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The practice of the deployment of teaching assistants by trainee teachers during classroom teaching experiences: an issue of negotiation. by Robert Morgan Key words: deployment, habitus, trainee teachers, teaching assistants, hierarchy, localised familiarisation Abstract: This doctoral study explores how teaching assistants, mentors and trainee teachers perceive the practice of the deployment of teaching assistants during a school experience on an Initial Teacher Training programme in southeast London. It arose from an assumption that some trainee teachers found the deployment of teaching assistants a difficult process. A qualitative research approach based on an interpretivist paradigm was used through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, capital and field. This was utilized to determine whether trainee teachers found the nature of deployment of teaching assistants difficult owing to a struggle for power within the classroom. Data were collected through questionnaires and semistructured interviews. Analysis revealed that trainee teachers recognize the right to deploy their teaching assistants but appear not to wish to engage in an overt struggle for power – but rather do it subtly, by preferring to adopt a process of localised familiarisation. Aims & Objectives The present training of primary school teachers does not give enough attention to the preparation of trainee primary teachers to manage teaching assistants in their classrooms. The basis of my research, as a teacher trainer in a higher educational institution, is the consideration that the deployment of a teaching assistant effectively is a professional standard but one which qualified teachers, let alone trainee teachers, are often not adequately prepared for (Sharples, Webster and Blatchford, 2015 and Bignold and Barbera, 2011).
PrimaryFirst
The main research concerned three groups of people who work within the process of an assessed placement of school experience in Initial Teacher Training: trainee primary teachers, teaching assistants and school-based mentors in primary schools in south east London. The deployment of teaching assistants is a key part of the trainee primary teacher’s responsibility but there is little, if any, existing literature that concerns the deployment or the relationship between a primary trainee teacher and a teaching assistant in United Kingdom state schools. The argument is that the establishing of a professional relationship during the deployment of a teaching assistant by a trainee teacher in primary schools, in and around southeast London, opens the curtain to a scene where the complexities of the teaching profession are exposed. In my study, the trainee teacher recognizes the powerlessness of her situation in an environment and she adopts a measure to work with her teaching assistant by negotiation: one that I call a process of localised familiarisation within the primary classroom setting. Theoretical framework Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, capital and field (Bourdieu, 1984) was the lens chosen to conduct the study to discern the perceptions of how power was recognized and used within an environment that comprised a social world. Being an ‘insider researcher’ influenced the method of data collection. A qualitative research approach based on an interpretivist paradigm was used to analyse the data. Bourdieu’s writing was concerned with analysing concepts of power and social class. The accumulation of
