{"title":"When policy clashes with practice: The case of teaching assistants in the Czech Republic","authors":"K. Slezáková, Lenka Kissová, Lenka Felcmanová","doi":"10.2478/jped-2022-0009","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the mid-2010s, Czech Republic has been implementing inclusive education measures on a wide scale. Five stages of supportive measures have been introduced, including the assignment of teaching assistants (TAs) for students with special educational needs. In the four years since the main reform, the assignment of TAs has become the most implemented supportive measure, even as their role in promoting inclusive education has been questioned in the scholarly literature. We base our findings on empirical research in primary schools and relevant policy documents. This paper focuses on the clashes between policy intentions and the practice of incorporating TAs into classrooms. We organise the findings into four categories of policy/practice conflicts: (1) ambiguous TA job descriptions; (2) insufficient TA qualifications; (3) combined TA contracts due to lack of funding; and (4) inconsistencies in TA appointments. Our findings suggest that, in practice, policy-regulated measures often do not correspond to the actual needs of schools.","PeriodicalId":38002,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pedagogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Pedagogy","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/jped-2022-0009","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Since the mid-2010s, Czech Republic has been implementing inclusive education measures on a wide scale. Five stages of supportive measures have been introduced, including the assignment of teaching assistants (TAs) for students with special educational needs. In the four years since the main reform, the assignment of TAs has become the most implemented supportive measure, even as their role in promoting inclusive education has been questioned in the scholarly literature. We base our findings on empirical research in primary schools and relevant policy documents. This paper focuses on the clashes between policy intentions and the practice of incorporating TAs into classrooms. We organise the findings into four categories of policy/practice conflicts: (1) ambiguous TA job descriptions; (2) insufficient TA qualifications; (3) combined TA contracts due to lack of funding; and (4) inconsistencies in TA appointments. Our findings suggest that, in practice, policy-regulated measures often do not correspond to the actual needs of schools.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Pedagogy (JoP) publishes outstanding educational research from a wide range of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical traditions. Diverse perspectives, critiques, and theories related to pedagogy – broadly conceptualized as intentional and political teaching and learning across many spaces, disciplines, and discourses – are welcome, from authors seeking a critical, international audience for their work. All manuscripts of sufficient complexity and rigor will be given full review. In particular, JoP seeks to publish scholarship that is critical of oppressive systems and the ways in which traditional and/or “commonsensical” pedagogical practices function to reproduce oppressive conditions and outcomes. Scholarship focused on macro, micro and meso level educational phenomena are welcome. JoP encourages authors to analyse and create alternative spaces within which such phenomena impact on and influence pedagogical practice in many different ways, from classrooms to forms of public pedagogy, and the myriad spaces in between. Manuscripts should be written for a broad, diverse, international audience of either researchers and/or practitioners. Accepted manuscripts will be available free to the public through JoP’s open-access policies, as well as featured in Elsevier''s Scopus indexing service, ERIC, and others.