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Theorizing Instructional Assistant Practice in Inclusive Classrooms

Esther Ajayi, Co-Author, Eleanor Elizabeth Ubakum Opurum

Abstract

Instructional assistants, known variously as paraprofessionals, teaching assistants, or educational support staff, have become the single largest category of adults supporting learners with disabilities in inclusive classrooms across most English-speaking and internationally comparable education systems. Despite that numerical predominance, the literature on Individualized Education Program delivery has continued to treat teachers and specialist therapists as the primary agents of planning and implementation, with paraprofessionals occupying a secondary and frequently under-specified role. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that re-centres the instructional assistant as a co-deliverer of the IEP, while preserving the accountability and pedagogical leadership of the qualified teacher and specialist team. The framework, which is derived through the integration of the international paraprofessional research literature, the evidence base on IEP implementation, and the practitioner-oriented literature on inclusive special education, identifies four interlocking domains in which paraprofessionals contribute to IEP delivery: instructional delivery, behavioural scaffolding, communication support, and data collection. Each domain is specified in terms of observable practice, required competencies, supervisory structures, and ethical safeguards. The framework is distinguished from prior role- taxonomies by its explicit attention to the decision-making discretion exercised by paraprofessionals in the moment-to-moment classroom life of the learner, and by its insistence that paraprofessional practice be theorised rather than catalogued. Implications are drawn for teacher-paraprofessional collaboration, for paraprofessional preparation programmes, and for the evaluation of IEP implementation quality. The paper concludes that treating paraprofessionals as passive executors of plans designed elsewhere is both empirically inaccurate and pedagogically costly.

Keywords

InstructionalParaprofessionalsIndividualizedInclusivecollaborationConceptual framework P-ISSN 2695 2416

References

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