The triad in mind: An exploration of what is needed by the learning support assistant to facilitate integration of the child with special educational needs into mainstream education

摘要

This paper explores what the learning support assistant needs to help integrate children with educational or behavioural difficulties into mainstream education. Although focussed on one role, the paper is relevant to a wider context and draws upon the author's experience of infant observation in relation to the educational workplace. The paper reflects upon the different roles that workers take up within institutions and how these can be seen to form part of a triad including the maternal, paternal and infant positions. The author suggests that the learning support assistant (and other comparable roles) takes on the maternal role. The paper reflects upon the supposition that mothers function at their best when their own anxieties and fears are contained by the paternal function. Similarly, assistants are only able to contain and support the child when they themselves feel sufficiently supported. The assistant gains from an awareness of paternal and maternal functioning and projective processes. When levels of support are sufficient, the assistant can engage in triadic thinking, hold the link between organisation, child, and individual worker, and function as a container.