From “Remodelling” to “Reconfiguration”,the role of the Teaching Assistant in England’s Primary Schools has extended and has slowly developed into becoming a teaching role.Teaching assistants are planning, preparing and assessing lessons;delivering the curriculum to individuals, groups and whole classes of children. Teaching Assistants participate in on-going school training and attend training courses at several levels[GCSE, City and Guilds[Key Skills], NVQ, HLTA, Foundation degree, BA/BSC degree].However, there is a lack of educational theory underpinning these courses in comparison to teacher training courses [BA QTS, PGCE], which focus heavily on theories of cognitive development. For example, a teacher in training will study,reflect upon and challenge Piaget’s “Theory of Cognitive Development” and the “Constructivist Theory of Knowing”; Vygotsky’s theory of “Social Cognition”;Bruner’s theories on “The Process of Education”;Donaldson’s theories on “Embedded and Disembedded Thinking”;Holt’s theories on “How Children Learn and How Children Fail”.A teaching assistant in training does not have an academic focus in these theoretical areas. My research in this paper aims to assess whether evidence based teaching is disappearing,or taking a side step in the Primary Schools of England – Whether educational philosophy,history and general didactics are no longer at the forefront of the education of the school workforce. Alongside this, I aim to question whether there is enough contemporary, evidence based research to support using a non-graduate or unqualified teacher, to teach primary aged children. As the world is now “seen” as a “Global village”,and as the European Union brings together Europe as “one” [particularly in the light of The Lisbon Treaty], the latter part of my research will be to address whether Primary Schools in other European countries are remodelling their workforces in a similar way; whether teaching throughout Europe involves the use of the teaching assistant as teacher, or whether England is offering an alternative approach to teaching and learning philosophies. Questions: • Are educational philosophies,the history of education and general didactics no longer at the forefront of the Primary School workforce in England? • Are European schools, as a whole,using teaching assistants as teachers to deliver parts of the Primary School curriculum? • Is there enough evidence-based research to support the use of the teaching assistant as teacher? • As the European populace continues to be transient and immigrant communities continue to grow in England, is Europe [and are European parents] aware of the implications of the “remodelled workforce” strategy in its entirety?

My research is constructed on the foundations and principles of “Grounded Theory” [Strauss and Corbin], and is a qualitative research project. I am drawing on previous PhD research that I have undertaken in the Primary Schools of Lincolnshire, England. I aim to undertake research of Primary School education in as many European countries as possible, given time constraints and a deadline of the end of June 2009. Methods of data collection in European schools will include email interviews, telephone interviews, and questionnaires. Methods of data collection in England’s Primary Schools will include questionnaires, interviews, shadowing, classroom observations, whole school observations, diary analysis, the product of children’s’ work, interviews and liaisons with internet news groups [via the TES website]

My research is currently on going and is therefore inconclusive. However, it is possible to predict from my current data collection that England’s schools [via government philosophy and policy] have a different outlook to teacher training and the use of unqualified teachers in the Primary School sector than to that of their European counterparts.