Introduction

Of the four core subjects in Australian schools—English, Mathematics, Science and Humanities—only English is compulsory from Foundation to Year 12. Since 2012, the Australian government has outlined in the Australian Curriculum what students in Foundation to Year 10 ‘should be taught, regardless of their background or where they live’ (ACARA, 2023a). The aim of the Australian Curriculum: English is to ‘develop the understanding, attitudes and capabilities of those who will take responsibility for Australia’s future’ through exposure to ‘range of ideas and perspectives about human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and ethical and global issues’ (ACARA, 2023b, Rationale section). The value of the Australian Curriculum: English extends to building students’ general knowledge and ability to engage in ethical decision-making. Participation in English throughout their schooling also provides students with multiple opportunities to develop language skills beyond everyday experiences and English exposure. However, the subject also functions as a critical gateway to further education: one that can have deleterious impact for some students. For example, until very recently, recording a grade of ‘Sound Achievement’ in each of the four senior school semesters in General English was a prerequisite for entry to many Queensland universities. Historically, Grade 10 senior subject selection processes have been used to dissuade students with perceived literacy difficulties from participating in General English (among other ‘Authority subjects’ like Physical Education; Penney & Hay, 2008) with the aim of protecting some schools’ Overall Position (OP) rankings in the Queensland Certificate of Education. In some instances, students not enrolled in General English have been prevented from enrolling in all other Authority subjects (e.g., Modern History) with the effect of pushing those who may have been interested in those subjects and/or who may have successful with appropriate support into purely vocational pathways (e.g., Construction). While these barriers might appear to have been addressed through the provision of a range of English subject offerings in Years 11 and 12 (Sawyer, 2023), which can now all contribute to an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), these offerings do not enjoy the same parity of esteem and nor do they have the same transactional value. It remains the case in some Australian states, including Queensland, that a ‘C’ or ‘pass’ grade in General English is required for entry to many professions, including policing and primary school teaching.

Further distinguishing subject English from other disciplines is the predominance of language both as ‘the instrument of teaching and learning … and the object of study’ (emphasis added, Christie & Macken-Horarik, 2013, p. 175). This combination makes the discipline inherently challenging for an increasingly diverse range of students who must all learn thousands of new words each year to keep up with subjects across the academic curriculum (Nippold, 2016). Some students find this more difficult than others, yet these students are still entitled to engage with and learn from the big ideas and rich language of subject English. For these reasons, it is critical that all facets of English—including the powerful ideas bound up in literary texts, as well as teachers’ explication and problematisations of them—are made accessible to all students, including those for whom English is not their first language and those with a disability impacting language and information processing, such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). As we shall discuss later, previous research has principally examined barriers to students’ participation in high-status subjects, including English, from the perspective of senior subject choice and the availability of those choices in schools serving lower socioeconomic communities. However, physical access is only one barrier facing students with disability for whom the accessibility of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment is not only critical for successful participation but an entitlement under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Dickson, 2019).

From adjustments to accessibility

Australian educators across all levels of education are required under the Disability Standards for Education 2005 (Cth) to remove barriers to access and participation of students with disability through the provision of reasonable adjustments (Spandagou, 2020). However, for this to occur, students must first be identified and many—particularly those with less visible disabilities like DLD and ADHD—remain unidentified and therefore unsupported (Teather & Hillman, 2017). However, the solution to this problem does not lie in more effective identification for apart from adding load to an already overburdened clinical assessment system and potentially further contributing to labelling, stigmatisation, and segregation (Law, 2019; Tancredi et al., 2023), many already identified students currently do not receive additional support or reasonable adjustments, despite their entitlement to them (Graham & Tancredi, 2019; Mulholland et al., 2015). Students with disabilities impacting language and information processing are highly prevalent in the range of missed students, despite these students being described as ‘hiding in plain sight’ on data walls, in lower academic streams and support classes, and in vocational pathways and Flexible Learning Options (Graham & Tancredi, 2024; Tancredi, 2020).

