ABSTRACT
This chapter moves on to look at issues of power, both with regard to the TA role more broadly and to issues of status and power as part of the school workforce. It reflects on how power impacts on TAs' agency to manage behaviour and how this might affect what actions they take in the classroom, with groups and with individual children. Trent, J. argued in his research that without addressing what he described as the 'untouched relations of power' that existed between teachers and TAs, where TAs were often viewed as 'subordinate', these partnerships could not be effectively established. TAs providing support for pupils rather than teachers, which was TAs' highest-ranking priority in research, might actually serve to mediate some of the tensions they experienced in teacher-TA relationships and also increase their power. When considering power issues, the phrase TAs commonly used in Watson et al. research was the importance of knowing their place.
