Many teachers in learning support roles face the challenge of managing a wide array of tasks that fall outside of the expectations of a typical classroom teaching position while also carrying the expectation that their time is best spent in direct teaching. Conflict arises when spending time on indirect and administrative tasks, which is important and time consuming, is de-valued and the fact that these tasks are key components to providing services for students is overlooked. This leaves teachers in learning support roles with conflicting expectations and assumptions of what is important and how this is to be acted out, often leading to job attrition. This research explores the question: Could a planning tool be used to more clearly and effectively utilize LST time and, by extension, improve the working environment and job satisfaction of the LST? Using the methodology of design-based research, both qualitative and quantitative data was collected through survey, interview and focus group meetings to explore discrepancies in the perceptions of the roles LSTs fulfill related to the needs of the students they work with from the perspectives of elementary classroom teachers, school administrators and LSTs. The data collected indicated that all three groups exhibited incongruencies between what specific activities they saw as valuable and how they felt LSTs should spend their time. Having specific jobs outlined, as in a planning tool, clarified perceptions of how time would be best spent, enabling team members to plan with a unified vision.
Please click the link to watch my 3-minute thesis:
https://viu.video.yuja.com/V/Video?v=659114&node=3177186&a=464021169
Hi Andrea. In my conversations with LST’s and as a person who went through the school system with a chronic health designation, I think that your planning tool idea is excellent! It would be interesting to see the tool that you are describing. Is part of your project, trying the tool out, or would that be an extension of your project? I think that a lot of LST’s and admin would be very open to trying your tool out. One thing that I have noticed in my travels to different school districts, is that the expectations for LST’s are often different depending on the school district. For example, in some districts LST’s are responsible for overseeing EA’s, while in others that is an admin job. I wonder how these differences would affect the tool you are creating. If your tool is successful, it might be useful to try to get it used as a standard for all BC schools so that there is consistency in the expectations and roles of LST’s. I think that with COVID, this is a very timely project as there is even more stress on LST’s than ever before. I wish you well in your project journey!
Melissa,
Part of my thesis included trying out the planning tool and gathering feedback on its effectiveness and what could be done to improve it. I tried to work flexibility into the planning for the tool while trying to avoid making it too cumbersome to use. Initially my survey and focus group were based in one school district, but I included participants from around BC with the planning tool to try and build in some of that necessary flexibility.
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for sharing your research. Being in my first year as an LST, your presentation really resonated with me. I have similar feelings of uncertainty of what my role should ideally look like, and I feel like each classroom teacher also has a different perspective of what my role is/should be. I think that this lack of clarity is a deficit to the effectiveness of support and collaboration within a school.
I think that a planning tool is a great idea to create clarity for all members of the school regarding the roles and responsibilities of LSTs. My LST partner and I have had many discussions this year about what our role would ideally look like, and how we can share that with our colleagues. I do think that one of the challenges with this is that the role of an LST does look different depending on the school and the district.
Thanks for sharing!
The variability in role between schools and districts is definitely a hurdle to creating an effective planning tool! Initially I focused on one specific school district when I distributed the survey and met with the focus group, but then branched out and was able to have a group of LSTs from different districts in BC take the planning tool the focus group worked on, try it out, and then report back on what worked and what didn’t to help refine it. Overall the feedback was very positive with the LSTs saying that they would like something like this to be widely available.
Hi Andrea, thanks for sharing your work. I am impressed with your comprehensive research design, DBR brings in a lot of data and it looks like you embraced it. Who did you interview? I played a support role at VIU for many years and recognize the challenges you discussed in your video. The planning tool (and the collaborative conversations that it will surely bring) sound like a great opportunity to make the ‘invisible’ elements of your role transparent and address some of the conflicting expectations. Good luck moving forward with your important work.
Thank you Wendy. I initially interviewed LSTs within one school district in the lower mainland (SD 34), but then broadened that group to include LSTs from different districts in BC through the Learning Assistance Teachers Association. The conversations I’ve had so far based off of this research have made me want to follow this past the end of my thesis (possibly into further development and piloting of a planning tool…if possible).
Such important work! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Jennifer!
Hi Andrea,
This is such an important topic! I really enjoyed your concise description of the problem and your findings. I appreciate your thinking around seeing the need to create a planning tool for LST in order to help provide clarity for all of the different people involved. I really liked you shedding light on the importance of outlining the needs of the school population, clarifying goals, and aligning priorities. I can see how this would also be helpful for EAs experiencing similar struggles connected to the breakdown of communication that can occur. Thank you for the informative 3 minutes!
All the best,
Jess
Thank you, Jessica!
Hi Andrea,
After listening to your video presentation I found that what you discovered about the dilemma with LST in terms of roles and conflicts are almost similar to my previous role, though not in school, but in a corporate setting. I noticed that this issue is nothing unusual in many working environments if no proper SOP (standard operating procedure) being exercised or at least exist. In my previous experience, the organization that I worked has a Doc Con (document control) department where anything related to rules, regulations, or any SOP will be controlled and audited by this team, and no bypass allowed. This team also perform CIP (continuous improvement process) and validate any CAR (corrective action report) submitted for any incidents/issues within the work environment. So, I used so many terms, which are all commonly used in many corporate/MNCs that I worked before.
