Investigating the impact of Accessible Pedagogies on the experiences and engagement of students with language and/or attentional difficulties

Abstract Students with disability tend to report lower levels of school engagement. To date, research has focused on building students’ extrinsic motivation and self-regulation with limited consideration of the impact of instructional barriers. In this mixed-methods study, we investigated the effect of teachers’ participation in the Accessible Pedagogies™ Program of Learning on the classroom experiences and engagement of 56 Year 10 students with disabilities impacting language and information processing. When asked in interviews what their teacher did to help them pay attention and to understand, students described teachers’ increased use of practices that were the focus of the program. Self-report questionnaire data revealed a positive, statistically significant increase in cognitive engagement for students whose teachers participated in Accessible Pedagogies™. No increase was observed for a Comparison Group. Findings suggest that the reduction of extraneous language and cognitive load through teachers’ use of Accessible Pedagogies™ may have helped students deploy available mental effort to engage in learning, rather than expend that effort to overcome unnecessary instructional barriers. Future research will investigate the impact of Accessible Pedagogies™ with larger samples and a wider range of students.