The Relational Space of Teacher Aides and Teachers: The ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of Inclusive Education

Inclusive education is vital for the rights of all children to education to be met and teacher aides are key players in inclusive education efforts. But inclusive education policy aspirations, like other policies, often fail to be fully realised. In this article we focus on the inclusion of teacher aides in educational networks and the extent to which both teacher aides and teachers can access, borrow, and leverage each other's resources. Our investigation drew on social capital theory and social network analysis to provide insights into this aspect of inclusive education. We administered a social network survey to 701 educators in two communities of learning—comprising four and eight schools respectively. Our analysis involved whole network statistics, analysis of TA-inclusive dyads, centrality measures, statistical tests of the centrality measures, core-periphery analyses, and sociograms. We found that patterns of relational activity between TAs and other educators were low; connections (of any kind) were infrequent. While teacher aides were accessible to others from a network perspective, people did not directly access them. They were, despite policy aspirations to the contrary, rarely considered valued sources of knowledge and expertise or identified as collaborators. In most schools, teacher aides were on the periphery of the network. It is clear that ambitious and well-intentioned inclusive education policies are not yet working as intended. We argue for the vital contribution of the relational space—the relational ties amongst teachers and teacher aides­— to realizing inclusive education goals. In turn, we argue for educational leadership focused on belonging and inclusion not only for students, but also for all of the adults who support inclusive education aspirations in school communities.