Internationally, teaching assistants (TA) support children with special needs and/or disabilities in completing classroom tasks while teachers manage whole-class instruction. Given the limited training available for TAs, influential researchers recently developed a framework to help TAs effectively design such a relevant practice. This ‘scaffolding’ framework encourages TAs to offer minor, neutral support, such as prompting, to students encountering difficulties completing tasks. This way, TAs maximise children’s thinking and learning. To further inform the scaffolding framework, this research explored TAs’ views in England. Four primary-school TAs participated in a focus group (Focus Group 1) to discuss the scaffolding framework and examples of effective teaching practices across multiple task contexts, such as open and closed tasks. To facilitate the discussion around effective practices, two videos were illustrated to the participants including a TA supporting a child with SEND; the TAs were particularly invited to use the teaching context in the videos to describe effective strategies that they might adopt in comparable circumstances. Video 1 illustrates a TA supporting the child with SEND completing an open task, namely describing a picture, while Video 2 shows the dyad dealing with a closed task: identifying a grammar mistake in a sentence. The data drawn from Focus Group 1 were finally thematically analysed. To this end, the author transcribed the data verbatim and then interrogated the transcript in relation to scaffolding theories and practices. This process resulted in a list of thematic codes identifying the co-constructed meaning of effective TA scaffolding practices along with practical examples and the factors (such as types of tasks) influencing the applicability of the scaffolding framework. These research findings drawn from Focus Group 1 were finally shared with the participants in a second round of focus group discussion, Focus Group 2, for confirmation and further elaboration. Drawing from this research, this dataset includes pseudonymised transcriptions of the two focus group discussions. Video 1 and 2 and their transcripts are excluded from the dataset. Additionally, the dataset contains demographic information of the participating TAs gathered through a questionnaire.This research programme aims to increase awareness of my PhD and its use amongst multiple audiences (e.g., politicians and scholars). To this end, academic publications, conferences, and podcast talks are used. Before describing the next project’s aims, an abstract of my PhD is produced. My PhD explored the classwork of teaching practitioners (TAs) internationally playing a crucial role in the mainstream education of children with SEND while teachers manage whole-class education. Whilst much of the existing research has targeted countries using TAs with limited training and a role focused on only assisting children with SEND, my study was carried out in a context (Italy) providing TAs with wealthy training and whole-class responsibilities equally to teachers. Drawing from classroom observations of a TA and interviews with 31 other TAs in Italian primary schools, the study suggested that: a) The TAs instructed children with SEND and infrequently managed whole-class instruction. b) Regardless of being well trained, they did not effectively scaffold the thinking of children with SEND – namely, they supplied children with answers to solve tasks, limiting their thinking and learning. Also, the TAs demonstrated a lack of awareness of a key sociocultural principle as to how children best learn, such as fostering their thinking by transferring them the responsibility of task completion. Hence, the project’s plan of sharing this PhD contributes to existing knowledge of a relatively unexplored research context. Moreover, the dissemination produces guidelines for TAs as to how to design effective instructions, known as ‘scaffolding’, in Italy and beyond according to the sociocultural tenet above. Despite being based on the experience of a few TAs, sharing the PhD findings might also have important implications for Italian policymakers due to uniform employment conditions and training of Italian TAs, whereby negatively impacting the teaching of highly trained TAs like the PhD participants. Among these is the seeming need to include more training on sociocultural principles of child development in the training of TAs, alongside its existing ample provision of courses on teaching methods. This might improve TAs’ awareness of the effect of their practice on children's learning and their teaching in practice. Though this policy implication is germane to the Italian context, countries reviewing the training of teachers and TAs might also benefit from this (e.g., the UK). Finally, this research programme includes new research addressing this question: ‘What do primary-school TAs perceive as effective scaffolding practices?’. To deal with this, I rely on the following: a) An unexplored collaborative research design, wherein four primary-school TAs and I have focus discussions (FG) on the research question topic. Firstly, I use the FGs to present an influential scaffolding framework informing TAs on how to design effective practices. Next, the TAs describe examples of their effective teaching practices to update this. b) The analysis of a different research context than in my PhD (UK primary education), thus potentially promoting nuanced TA classwork and findings.

The research data were drawn from a collaborative research design, wherein four primary-school teaching assistants (TA) and the first author serving as an interviewer explored effective scaffolding practices across two subsequent focus group discussions held remotely on a video call platform. The following research questions particularly informed the research: 1) What do primary-school TAs perceive as effective scaffolding practices? 2) What features do primary-school TAs perceive could influence the applicability of scaffolding practices as identified by the scaffolding framework? The participating TAs were purposefully selected as having a ‘pedagogical’ role: in particular, supporting the education of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. This way, they effectively represented the common role of TAs in English schools. The sampled TAs worked in the same school and were all female. Their names are pseudonymised in the dataset.