Accessibility is a concept derived from the social model of disability which conceives of disability as an outcome of the interaction between a person with an impairment and barriers to access and participation within environments designed by and for a person without that impairment (Oliver, 1996). Accessibility is achieved through the application of the principles of universal design to anticipate and proactively remove any barriers that may prevent or impede access and participation of a person with an impairment (Graham et al., 2024). For students with language and/or information processing difficulties, accessibility resides in the comprehensibility of written and verbal communication. Communication in the context of teaching encompasses whole class and individual instruction, and includes the design and use of resources and visual supports (Graham & Tancredi, 2024; Starling et al., 2012). If classroom pedagogy does not account for the developmental limitations of child or adolescent language and working memory, all students can experience barriers to information processing and comprehension (Cowan, 2014; Sweller et al., 2019), however these barriers are more acute for students with disabilities impacting language and/or information processing.

The processes of learning

All cognitive tasks—including language comprehension, problem-solving, reasoning, arithmetic, planning, and learning—require students to hold verbal and visuospatial information in mind during task completion (Cowan, 2014). The highly dynamic, time and capacity limited system used in this process is working memory (Baddeley, 2000). Working memory is the conduit through which information must pass before it is stored in long-term memory, a second, seemingly limitless memory system (Cowan, 2014). Each student may process information slightly differently, depending on how much (or little) information they hold in long-term memory about a particular subject, as long-term memory resources bolster working memory (Sweller et al., 2019). Further, while all students’ memory system—as in the mechanism through which information is processed and students learn—is the same (Willingham et al., 2015), there are differences in the speed and capacity of the cognitive processes that feed this system. Principal among these processes are working memory, language processing, and attention (Montgomery et al., 2018), each of which is a known area of difficulty for students with DLD and/or ADHD (Archibald & Gathercole, 2007; van Leishout et al., 2017). These differences do not mean that lower academic achievement is a natural or inevitable outcome. Instead, given the prevalence of students in these two groups, it means that everyday classroom teaching must be accessible to them, not just through the provision of reasonable adjustments—which requires schools to engage in expensive and time-consuming clinical assessment and identification processes (Tancredi et al., 2023)—but by anticipating and removing as many barriers that might impact students with language and attention difficulties as possible.

Designing out barriers

Recent research has demonstrated that anticipating and removing linguistic, procedural, and visual complexities from summative assessment task sheets (Graham et al., 2018a, 2018b) improves achievement for all students, including for those with disabilities impacting language and information processing (Graham et al., 2023). Unnecessary complexities in written, verbal, and visual texts have significant implications for learning because using any processing capacity to deal with what Sweller (2010) calls ‘extraneous cognitive load’ is capacity that cannot be used to process intrinsic cognitive load; that is, the inherent complexity of curriculum content (e.g., reading and understanding Shakespearian text). Importantly, while all students are impeded by extraneous cognitive load, students without disability have greater processing resource on which they can draw to overcome these barriers to then process the necessary information at hand. The key difference between students with language and/or attentional difficulties and those without is the amount of cognitive effort required to overcome these barriers, increasing the risk of some students’ missing or losing critical information due to cognitive overload and/or hastening task avoidance due to the mental effort involved. Importantly, barriers to language and information processing can be minimised or even removed through consistent and effective use of practices that support working memory and comprehension (Gathercole et al., 2006; Starling et al., 2012; Sweller, 2016).

