Multilingual Teaching Assistants in Secondary Newcomer Education: Mapping the Role Development Over Time

Multilingual teaching assistants (MTAs) can provide key support to newcomer students and educators. However, they encounter challenges linked to a multifaceted role, marginal institutional positions, and scarce professional development opportunities. While this role is dynamic and likely to evolve, most research has captured MTAs’ experiences at one moment in time, providing a limited understanding of how (and if) such challenges are negotiated progressively and how MTAs shape their long-term trajectories. To bridge this gap, this study adopts a longitudinal perspective to map how five MTAs develop their role over one year in a Dutch secondary newcomer school. We analyzed 15 semi-structured interviews with the five MTAs collected at three timepoints using a constant comparative method guided by the dimensions of purpose, position, and potential (PPP). Our findings show that the MTAs’ purpose evolved from providing linguistic support to a broad range of activities, such as academic and socio-emotional support; their institutional position strengthened following their role negotiation with teachers; and the perceived potential was on improving their Dutch proficiency and adopting a multilingual approach. Following this longitudinal perspective, we articulate policy and practice implications for supporting MTAs in newcomer education.