Intervention programmes in mathematics and literacy: teaching assistants’ perceptions of their training and support

We approach the recent argument put in this journal that teaching assistants (TAs) should be more strongly trained, monitored and supervised when teaching on intervention programmes. We suggest that the argument sits uneasily with 10 wider management and educational literature. We examine TAs’ experience of delivering important intervention programmes in mathematics and literacy. TAs report considerable variation in both their training and the quality of management involvement in their teaching. Consequently, we argue for an approach that includes TAs in a form of distributed leadership which recognises their specific 15 capabilities rather than the model advocated both by government documents and some researchers.

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