Study finds program boosts cognitive engagement of students with language and attention difficulties

The study, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Projects scheme and published in Learning Environments Research, is led by QUT Centre for Inclusive Education researchers Ms Haley Tancredi, Professor Linda J. Graham and Dr Callula Killingly, and Professor Naomi Sweller of Macquarie University.

The study involved 56 year 10 students and found a statistically significant increase in cognitive engagement when their teachers participated in the Accessible Pedagogies program.

Doctoral student Haley Tancredi, who was first author of the study, said the two most common disabilities impacting language and information processing were Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which together account for about 14 per cent of school students - or four students in every classroom of 30.

Ms Tancredi said students with DLD and ADHD often "hide in plain sight" in the classroom and underachieved relative to their potential. However, many of the barriers these students face could be proactively removed using accessible teaching practices.

Ms Tancredi and Professor Graham, Director of the QUT Centre for Inclusive Education, have spent the last seven years developing a program of learning to help teachers reach these students whether they have been identified or not.

"In prior research, we investigated the impact of the Accessible Pedagogies program on the accessibility of teachers' practice," Professor Graham said.

Professor Graham said findings were extremely positive with most teachers demonstrating improvements across a range of accessible teaching practices targeted in the program.

Ms Tancredi said this latest research "aimed to determine whether improved accessibility was noticed by students and whether it made any difference to their engagement and classroom learning experience".

"Students participating in this study were interviewed before and after their teachers underwent the program," Ms Tancredi said.

Professor Graham said that when asked what their teacher did to help them pay attention and to understand, students whose teachers participated in Accessible Pedagogies explicitly described increased use of practices emphasised in the program.

"Importantly, students did not know whether their teachers were participating in the program, nor did they know its content," Professor Graham said.

Professor Sweller said students also completed questionnaires assessing their classroom engagement before and after their teachers participated in the Accessible Pedagogies program.

"Students whose teachers participated in the program reported a significant increase in cognitive engagement, which is a measure of the level of investment that students put into comprehending complicated ideas and mastering content. There was no such increase for students whose teachers did not participate," Professor Sweller said.

Ms Tancredi said that the team's findings "suggest that teachers' use of Accessible Pedagogies may help students redirect their mental effort towards learning, rather than expending that effort to overcome unnecessary instructional barriers".

"The practices in Accessible Pedagogies are essential for students with DLD and ADHD, but help all students to pay attention, understand, and learn. Future research will investigate the use of Accessible Pedagogies in primary school classrooms and in schools serving disadvantaged communities," Ms Tancredi said.

Read the full article, Investigating the impact of Accessible Pedagogies on the experiences and engagement of students with language and/or attentional difficulties, published online in the Learning Environments Research journal.

Main image (left to right): Haley Tancredi, Professor Linda Graham and Dr Callula Killingly.

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