Teacher Assistant at a primary school

This master thesis deals with the subject of the first-grade primary school teaching assistants. It seeks the answers on following questions: what the social and cultural background of teaching assistants is; what their key motivation for is applying for this role; what their expectations before were entering the profession; what their motivation for continuing the profession is. In this master thesis, I place the emphasis on uncovering the previous job and life experiences of teaching assistants as well as how these past experiences affect their current job position. The answers for these questions are provided by qualitative and quantitative research which is based mostly on semi-structured interviews with teaching assistants from the elementary school in Prague, district 10. From the outcome of these interviews, the questionnaire was made, which was subsequently sent to assistant teachers from various parts of Czech Republic. Questionnaires were used mostly for confirmation and completion of information acquired from semi-structured interviews. This master thesis confirms that assistant teachers get involved in their profession for various reasons and have diverse previous work and life experiences. Education of assistant teachers is diverse, which in turn leads to rather vague expectations..