Mentor materials
Reflection and research in professional development
Learning intentions
Your ECT will learn that:
- Teaching assistants (TAs) can support pupils more effectively when they are prepared for lessons by teachers, and when TAs supplement rather than replace support from teachers.
Your ECT will learn how to:
Build effective working relationships, by:
- Sharing the intended lesson outcomes with teaching assistants ahead of lessons.
- Ensuring that support provided by teaching assistants in lessons is additional to, rather than a replacement for, support from the teacher.
Topic introduction
As part of the self-directed study session, you have explored how research evidence can be used to improve learning. Today, you are going to apply what you have learnt to the evidence about working with TAs to support pupils’ learning.
Meeting activities
Throughout the session, try to refer explicitly to the learning intentions, and encourage your mentee to record key points in their learning log. Tailor your use of the theory to practice activities below in response to the review and plan sections of this session.
Review and Plan (5 mins)
- Start this session by briefly following up on the actions that the mentee set at the end of last week’s session. Ask your mentee to summarise:
- what they did
- the impact of this on their workload and wellbeing (including how they are evaluating this)
- what they will do going forward to build on these actions
- Clarify the learning intentions for this session with your mentee.
Theory to Practice (35 mins)
Discuss with mentor
As part of their last self-directed study session, your mentee reviewed a research article. They were supported to select a piece of research evidence, consider the credibility of the research and consider the applicability of the research.
Ask your mentee to share their reflections on this activity. You may find the following prompts useful:
- what piece of research evidence did you select?
- how did you source the research evidence?
- what were the main claims made in the research?
- how credible do you think the research is? And how do you know?
- how applicable do you think the research is in your context? And how do you know?
Analyse artefacts and discuss with mentor
Explore the recommendations in the Education Endowment Foundation’s Guidance Report Making Best Use of Teaching Assistants.
To engage with these recommendations, you could:
- take 10 minutes to read recommendations 1 and 2, while your mentee reads recommendations 3 and 4
- each take a couple of minutes to summarise to each other the key messages from the sections of the report that you have read
- discuss common themes and how it relates to the research summary you have already read
Then evaluate the resource using the criteria addressed last week in relation to the effective use of evidence.
You may find it helpful to consider the following questions:
How credible is the evidence?
- what are the key claims made?
- who funded, undertook and published the research?
- what types of research were used to support these claims?
- what limitations are there to the research?
How applicable is the evidence?
- what context was the research undertaken in?
- does the evidence address a problem or issue that you have?
- how do the claims compare to your own professional experience?
- are the approaches described likely to be suitable and feasible in your own context?
The answers to these questions are open to professional debate, but you may find the following prompts useful:
Overall, there are a number of different claims made and they are credible. Perhaps the central claim is that TAs can make a big difference to pupils’ learning, but that this requires effective deployment. The report was funded and published by the Education Endowment Foundation, which is an independent charity known for the quality of its work. The report itself describes the rigour of the process used to develop the materials. This includes an evidence review stage and the systematic involvement of a range of professionals to develop the recommendations.
In terms of applicability, this is open to even more professional judgement, and will depend on your own context. For instance, if you already have very effective practice around TA deployment, then the potential benefits of the recommendations are likely reduced.
Next Steps (5 mins)
Agree with your mentee how they will now put their learning from this week’s session(s) into practice in their teaching. Help your mentee to clarify:
- the action(s) they will take and how these actions are expected to contribute to improving pupil learning
- what success will ‘look like’ in relation to these actions
- how they will evaluate their success in taking these actions
Note the date of your next mentor meeting, when you will check on your mentee’s progress.