So, my question is, how do you ensure that school administration (administrator, principal, teachers) will oblige to these sets of rules? Are there any audits to protect everyone’s role and eliminate/reduce conflicts?
Thank you again, Andrea. Your topic here can be commercialized for any organization, not just schools actually, just my thought.
Thanks: Ariff
Thank you for your comments Ariff!
My husband work in IT and in our discussions of my research we have found it interesting how similar our experiences are in Education versus IT. The issue of ensuring that school administration accepts and follows this plan is a tricky one. In education there is a certain amount of autonomy that individual teachers and individual administrators are given, meaning that they are required to “buy in” to using the planning tool (mandating it isn’t enough) for it to be truly useful. It would need to be supported by the district, with district staff encouraging and facilitating the use, for it to be in widespread use. I think that the questions that you pose would be excellent for guiding further development of this tool.
Thank you for sharing, Andrea.
This is a very important topic. Often, we make assumptions about how people are using their time and not realizing all of the layers it takes to implement the visible layers of the job. I am curious what your planning tool looks like? Is it a start to finish process or is it cyclical? I think there is a lot of room for something like this to help support whole teams working together for the best outcome of students.
Hayley
Hayley,
The planning tool consists of three parts, starting with the most general and moving to the more specific. The first part involves a school profile that breaks down the school population into needs-based categories, sorting by funded and non-funded, and the selects the general support that Learning Support plan to use to address these needs. The second part breaks down the caseload of the LST, looking at which individual students (funded and non-funded) will be needing supports and what their goals are. The third part looks specifically at the services that the LST will be providing and outlines what that looks like (what type of direct service will they be providing, listing the indirect supports they will be providing, what assessments they will be using and what the assessment schedule looks like, etc.). This is just a general breakdown but hopefully it gives you a picture of what this might look like. This is intended to be a cyclical process, initiating in September and then reviewed at each term change or major school change.
Hi Andrea,
Your work speaks to an ongoing concern that almost all schools continue to struggle with. In my time working in support, I have witnessed continual conflict regarding the responsibilities of these specialized educators. Whether it be directly attending to the needs of our students or addressing the supports (i.e. environmental, curricular, behavioural) for our enrolling colleagues, there is a significant incongruence of expectations. Additionally, the functions of being a case-manager seem to be very ambiguous which often creates further complexity in ownership of how we support individualized student leaning
The informative resource and tool you propose directly attend to the array of challenges arising in the complex role. I am extremely curious to learn the means of unification that you discuss. Are you able to speak to how the results of your data collection directly impacted the perceptions of the role, perhaps more on the micro-level with those involved in your study)? In order to create on-going continuity, were you able to involve district staff who design job descriptions?
Amazing and very relevant work! Thank you.
Callum,
Thank you for your comments! I asked my focus group to take the planning tool, try it out in their school environment, and then report back. One participant, in particular, ended bringing the tool to her administrator and they used it to advocate to the district for more support for the students in their school. The tool helped show what the needs of the school looked like as a whole, and how there was not enough support to meet those needs. I have been consulting with district staff (helping teachers, speech-language pathologists, school psychologists) as I worked through this process and they have all felt that this is an important issue to tackle. They have all been very supportive of the planning tool and felt that it would help them, in their roles, as well.
Hello Andrea,
I really enjoyed your presentation and the discussion during the conference. I find role clarity gets really challenging when you start looking at more specialized roles. As you mentioned in the discussion the ITT/IST role ended up isolating individuals further. I know in my specialized resource role the question of how to allocate my time- especially when it comes to considering planning time with teachers is a real issue. I think the idea of a planning tool makes lots of sense.
In regards to using the tool to advocate for more support, how do you think the general shortage of support in some districts will affect the viability of this? I know a colleague and myself were discussing the use of counsellors in schools and how we can acknowledge one school needs more time, yet without removing the counsellor completely from a school (which also would be an issue) there is no way to increase support.
Thanks!
Thank you for your comments! The general shortage of support in some districts may change how this tool is used. It could be used to show the districts more clearly the breadth of the needs within the school, but then it is up to the district to decide how money is spent. It could also be used as a triage tool within the school, to get a clearer picture of what the needs are and then make decisions for allocation. Sometimes the shortage in support within a district is attached to the concern of equity, and while this planning tool won’t immediately address that issue, it can bring it more to light.
Congratulations Andrea!
It was exciting to hear how your thoughtful study design was realized through your research this year. You took on a complex issue, used your data collection and analysis to reveal the tensions in learning support, and, with your participants, used those findings to create a tool to directly support awareness and change. What an excellent example of how research can result in findings that both meet identified needs in your context, and have the potential to impact LST roles and student support in the educational community.
Thank you for sharing this important contribution1
Mary Ann Richards
Thank you Mary Ann!