This thesis interrogates the roles and professional identities of learning support staff within an English secondary school, addressing gaps in existing research that focus primarily on their positioning within organisational hierarchies and their impact on pupil outcomes and budgets. While previous studies have often framed learning support staff as lacking professional agency, this research shifts the focus towards how they navigate their roles and construct their identities through social interaction. Using a qualitative case study approach, this study applies Symbolic Interactionism as a theoretical framework, specifically drawing upon the work of Erving Goffman, Sheldon Stryker and James Paul Gee. The Symbolic Interactionist perspective is used to understand identity formation through reflective accounts of interactions taking place within the context of a secondary school, incorporating perspectives from three learning support staff members, five teachers and a deputy headteacher. Interviews and reflective journals are used for data collection to support an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach. Findings illustrate how learning support staff define their roles and negotiate identities against the expectations encountered in a school environment. Likewise the viewpoints of teachers provide insight into how learning support staff are perceived within the school’s broader professional setting. Analysis reveals that role definition and identity negotiation are influenced by a range of factors, including personal values and prior professional experiences rendering the role performances of each individual staff member unique and irreplaceable. Furthermore, learning support staff participants identify continuous complex and autonomous decision-making processes as integral to their work. Findings also indicate disparity over how other colleagues in school comprehend less well-known roles, such as learning mentors, compared to teaching assistants. These findings are critically discussed in relation to existing literature and Symbolic Interactionist theory, contributing to the discourse on learning support staff in England by moving beyond assessments of their value in purely economic or outcome-based terms, prioritising instead the complexity of their work and the significance of social interactions in shaping their professional identities.
| Date of Award | 6 Oct 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Jo Bishop (Main Supervisor) & Lisa Russell (Co-Supervisor) |
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