Teacher assistants (TAs) are support staff who help teachers to carry out educational objectives of the school. They make educational experiences of children more interesting as they undergo the learning process. In many instances, support staff are qualified professionals with special needs for diagnostic testing, speech therapy, and physical therapy. Another category of teacher aides s non-professional documentation usually obtained from colleges. The last cadres of teacher aides are those that have no post-secondary qualifications in essence teacher aides are assigned roles depending on the level of their competencies. The teacher takes the lead role as the teacher aides work directly with students individually or in small groups aimed at performing certain tasks. Teacher aides can make appraisals of how students are responding to tasks but not make judgments. Teacher aides function in the classroom, professional teaching assistants may provide professional reports on students to help their teachers understand their students. Teachers use their reports to plan individualized plans for student improvement. The Australian College of Teacher Aides and Childcare (ACTAC) is Australia’s leading provider of nationally recognised teacher aide courses and childcare courses, if you are looking to study a nationally recognised qualification
The Rationale behind TAs
Different categories of students require services of teacher aides Mitchell identifies a category of students with disabilities, students with difficulties and students with disadvantages. Students with disabilities are perceived in medical terms as those with some form of disorders causally connected to organic pathologies. Their educational needs emanate from problems that can be connected to these disabilities. The group is known as Special Educational Needs (SEN). If you are looking at studying special needs education then ACTAC also provides the leading teacher aide course, CHC40213 Certificate IV in Education Support. The second categories of children with difficulties are those with behavioral, emotional and learning disorders. They are causally connected to student and school context. They could be cultural, socio-economic, or linguistic in nature. Students with disadvantages and difficulties are not well documented. Countries with diverse ethnic backgrounds form the focus for unraveling student difficulties and justifies why teacher aides are required. Students who do not speak English have extensive learning needs apart from the common (SEN) category. Teacher aides are hired to support such kind of students by managing student behavior, enhance learning skills and assist class teachers to complete duties. The challenge of Teacher aides is that their role is not well understood hence receive limited directions of work or have incomplete job descriptions. Use of teacher aides begun in the western countries when the philosophy of inclusive education assumed that every child had the right to be educated in the school of their district and hence be provided with equal educational opportunities of their age.
