取与博士研究不同的场景开展分析——即英国小学教育场景，从而有望为教学助理的课堂工作研究提供更细致入微的发现与结论。