((4) Community service.
Twenty-six of the participants wrote of their experiences from working or volunteering in a community setting.
For example, TA64 wrote:
I worked for Human Services—Intellectual Disability before working in a school for many years.
Item 10 asked participants to indicate how they rate the level of importance of training and professional
development in performing their role as a TA who works with students with disabilities across a 5 point Likert
scale of not important, slightly important, important, quite important and very important. Results showed that the
majority (61.7%) of participants responded that training and professional development in performing their role as
a TA who works with students with disabilities was very important; 20.4% indicated it was quite important; and
the remaining 17.9% responded that it was important/slightly important. No participant indicated that training
was not important.
Item 26 asked participants to indicate whether they had had training in the 18 student related tasks from item 24.
Participants were also asked to rate their need for additional training in the 18 listed tasks. Table 3 presents the
results for this item.