The involvement of teaching assistants in professional learning communities

Teaching assistants (TAs) have a notable role in supporting individual students, groups, and classes in learning and in daily practices, both in mainstream and special education at the primary and secondary school levels. To enhance teaching assistants' learning, they should be integrated members of schools' professional learning communities. Despite this, most research about professional learning communities has concentrated on studying professional learning communities from teachers' and principals' perspectives. The purpose of this study was to identify how Finnish teaching assistants perceive their own and their schools' capacities. Teaching assistants' perceptions about personal capacities indicated that collaborative knowledge construction is regarded as a strength, including shared inquiry with teachers, and reflection of common and own practices. Perceptions about interpersonal capacities indicated that collaboration, shared values and vision, collective responsibility of student learning and shared practices with teachers are regarded as strengths. The dimensions of relationships and climate, including relationships based on trust and respect, were also reported as strengths. Within organizational capacities, structural conditions, such as participation, time allocation, professional development and in-service training and stimulating leadership have been reported as aspects that could be stronger from teaching assistants' perspectives. Methodologically, this study confirms the nature of professional learning community as a multidimensional and multi-layer construct, with interrelated dimensions and capacities.