In the classroom, these practices include the use of short simple sentences, relevant concrete examples, economical explanations, developmentally appropriate vocabulary, explicit teaching of new words and specialist terms, regular and effective checks of student comprehension, strategies to catch and maintain students’ attention especially prior to issuing instructions, using a moderate pace with intentional pauses to allow processing time, regular repetition of main points, and clear, high-quality, well-aligned visual supports (Graham & Tancredi, 2024). Together, these practices reduce the volume of information that students must hold in mind, freeing working memory capacity for all students—but especially those with language and attentional difficulties—to engage in deep conceptual connections, synthesis of ideas, and text creation (Cowan, 2014). Importantly, if barriers to access and participation are reduced or removed, students with disabilities impacting language and information processing are just as capable of academic achievement as any other student (Graham et al., 2018a, 2018b). While this is the aim of differentiated curriculum offerings, inadvertent reductions in the cultural and intellectual value of the knowledge to which students are exposed (Graham et al., 2021; Spina, 2019), not only limit these students’ access to further education, training, and employment but also their understanding of and participation in social, political, and cultural life.

Subject english: a critical gateway

That there are different offerings within subject English has long been the subject of analysis and critique due to the differential opportunities and outcomes that flow from exposure to different forms of knowledge (Tranter, 2012). Almost three decades ago, Richard Teese (1996) examined the link between success in high-status academic subjects and the social power gained through access to higher education and the professions. His research was pivotal because it highlighted the influence of higher education entrance requirements on the cognitive architecture of the academic curriculum in key subjects (including English) and patterns of inequality in student outcomes. Green et al. (2023) recently extended Teese’s work on the different value attributed to high-status academic subjects relative to low-status vocationally oriented subjects, finding a clear correlation between enrolment in higherFootnote 1 versus lower status English subjectsFootnote 2 and socioeconomic status. In noting that this correlation is their key concern, Green et al. (2023) describe the formation of these patterns as circular, saying:

…the subjects in which students enrol, based on their perceptions of the subject itself and their own suitability for it, along with the effects that their enrolments and results themselves create, all operate in a circular way. (p. 15)

This work by Teese and, more recently, Green et al. are just two examples of a rich body of research that has investigated socioeconomic patterns in student achievement. However, this research tends to focus on achievement in the final senior phase of school—after senior subject selection has already occurred—and perceives access only in terms of subject/enrolment availability. Our key concern is one step earlier for we are interested in particular students’ perceptions of subject English and their suitability for it in the lead up to senior subject selection. These perceptions are most likely formed before Years 11 and 12 by the level of difficulty students’ experience with the subject and by the grades they receive. For students with language and/or attention difficulties, formal access is only part of the problem with the in/accessibility of subject English likely to take precedence in the formation of students’ perceptions of English and their own suitability for it. Teachers’ perceptions of subject English and students’ aptitude are also important as these have implications for the provision of support, particularly in relation to decisions about streaming and placement, differentiation, and the provision of reasonable adjustments. While there is some literature on teacher perceptions and expectations (Anson, 2017; Johnstone et al., 2023; Willis et al., 2019), we could not find any studies on the experiences of students with language and/or attentional difficulties in junior secondary subject English, nor on their perceptions of themselves as learners in English or how these perceptions come to be formed, nor on the accessibility of English for students whose first language is English and/or speakers of English as an additional language or dialect who have had at least eight years exposure to the English language (Creagh et al., 2019; Li’el et al., 2019). This gap is significant, given the subject’s compulsory status, its privileged role in the formation of future citizens, and its function as a critical gateway to senior subject selection and post-school opportunity. We engage with this gap in the research by investigating five research questions:

  1. 1.

    Do students with language and/or attentional difficulties find this compulsory gateway subject difficult and, if so, why?

  2. 2.

    Is difficulty in this subject reflected in their English levels of achievement?

  3. 3.

    To what factors do these students attribute any difficulties they experience?

  4. 4.

    How do these students characterise ‘excellent teachers’ and which teaching practices do those teachers use to help students learn?

  5. 5.

    To what extent do these students’ current English teachers use these practices?

Research design and method

The doctoral study on which this paper is based is part of the Accessible Assessment ARC Linkage project (LP180100830; Graham, Willis, et al., 2018a), a large-scale mixed-methods waitlist study investigating whether improving the accessibility of summative assessment task sheets and teachers’ instructional practice improves the experiences, engagement, and achievement of all students, including a subgroup of students with language and/or attentional difficulties. Year 10 English was chosen as the focus for the study because English is a compulsory but challenging discipline for students with language and/or attention difficulties, and because it is a critical gateway to participation in further education, employment, society, and culture. Year 10 is also when all students should be accessing the same level and quality of content through the Australian Curriculum, including those with a disability.

