Lit Review

Nolan Mendonca

LBST 301

Professor Gillmore

December 13, 2021

 Introduction

The academic and social success rate of a special needs students has always been

reflected by the help of their teaching assistants. However, if we pulled their teaching assistant’s

aid to as minimal as possible, the question arises of would it benefit them not only academically

but also socially down the road in their life? After doing my internship at a charter school in San

Diego, I had realized that some of my SEN students I worked with thrived better academically

with less help in their schoolwork. At the same time, some students did not thrive with that

technique. This topic is a personal interest to me because as a hopeful special education teacher, I

plan to be knowledgeable about the approaches I should do in order for the SEN student to be

successful in their academic and social life. When starting my initial research, I noticed that this

topic has not been thoroughly researched enough.

There has been a lack of research on special needs students and their social inclusion in

school and society. The question does arise on the effectiveness of TAs and the pupil’s academic

success, however, there is no question that these two concepts are intertwined. There should be

more experiments and studies through which we can see a clear definition of if the SEN students

are benefiting from the TAs or being harmed. If we could identify which specific influences are

affecting the process of their social inclusion, we could acknowledge that more to future

educators in the special needs field (Saddler, 2013, pg. 150). If there were more research done on

the topic then maybe the TA could start to target improving SEN students’ social skills in their

education. In this paper, I plan to tackle the question of if special educational needs students are

more benefited when their teaching assistant gives them less help and if it creates better social

skills through their own experiences.

Literature Review
Relationship Between Student and Paraprofessional

There is no question that the student and the paraprofessional have a relationship.

However, the relationship defined between the two can vary depending on the country and

school they attend. Finding the TAs’ appropriate role can be difficult because of how often they

work with their kids for long periods of time. The TAs often end up at the primary educators for

SEN students when they should be the secondary to their educational experience (Webster,

Blatchford, Bassett, Brown, Martin, Russell, 2010, pg. 329). When people often think that

distancing the TA as a secondary provider could harm the student, it could not be more wrong. In

a study on a 4-year-old with development disabilities in a pre-K classroom, they had found that

their engagement was just as a normal student when the TA was distanced from them (Russel,

Allday, Duhon, 2015, pg. 207). Every SEN student does have the legal right to have a TA with

them during their academic career, however, if the time between the two is limited, it forces the

student to strengthen their commitment to activities and naturally develop their social and

academic skills (Rama, Kontu, Pirttimaa, 2020, pg. 163).

The roles that paraprofessionals bounce back and forth from can be a wide range of titles.

We can identify five major roles that a paraprofessional is capable of which are instructional,

support, liaison, personal support, and one-to-one in-class support (Minondo, Meyer, Xin, 2001,

pg. 114) The recommended positions that could be helpful are ones that are less over-reliant like

“assistive technology, teacher training, teaching formats that are amenable to students pursuing

different learning outcomes or progressing at varying rates, use of existing schoolwide supports,

use of a paraprofessional assigned to a class rather than an individual student, different models of

delivery, positive behavior supports, and peer supports” (Giangreco, 2010, pg. 8). This not only
is cost-effective for the schooling system, but also creates different beneficial outcomes for the

student while developing their academic and social skills.

Effectiveness of a Teaching Assistant

Having a teaching assistant is one thing, but the quality of the teaching assistant is

another. Having three frames acknowledged (deployment, practices, preparedness), it showed the

hesitation of whether the TAs should have an important role like I mentioned earlier. It showed a

negative impact in the students because the paraprofessionals were not trained properly for such

duties and effectiveness. A study was done with a group of children with down syndrome and the

results were that they were not able to produce a quality personal narrative after help from their

TAs (van Bysterveldt, Westerveld, 2016, pg. 249). The fact that out of that whole study, not one

down syndrome student could produce a quality personal narrative reveals how unprepared the

TAs are for setting up SEN students for real-life scenarios. It also highlighted four main themes

which are “the explicit and subtle forms of separation these pupils experience daily; the high

level of pedagogical decision-making TAs have for pupils with statements; the impoverished

pedagogical diet pupils with statements received, compared to their peers; and the gaps in

teachers’ TAs’ knowledge concerning meeting the needs of pupils with statements” (Webster,

Blatchford, 2014, pg. 324). There is a gap between the TAs and teachers with meeting the needs

of the SEN student because of the lack of communication. If this lack of communication is not

fixed, it can harm the student’s academic success and set them up to be behind for the rest of

their academic career.

The effectiveness could also be influences\d by what kind of school the SEN student is

attending. With different kinds of schools, mainstream and special, it can differ the tasks and

goals for the specific student. The TAs in the mainstream schools effect the way the teacher
teaches for that class lesson than when the teacher would teach on their own. The special schools

TAs have more time to develop a plan for their SEN students while also working with the

teacher. The difference between time the TAs had spent at two different kinds of schools is the

assisting the TA was doing at special schools was 12 percent while the mainstream schools were

only 2 percent. Both schools however, averaged a 10-15 percent of their time simply on waiting

for activities to end (Takala, 2007, pg. 55). This shed light on the educational system is designed

to have SEN students get caught behind because they inform the TAs that they must wait in

activities like this. If we included them into the activities, the success rate in their social skills

would go up.

SEN Students’ POV

Without discussing the point of view from an SEN student would be unethical in a

research case like this one. In a study conducted in England, the researchers recreated the TAs of

ten to eleven years old’s memories and studies their responses. Through this study, the students

expressed that they felt that the TAs supported them through their academics and found that most

of the kids found their TA to already be ideal. They all talked positively on their TAs, but it

highlighted specifically what the TAs were focused on when the kids recreated their

paraprofessional (Pinkard, 2021, pg. 260). Having the students be in control of the experiment

made them only really show the positive side of the TAs, so that they could have fun during the

experiment. The researchers had to take a close look into their behaviors as well. In a different

study, pupils have also commented that they have experienced different things in their primary

schools. The SEN students noticed that when they have a high-level experience, there is a “lower

quality pedagogical diet as a result of school and classroom arrangements that rely heavily on

TAs to provide key, movement-by-movement instructional input” (Webster, 2015, pg. 1005).
The students are recognizing there are flaws in their system for help, but yet there has been no

change. The TAs need to acknowledge their feelings in more than an academic sense and make

the change for them to succeed. Also, to recognize that every student is not the same, so their

curriculum is not going to be the same as the last SEN student with the same special needs.

Research Methodology

Study Design

Study Population & Sampling

Participants in the Study

Data Collection Methods

Data Analysis Methods

Mechanisms to Ensure Credibility/Reliability

Ethical Considerations
 References

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