Learning and support assistants in inclusive education: a transnational analysis of assistance services in Europe

Abstract

This paper presents results of a comparative study about assistance services for supporting students with disabilities in regular schools in five European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Slovakia and the UK). Besides the analysis of relevant documents on assistance services, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with learning and support assistants (LSAs), teachers and stakeholders from the Ministries of Education were conducted. The context of the study was the Erasmus+ project 'Improving Assistance in Inclusive Education Settings' (IMAS). The aim of the study was to reveal goodpractices, strengths and weaknesses of this service in the five countries. One of the most interesting findings is that Slovakia is the only country with formal and domain-specific qualification requirements for working as an LSA. In line with previous research, further results showed that in all investigated countries, LSAs legally defined roles and responsibilities often do not correspond to their activities performed in practice. Based on these findings, recommendations for improving assistance services have also been provided. These recommendations could support relevant decision-makers in further developing assistance services to ensure adequate support for students with disabilities in regular schools.

Concept of knowledge boxes – a tool for professional development for learning and support assistants

“…In other words, pedagogical duties are not defined as being part of the assistant’s role (Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes, 2014). Similar regulations apply in other European countries such as Germany, Portugal and UK (Breyer et al, 2020).…”

“…The legal regulations defining the duties of such assistants also vary throughout Europe. In Bulgaria and Slovakia, for example, the tasks of the assistants include communicating with teachers, parents, and other professionals, in addition to providing support for children with disabilities (Breyer et al, 2020). In Austria, the assistance services are regulated at state level and the legal regulations in Styria, for example, state that learning and support assistants are only allowed to provide care or offer ancillary services in the support of children with SEN and physical disabilities in school.…”

“…In Austria, for example, learning and support assistants are responsible for supporting an individual student for a certain number of hours. Time for exchanging information or joint lesson planning is not foreseen (Breyer et al, 2020). This means that exchange between assistants and teachers often occurs before or after class and is considered extra voluntary work (Biggs et al, 2016).…”

Does the School Really Support My Child? SOFIA: An Assessment Tool for Families of Children with SEN in Spain

“…First, a search was done for studies that delved into the topic to determine which aspects were the most important in the assessment instrument's first proposal. Several studies were used as a basis for the proposal of different important aspects to be taken into account in the construction of the questions by the experts in phase 2 (among those that stand out are: [1, [3][4][5]10,12,16,18,20,23,30,39,43,45,47,51,55,61,66]). Based on the literature review and the detailed analysis of the existing legislation, the main dimensions were proposed to design the SOFIA Questionnaire, which has subsequently been subjected to an analysis of its content validity through expert judgment, as suggested by the International Test Commission [71].…”

“…Simultaneously, much of the research in the field use qualitative techniques, mainly semi-structured interviews, and focus or discussion groups [56][57][58][59][60], making it difficult to collect, compare and generalize data [61]. The few studies using questionnaires [53,59,60] have focused, as discussed above, either on specific disorders or in student's and teacher's variables [62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69], often leaving aside the perception of the parents. For all the above reasons, there is a need to assess the opinion of the parents of children with SEN regarding the education their children receive, and to give them a voice through a tool that is reliable and valid and that allows studies to be carried out in this respect, in order to enhance the participation of these parents in the inclusive education of their children.…”