Participants

In 2022, 234 Year 10 students were recruited from three Queensland state secondary schools. A multiple gating procedure was adopted to identify a subgroup of 59 students with likely language and/or attentional disorders (see Tancredi et al., 2023).Footnote 3 Parents of all 234 students completed a brief demographic survey, plus the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills Student Language Scale (TILLS-SLS; Nelson, Howes, & Anderson, 2016), which is used to identify students with possible language and literacy disorders, and the Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham Rating Scale (SNAP-IV; Swanson et al., 1982), a commonly used screening measure for ADHD. Stringent thresholds were then applied to identify students with no apparent difficulties, possible difficulties, and probable difficulties (Tancredi et al., 2023). The latter group was invited to participate in additional assessments of their language and attention skills using the full standardised assessment battery of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS; Nelson, Plante, et al., 2016) and the Brown Executive Function/Attention Scales Student Form (Brown, 2019), both of which were administered by the first author or another qualified speech pathologist.

Identified students were aged between 13 and 15 years (M = 14.46, SD = 0.54). One student identified as non-binary, with half the remaining students identifying as female (n = 29) and the other half identifying as male (n = 29). Five (8.47%) spoke English as an Additional Language or Dialect.Footnote 4 Across the three schools, students were taught by 26 different teachers. All schools employed academic streaming and differentiated offerings in Grade 10 English. Multiple students in our study attended lower streamed classes and two reported receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) support. However, one of these students reported that they did not speak a language other than English (although their parents did) and the other reported that his non-English language proficiency was low.

Notably, almost three quarters of students (71.19%) in the sample had never previously been identified as having difficulty with either language or attention. However, analysis of these students’ language and attention profiles revealed wide variation in the severity of impairments with 12 students scoring in the average range for language and attention, 16 students demonstrating difficulty in language (and not attention), and 11 demonstrating difficulty in attention (and not language). The majority of students in the sample (20) demonstrated difficulties in both language and attention (Tancredi et al., 2023). Despite this diversity, all 59 students demonstrated difficulties with vocabulary, retell, working memory, and regulation of alertness and processing speed. Most importantly, when asked what they wish their teachers knew about them and how they learn, all 59 reported similar impacts of impairment and barriers to learning, irrespective of their language and/or attention profile (Tancredi et al., 2023). These commonalities make it appropriate to combine the two groups in our analyses.

Measures

Levels of achievement data

Students’ Term 1, 2022 Year 10 English levels of achievement results were accessed via the school principal, with consent from students and their parent/caregiver. Two schools provided students’ results on an A to E scale.Footnote 5 One school provided students’ levels of achievement as a numerical rating from 1–15. To standardise students’ results across the three schools, results from each student were converted to a score out of 20. Two students undertook alternative assessment tasks for which an equivalent level of achievement was not available.

Interviews

All 59 students participated in individual semi-structured interviews lasting approximately 25 min. All interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. The interviews were conducted in a quiet room on school grounds by the first author or a research assistant. To enhance accessibility and to support comprehension, the interview schedule was uploaded into QualtricsXM (2024) and presented using an iPad with verbal prompts from the interviewer. The interview schedule included 33 questions tapping students’ attitudes to school, engagement, academic self-perception, perceptions of teaching, and classroom experiences. For the present paper, we analysed responses to four main questions and two sub-questions generated from previous research (see Table 1).

Table 1 Interview Question Analysis Approach by Question
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Data analysis

Achievement data were standardised for comparability across the three participating schools and are represented in the results as an A, B, C, or D and below, where each grade encompasses higher and lower bands (e.g., A + , A, and A-).

