15 December 2016
Research evidence can’t offer certainties, but it can help school leaders make better decisions.
30 October 2016
The evidence on deploying TAs to deliver out-of-class interventions is unarguable. Our new MITA project aims to show that up-skilling TAs and carefully rethinking their use within classrooms can unleash their full potential.
28 September 2016
Our work with the Education Endowment Foundation has shown how the teaching profession and researchers can unite around the evidence to co-construct solutions for making better use of teaching assistants. In this blog, Rob Webster reflects on what he has learnt from working closely with those at the chalk-face.
28 February 2016
What happens when provocative findings from educational research get wide coverage, but are narrowly reported? What are the risks to policymakers, practitioners and researchers? Rob Webster shares his experience of helping schools make sense of the headlines about teaching assistants.
11 September 2015
The government has admitted to another delay to the publication of the new professional standards for teaching assistants, but nothing would show a greater statement of intent and support for schools by getting them out there now. After all, the timing couldn’t be better…
01 September 2015
How can we connect TAs with the kinds of practice that have a measurable impact on achievement? Our new book, The Teaching Assistant’s Guide to Effective Interaction, aims to grow schools' capacity and opportunity for the valuable types of classroom talk that improve pupils' independence and their relationship with learning.
26 February 2015
Evidence-informed guidance and the DfE's new professional standards for TAs offer school leaders actionable recommendations to help TAs thrive in their role and improve outcomes for pupils.
30 December 2014
A new paper looks at how the educational experiences of children with SEN have changed since the 1980s. The results are a reminder that effective policymaking and classroom practice require objective research evidence to balance our subjective perceptions.
An Australian politician has claimed “we need to get rid of” pupils with SEND from mainstream classrooms, because “the teacher spends so much time on them, they forget” about others pupils. But data from our new research suggests otherwise...
