This research examines the role of teaching assistants (TAs) working with children with special educational needs (SEN) in an increasingly complex and diverse context. The role of the TA has been given more attention recently, partly due to the increased focus on their effectiveness within an inclusive education system in a time of workforce reform. The research takes a life history approach to examining the experiences of TAs within inclusive contexts and focuses upon how their backgrounds impact upon their role within the classroom, as well as how their experiences demonstrate ambiguity, tension and contradictions. Rather than a focus on pupil and institutional outcomes, the article analyses the tensions between the policy and institutional frameworks of inclusion and how TAs experience this. TAs' contradictions, tensions, resistance and also pleasures within their work are explored from their own perspectives. The personal interpretations, understandings and day-to-day implementation of inclusion are the focus.