Interview data were analysed using inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis (Proudfoot, 2023), an approach that integrates deductive reasoning and categories drawn from the literature with the generation of themes and categories drawn inductively from the data. All structured response questions were analysed by frequency count (Table 1). The two free response questions (Q1a and Q3) were analysed inductively, and then deductively. First, as students often made multiple points when answering free response questions, responses were divided into distinct statements. These statements were then allocated either to categories arising inductively from the data (Q1a) or in accordance with predetermined categories derived from the literature (Q3). Illustrative quotes are provided for contextualisation.

Results

Year 10 English is… [easy/alright/hard]

Of the 59 students, only five (8.47%) said that English was ‘easy’ and another six (10.17%) reported that English was ‘hard’. Most (81.36%) said that English was ‘alright’. To understand how easy/alright/hard English really was for these 59 students, we compared responses to this question with their Term 1 Levels of Achievement in English. The results presented in Fig. 1 suggest that English may be somewhat more difficult than students initially described, especially for those who said it was ‘alright’, as one in five of these students (22.92%) received a fail grade.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Perceptions of English Compared to Students’ Levels of Achievement

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Depending on the answer they had just provided, we next asked each student why they thought English was easy, alright or hard. Fourteen students (33.33%) said that English was ‘alright’ because, as Sanjit put it, ‘it’s not the hardest thing there is. It’s not super easy, it’s just in the middle’. Another three students did not know, gave no answer, or gave a response that could not be coded (4.62%). As these 17 responses did not provide further insight into students’ experiences, they were excluded from the next layer of analysis. All remaining responses (n = 42) were separated into 44 statements and each statement was then analysed to understand more about students’ perceptions of English and their own suitability for it.

Why is Year 10 English [easy/hard/alright]?

Students attributed the ease or difficulty of English to their own ability or to the subject and/or the way in which it is taught. Attributions to self accounted for 14 statements across the group (31.81%), whereas attributions to subject accounted for 30 statements (68.18%). The preponderance of subject attributions held for both the ‘alright’ and ‘hard’ groups (Fig. 2), although there were only four statements from the ‘easy’ group. In the following section, we examine the factors to which students attributed to the ease or difficulty of English, starting with those factors students attributed to themselves.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Breakdown of 44 Statements Coded into Self and Subject

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Attributions to Self

In response to the question about why he thought English was easy, Bodhi said ‘Um, I’ve always been good at writing’, however, this experience was unique among the group. Julia, for example, explained that she found English hard because she experienced great difficulty converting ideas to written text:

Julia: ‘Because when like, I write stuff down like, I know what I’m writing. Like, I have a whole plan in my head, it’s just like, getting the words on paper. Like, I know what I wanna say and talk about like, but I just can’t put it in the right words.’

Some students’ responses to the question of why English is difficult suggested they may require reasonable adjustments and/or more explicit feedback.

Adilah: ‘Um, well, I don’t know, it’s just like really hard. Like I try my best and I still fail the classes. And, like, it’s just really like disappointing sort of. I kinda just carry on.’

When explaining why he found English ‘alright’, Tane compared his performance in English to other subjects, saying: ‘I’ve never been a very English, smart person. I’m better at math and stuff like that’. Although Tane didn’t explain precisely what he finds difficult about English, Oliver came a little closer when he said, ‘I find it hard to get going with [English]’. Jamie attributed his difficulties in English to difficulties with concentration, however, his statements were enveloped in a broader response through which we can begin to intuit something about the range of barriers that lie within subject English for students with language and attention difficulties:

Jamie: ‘…I mean, it’s just like sometimes the questions and how you like ... Because sometimes, if you scan over text too fast, you might miss some things. And if you read like a different place and then like something else happens, you get thrown off because of concentration.’

Several other students spoke about difficulties related to concentration but, consistent with the social model of disability, their responses highlighted aspects of the subject that made learning even more difficult for them. Statements in the attribution to subject category more than twice outnumbered those in the attribution to self category.

