ABSTRACT
The chapter introduces the research base on teaching assistants (TAs) and discusses its strengths and limitations. The research covered in this section might be new to many readers but will hopefully begin to make clear how the multiple perspectives on who TAs are and what their role(s) might be in school affects the subsequent discussions about their role in managing behaviour. The chapter considers who TAs are and how the readers know what their know about the work they do. Although the amount of research on TAs' work has increased in recent years, almost all of it has investigated how they support children's academic outcomes rather than the support TAs offer children in other ways, and these 'soft skills' have largely remained unexplored. The chapter provides some overarching, general information about who TAs are and what they do. It looks at the general characteristics of the population of people working as TAs in England as drawn out from research.
