Assistant Teachers’ Contributions to Classroom Quality in Head Start

Abstract Understanding the features of high-quality early childhood education experiences is critical for supporting the learning and development of the increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children enrolled in public preschool programs like Head Start. Many prior studies have investigated the role of the teacher in supporting quality in preschool classrooms, but often these studies do not make a distinction between lead and assistant teachers, or those that do, often choose to focus on the contributions of the lead teacher. In contrast, the present study focuses purposefully on assistant teachers in Head Start and how they contribute to quality in preschool classrooms that serve diverse groups of children. Using descriptive data from a demographic survey and multilevel modeling of data from the CLASS observational tool, I found that assistant teachers bring critical linguistic and cultural competencies to the classroom, beyond those the lead teachers in the same classrooms possess. Additional findings reveal assistant teachers contribute similarly to lead teachers in their interactions with children that provide emotional support and classroom organization. Notably, assistant teachers score lower than lead teachers in the provision of instructional support, and in the low range on the CLASS measure for this domain. Implications for policies and practices that address the concerns of assistant teachers, and widen the workforce pipeline in early childhood education are considered.