Emotional Experiences and Support Stability among Teaching Assistants in Inclusive Education

In the context of the continuous advancement of inclusive education, how to provide stable support for students with diverse learning needs has become an important issue. And teaching assistants play a crucial role in providing behavioral support, promoting learning participation, and offering emotional support. However, teaching assistants often occupy a marginalised professional position, facing role ambiguity and limited professional support while being expected to provide relational care and supportive connections (Sinnema et al., 2025). Current research mainly focuses on inclusive teaching strategies or students' learning outcomes, while there is relatively limited attention paid to the emotional experiences of educational support personnel who are mainly teaching assistants and their impact on the stable implementation of inclusive education. Inspired by the theory of emotional labour, this study aims to explore the emotional experience of teaching assistants in inclusive educational contexts from their perspective as education support staff, and to examine how emotional needs, supports structures, and support continuity are related. This study adopts an exploratory qualitative research design. Collecting data through semi-structured interviews, approximately 10 - 15 teaching assistants working in special education setting will be recruited. A brief reflective journal will be incorporated to enhance the triangulation of data. The data will be analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis. It is anticipated that the study will reveal ongoing emotional pressure experiences by teaching assistants when supporting diverse student behaviours, tensions between emotional demands and professional role expectations, and the impact of limited institutional support on cumulative emotional load. The study is expected to further highlight the link between support structures and service continuity, and suggest that support staff emotional sustainability may influence the stability of inclusive education implementation. This study strengthens understanding of support staff roles and offers insights for school-level support system development in inclusive education.