Attributions to subject

Some students said that English was ‘alright’ because it does not change much from year to year, however, others suggested that this repetitiousness made it hard to maintain concentration:

Angie: ‘…so like grade seven was a, uh, a review of grade six, so it’s like a little bit harder grade six, but now Year 10 is like just a reviewing of grade nine.’

Emily: ‘…you kind of zone out ‘cause it’s repetitive.’

Despite some students commenting that English doesn’t change much from year to year, others said that the expectations for success in Year 10—compared to the junior secondary years—had shifted quickly and were markedly different from previous years:

Kobie: ‘It’s because, like, it gets harder and, like, you have to put more stuff into your assessments. Like, more, um, more completitave [sic, complicated] language and stuff like all these words’.

Samantha: ‘Oh, it is because in junior high, um, the sentence that I wrote, if, uh, if it makes sense, it was okay. It was a tick. But in Grade 10, they say that even, even if it makes sense, it is not clear enough. And then, and I just realised that the writing style that I learned, now even… even if it was okay in Grade 9, it won’t work, you won’t score really well in Year 10, they’re harder.’

Laurence and Tessa spoke to a lack of clarity in assessment success criteria and inaccessibility of feedback.

Laurence: ‘I don’t know how to improve the marks. Like I can pass because the criteria is so basic to get a C and that will stay like that until senior. Cause I get a look at, um, criteria sheets. So, but then increasing the marks it’s so weird, ‘cause like how do I know when something is discerning? Like how do I, how do I know when I’ve gone to a high enough level? Or how do I know if I’ve structured something the standard way?’

Tessa: ‘I don’t know, some years the assessments seem hard, other years, they are like pretty easy. And, like, some semesters, you’re like, ‘Oh, I thought I did well’. That’s a lie!’

Several students raised the requirement to give speeches in front of an audience as a reason they found English hard.

Haruto: ‘Another thing is speeches. I just have like really bad stage fright with speeches’.

Lacey: ‘…last time we had to write, like, um, a speech about addiction. And I just don’t like speaking in public (laughs). So that, you know, wasn’t very fun’.

Zoe: ‘I hate doing the speeches. I feel like that’s, like, really bad. I just don’t like doing it ‘cause it’s like intimidating, I guess’.

Haruto, Lacey, and Zoe were not the only students to link attribution to subject factors to negative associations with subject English. For example, Ruby suggested that students who experience barriers in English can feel devalued.

Ruby: ‘Well, previously in like year 7, 8, 9. I was in like an honours program. And it... I was surrounded by people who are really good at English. It put me down a lot because I was not the best. And that’s like, the intention behind the honours program was just to push you to be the best. And it helped me in, like humanities, math, science, because that’s my strong point. But in English, if you’re not that good, you kind of get pushed aside.’

Several students attributed the ease or difficulty of English to the in/accessibility of teaching and the supportiveness of teachers’ practice. For example, Ayyash said that English was ‘easy’ because:

Ayyash: ‘…there’s a lot of stuff given to us like exemplars, um, uh, (laughs) um, like a little stuff to help us in class and out of classes.’

However, Violet alluded to variability of practice when describing why she said English was neither easy or hard and therefore, ‘alright’.

Violet: ‘I’ve had a lot of different teachers, so it kind of depended on the teacher that I had, too.’

The variability of practice in subject English may, in part, be connected to the in/accessibility of instructional language, which can be negatively impacted by the clarity, pace, and volume of teacher talk. As clarity and pace are affected by volume we next asked students about the quantity of teacher talk in the classroom.

Do you think some teachers talk too much?

Over two thirds of participants (69.49%) stated that some teachers do talk too much with eight responding with a forceful ‘YES!’ Six of these students expanded by describing the effect of too much teacher talk—including when teachers ‘go off topic’ (Samantha)—on their ability to sustain focus, attention, and engagement.

