Instructional aide recruitment

Instructional aides are involved in almost every aspect of a student with special needs' education. Given the important role that instructional aides have, logically it would make sense to ensure that individuals that are hired for this position would be well qualified and up to the challenge of working with students with disabilities. This study examines what draws an individual to want to pursue a career as a special education instructional aide and effective recruitment procedures. The researcher hypothesized that the answers to these questions would be very similar to how a teacher would answer; their desire to help children. The study showed that this hypothesis was true for most instructional assistants and confirmed that the majority of instructional aides pursued a career as an instructional aide due to their desire to work with children, but other reasons included convenient work hours and/or their desire to pursue teaching. Taken as a whole this study confirms that in order to recruit highly qualified instructional assistants in the field of special education school districts must broaden their advertising base to more than just word of mouth methods and make the position more desirable by increasing health insurance, sick pay benefits, and trainings. Keywords: Instructional aide, recruitment, hiring, retention, special education