Accessible Assessment and Pedagogies

This book is an evidence-based, practical guide to enable pre- and in-service teachers, system, school, and middle leaders to maximise students’ understanding of classroom teaching and assessment, improving outcomes and expanding opportunities for all students. Developing accessible assessment and pedagogy is especially critical when students have language and/or attentional difficulties; what if there were some simple things schools could do to make learning and assessment easier for all students to understand, from the outset? This book presents robust evidence from world-leading collaborative research in three large secondary schools that proactively designing classroom instruction and assessment for accessibility makes a positive difference for students and teachers. Evidence from eye-tracking technology, classroom observations, questionnaires and interviews with students and teachers, and summative assessment results points to what can change and why these changes are important. Written in the same plain language and humour as its best-selling sister, Inclusive Education for the 21st Century: Theory, Policy and Practice, this new book explains accessibility and why it matters and details processes for designing out barriers in summative assessment and pedagogy. Stories from partner schools about how they spread these gains across the whole school make this an accessibility playbook to drive whole school and system reform. Teachers, heads of department, principals, speech pathologists, and other professionals will find this text a rich source of professional learning for individuals and teams with discussion prompts for leaders and teachers at the end of each chapter.