A new teacher-friendly resource launched this month is set to reshape inclusive education practices across Australian schools, offering educators practical, evidence-based strategies to improve student outcomes and classroom experiences.
Titled Accessible Assessment and Pedagogies: Improving Student Outcomes Through Inclusive Practice, the book is edited by Professors Linda Graham and Jill Willis from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) School of Education. It was officially launched at a forum hosted by the QUT Centre for Inclusive Education (C4IE), attended by teachers, school leaders, speech pathologists, and other education professionals.
The publication stems from the Australian Research Council-funded project Improving Outcomes through Accessible Assessment and Inclusive Practices, and serves as a companion to the widely adopted Inclusive Education for the 21st Century: Theory, Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023).
Featuring 15 chapters and a suite of resources, the book provides a practical guide for educators to enhance learning experiences for all students, including those with common disabilities such as ADHD and developmental language disorder. It draws on data from eye-tracking technology, classroom observations, interviews, questionnaires, and assessment results to demonstrate the impact of inclusive teaching and assessment.
Professor Graham, Director of C4IE, said the book offers strong evidence that proactively designing teaching and assessment with accessibility in mind benefits both students and teachers.
“Teachers who implement these principles report fewer requests for clarification, greater job satisfaction, less time spent on corrective feedback, and more time for teaching higher-order concepts,” she said. “The result is increased cognitive engagement and better outcomes for everyone.”
Professor Willis emphasised the importance of the book’s two core components: accessible assessment task design and inclusive classroom pedagogies.
“Progress in these areas enables teachers to better support student learning and allows students to more effectively demonstrate what they’ve learned,” she said. “This publication is a toolkit to sustain and spread the sophisticated practices already present in many schools.”
The book also shares stories from partner schools that have successfully scaled inclusive practices across entire school communities, positioning the guide as a potential playbook for whole-school and system-wide reform.
Contributors to the book include QUT researchers Dr Julie Arnold, Dr Andrew Gibson, Dr Callula Killingly, Dr Lara Maia-Pike, Dr Haley Tancredi, and Associate Professor Sonia White. International collaborators include Professor Christopher DeLuca (Queen’s University, Canada), Professor Naomi Sweller (Macquarie University), and Gaenor Dixon (Queensland Department of Education).
The book is published by Routledge and is available now.
