1,721,011 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Looking forward: using the Warnock Report to chart a way forward
No full text‘<i>It’s properly changed, and I think it’s going to continue</i>.’ How the pandemic and the cost of living crisis remade the teaching assistant role
No full textThis paper presents evidence of how the role of teaching assistants (TAs) in England has been remade by the Covid pandemic. Drawing on data from a national survey of 9,055 TAs and 22 semi-structured interviews with TAs, teachers and headteachers, the authors show how essential TAs were to schools’ responses to managing the disruption caused by the pandemic. TAs kept schools functioning and supported the pastoral and wellbeing needs of children and families, both in school and in the wider community. As life and learning return to normal, the informal duties that TAs took on during lockdown have persisted, leading to a marked increase in workload. At the same time, TAs find themselves struggling to make ends meet amid a fresh crisis concerning the rising cost of living. Headteachers report fears of losing TAs to better-paid jobs and being unable to recruit replacements. Problems maintaining provision for pupils with additional needs and exacerbating challenges regarding teacher workload and retention are forecast. Despite schools’ innovative and well-meaning efforts to recognise and demonstrate their appreciation of TAs, this paper argues that this does not amount to a robust TA retention strategy. A comprehensive national development strategy and investment in the TA workforce is recommended to address longstanding issues concerning their role, identity, value and pay.</p
Introduction
Full text linkThis introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the role of teaching assistant (TA) with regard to inclusion and provision for pupils with special educational needs in three different European systems. It draws on data from a longitudinal study to track the evolution of the special needs assistant role in Ireland, and the attempts at policy level to exclude from it ‘any teaching activity’. The book explores the pupil experience and what is like to work with a TA. It presents reports on the experiences secondary school teachers in Australia have of working with TAs, and the factors that facilitate and impede practice. The book offers a blueprint for effective TA deployment that could be used as the basis for an impactful, long-term strategy.</p
Dataset for the Southampton Doctoral thesis empirical study: Exploring the Impact of Teaching Assistant Support on School Belonging
No full textThis dataset contains: Interview transcripts x3 and quantitative data from the study Exploring the Impact of Teaching Assistant Support on School Belonging.
</span
Scaffolding by teaching assistants in England: exploring the interaction between practice and task structure
Full text linkInternationally, teaching assistants (TA) support children with special needs and/or disabilities as they complete classroom tasks; meanwhile, teachers manage whole-class instruction. Given the limited training for TAs, Bosanquet et al. (2020) developed an influential framework promoting TA effectiveness. Their ‘scaffolding framework’ encourages TAs to provide minor support, such as prompting, while children complete tasks. Accordingly, children retain independence, maximising thinking and learning. This study examined how different task structures, including open tasks, influence the strategies TAs use. Two focus groups were conducted with four TAs working in an English primary school. Through facilitated discussion, participants reviewed the scaffolding framework and commented on videos showcasing the practices of another primary-school TA across open and closed tasks. Data were largely coded using the categories of the scaffolding framework. The findings reveal that TA support, such as prompting, is recommendable across tasks. In open-task settings, TAs could also utilise more nuanced assistance, notably ‘what else’ questions. These encourage children to further elaborate on their ideas, leveraging the undetermined nature of open-task responses. Such scaffolding opportunities are more limited in closed tasks, which require precise answers. Moreover, the findings illustrate that effective TA practice stems from open-ended or closed tasks well-suited to children's capabilities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
