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The impact of support staff on pupils’ ‘positive approaches to learning’ and their academic progress
Author(s) -
Blatchford Peter,
Bassett Paul,
Brown Penelope,
Martin Clare,
Russell Anthony,
Webster Rob
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/01411921003734645
Subject(s) - psychology , academic achievement , mathematics education , longitudinal study , naturalistic observation , educational research , pedagogy , medical education , social psychology , medicine , statistics , mathematics
In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in support staff in schools in England and Wales. There were widespread expectations that this will be of benefit to teachers and pupils but there has been little systematic research to address the impact of support staff. This study used a naturalistic longitudinal design to investigate the relationship between the amount of support (measured by teacher estimates and systematic observation) and pupils’ ‘Positive Approaches to Learning’ (PAL) and academic progress. There were over 8000 pupils across two cohorts and seven age groups. Results on PAL were not straightforward by there was a consistent trend for those with most support to make less academic progress than similar pupils with less support, and this was not explained by characteristics of the pupils such as piror attainment or level of special educational need.