Teachers and Teaching Assistants: Between Hierarchy, Autonomy, and Cooperation

Abstract

In recent years the employment of teaching assistants without a professional pedagogical qualification in Swiss mainstream schools has increased. In contrast to the established practice of cooperation between professionals in schools, a structural inequality has to be considered in the relationship between teachers and teaching assistants. In this article, I present findings of a qualitative-reconstructive study on the cooperation of teachers and teaching assistants. Methodologically the study follows a praxeological approach to educational research (STURM, 2016). In order to reconstruct the relations of collaboration and the orientations guiding actions, I conducted problem-centered one-to-one interviews (WITZEL, 2000) and analysed these using the documentary method (BOHNSACK, 2014a; NOHL, 2017). Four relational types of collaboration between the teachers and the teaching assistants were identified: the collaborating, the assisting, the delegated, and the substitutive type of collaboration. Further I discuss implications of the reconstructed collaboration for the employment of teaching assistants without pedagogical training in a setting that requires professionalization. Reflecting on the findings, I take professional theory and the concepts of education leadership and cooperation into consideration.