ABSTRACT
This book is a guide to help practitioners who want to rethink the use of teaching assistants (TAs). In this introduction we give the background to the book.
The DISS study (2003-2008) was designed to help fi ll gaps in knowledge of TAs’ deployment and impact. There were two broad aims:
1 To provide an accurate, systematic and representative description of the types of support staff and their characteristics and deployment in schools, and how these changed over time.
