Becoming a Teaching Assistant : A Guide for Teaching Assistants and Those Working with Them

This book is a course text for teaching assistants. It aims to help students make the transition into undergraduate level study. It is also a teaching and learning resource for students and tutors on undergraduate programs.

The authors introduce students to the requirements that their degree programs will make and explore issues such as behavior management and national curriculum strategies. This will help readers to engage with the material in a way that is appropriate to Higher Education study.

The book draws on the experiences of teaching assistants and is grounded in the day-to-day practices of professionals working with young people in schools. Theoretical concepts are explored as being crucial to developing learning support and teaching skills. The authors′ aim is to help students understand essential theory, and to provide a practical support throughout their studies.

Carol Robinson′s research interests combine theoretical and empirical work and focus on two main areas: the voices, experiences, rights and empowerment of children and young people; and the development of learning and professional knowledge through doctoral study and its enactment in practice. These interests developed from her experience as a classroom teacher in a range of secondary and special schools and from her experience of teaching on doctoral programmes. 

She has been involved in a number of research projects both locally and nationally and have led several Pupil Voice projects in primary, secondary and special schools, helping staff to develop ways of listening to the voices of the young people in their schools She also led the Pupils′ Voices strand of the University of Cambridge Primary Review of Education in England. She is currently a principal researcher on a project investigating how young people with low aspirations can be supported to raise their aspirations and self esteem and she is involved in a Building Communities Through Dialogue (BCTD) project exploring children′s, parents′ and teachers′ perceptions of dialogic learning approaches in the classroom. She is also on the steering group for the development of UNICEF UK′s school based Rights, Respecting Schools Programme and she is the Cambridge Primary Review regional centre coordinator for the south east region. 

Her methodological interests focus on constructivist approaches to research and within this, she particularly favours narrative approaches.