Models of research use in education tend to focus on specific elements of education systems or underplay the complexity of system change. Within other public policy areas, notably health, more work has been undertaken to integrate systems thinking when considering knowledge mobilisation and research use. In this paper, we survey public policy…

With the number of teacher assistants (TAs) employed in schools steadily increasing, most teachers are likely to work with a TA at various times throughout their career. International research indicates there is scope for teachers to enhance their work with TAs. This systematic review examines teachers' perceptions of their work with TAs.…

The Roma are Europe's largest minority ethnic group, yet too few Roma achieve a level of education that enables them to secure employment or positive life chances. Gaps in their attainment compared to other ethnic groups start to appear in the earliest years, with Roma participating in early education at half the rate of their peers. The European…

Following a learning experience with one of her Year 2 students, whose extreme and challenging behavior required extra support from a teaching assistant (TA) but who loved practical hands-on science days and investigations, it occurred to the author that there must be hundreds of children and TAs all over the UK facing challenging dilemmas every…

This article explores the process by which children attending mainstream UK primary schools can achieve social inclusion. It presents the findings from a systematic literature review, followed by empirical research, exploring the concept of social inclusion with particular regard to the experiences of pupils identified with SEND. The article draws…

A range of sociological work has theorized neoliberal regulative regimes, suggesting the contradictions contained in the enactment of policy and foregrounding the painful effects of these processes on subjectivities produced within performative school cultures. This paper contributes to this body of work by tracing the movement of desire in…

Aim: Tablet technology can play a valuable role in supporting learning for primary school children, but its implementation for children in the early years or for with those with learning delays has received limited focus. The aim of this study was to enhance understanding of the interaction between child, technology, and conditions for…

This paper presents the results of a small-scale research project to identify the impact of working in a nurture group setting on two teaching assistants in an English primary school. This research uses a narrative inquiry approach to provide rich data from the stories through which the practitioners interpret, and make sense of, significant…

The number of teaching assistants (TAs) in schools in the UK has risen in recent years, but there remains a lack of clarity about the roles being undertaken by these support staff. This article reports findings from a study investigating how the TA role is understood both by the pupils being supported and by TAs themselves. Eleven students with…

This article details a mixed methods study designed to examine the impact of a group process consultation model in helping staff manage challenging behaviour in the nurture group setting. It relates to two geographical clusters of staff, including teachers and teaching assistants, running 11 nurture groups in a major metropolitan area in the UK,…

This paper presents findings from an empirical study that investigated the learning experiences of deaf students in mainstream secondary classrooms, from teaching assistants' (TA) perspectives. These findings indicate that effective collaboration between mainstream teachers and specialist teachers of the deaf (ToD) is required to ensure…

This paper describes the mixed methodology evaluation of the Own-Voice Intensive Phonics (OVIP) programme with 33 secondary students with persistent literacy difficulties. The evaluation involved a quasi-experimental evaluation in which 33 students in years 7-9 in four schools used OVIP over an 8 week period and were monitored at three times for…

The debate regarding the inclusion of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in mainstream education in the UK partly revolves around what makes the classroom environment inclusive. Through the potential offered by the specific qualitative methodologies employed, this study aimed to explore the development of teachers'…

After 2005, approximately two million Poles emigrated, choosing mostly Britain as their destination. Quantitative reports paint a picture of the typical Polish immigrant as a person between the ages of 31-39, who, with a vocational (or equivalent) education, is active on the labor market. This paper reports on a qualitative study of six typical…