Julia: ‘Yes, there was this one sub who we had, and he kept droning on and on and on. Everyone was like, ‘meh’. Coz, like, he was just like over-explaining the task. And he talked really slowly too so that didn’t help.’

Gareth: ‘[The] ones that are just like talking and not doing anything, I’ll just zone out and don’t do anything.’

Manalia: ‘It makes me like, ‘Oh, this is so... Why are you taking so long? Can we actually do the work?’

Bella: ‘Yes. Uh, uh, my brain leaves the room’ (laughs).

Another student identified that once behind, it is difficult to re-engage:

Pippy: ‘I just think, well, like when my teacher’s talking, I, my brain kind of, it gets like really slow, and I have to think back about, ‘Oh, they just said those words, what do those mean? And then I’m like, okay, I’m catching up. And then she’s already like gone all the way down like already explained so much more. I’ve like missed that ‘cause I was trying to focus on what she was just explaining before.’

What happens when teachers talk too much?

To learn more about the impact of superfluous teacher talk on learners, we showed the iPad to all 41 students who said that some teachers talked too much and asked them to choose which of the seven options on the display applied to them (see Fig. 3). The most popular response was that students begin thinking of other things. The next most popular responses were that their brain shuts down and/or they talk to the person next to them. Six students reported that they try even harder to follow what the teacher is saying and another four said they would start using the messaging app Discord. Lastly, although no student selected ‘I get up to mischief’ as a standalone choice, four did select ‘all of the above’.

Fig. 3
figure 3

What Happens When Teachers Talk Too Much?

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Students’ responses to these questions provide useful insights into the barriers that some students experience in English classrooms. However, after 11 years of schooling, these students have also had many opportunities to experience practices that reduce barriers and support their learning. For this reason, they can provide valuable insight to help identify, assess, and improve the accessibility of teaching practice. We therefore asked students to tell us their thoughts on what makes for ‘excellent’ teaching and what these teachers do to help them learn. As described in Table 1, we then coded responses into four categories derived from previous research.

What makes an excellent teacher?

The largest proportion of students’ statements (50.56%) related to instructional support which are practices that support student learning (Table 2). Coded into this category was teachers’ provision of explicit instructions and clear explanations, demonstrations and examples, and detailed feedback; use of repetition and developmentally appropriate vocabulary; checking and repairing of students’ comprehension, connecting new material to prior learning, and teaching at a student-friendly pace.

Table 2 Coding Categories and Corresponding Responses
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Although these practices are important for all students, evident in these students’ responses is the universality and frequency with which ‘excellent teachers’ use these practices.

Tessa: ‘They, like, they’ll explain it, they’ll go through it probably several times. They’ll make sure they’ve explained it in multiple different ways so everybody can understand it. They’ll happily answer your questions.’

In her response, Tessa introduces other important aspects of accessible teaching practice like repetition, and question/answer cycles, which are important to both support, confirm and extend student comprehension. Other students extended these ideas:

Kiaan: ‘Um, they just help more. And then go one-on-one. Just, more explaining. They don’t leave unless you know what it is’.

Pippy: ‘They go through things slowly. And they kind of check in with every student to make sure that they’re like on the same track’.

In their comments, Tessa, Kiaan and Pippy suggest that excellent teachers persevere to ensure students fully comprehend content and concepts, before moving on to the next task or topic. Others explained that excellent teachers make new content or complex ideas accessible through the language and vocabulary they use when teaching:

Heng: ‘They explain it thoroughly. Yeah, they make it into simpler words as well.’

Violet: ‘Well, he like, puts what we’re learning into like, a different scenario, you know? Like, something that we’d understand more. So, like, like, he kinda just compares it to something, and then just makes it way easier to get, ‘cause it’s like, um phrases and words that we already know.’

Similarly, students pointed to the importance of teaching at a student-friendly pace, one that was not too fast or slow, and which allowed appropriate time to explain new curricular content:

Samantha: ‘[the] pace of the lesson they don’t, they don’t rush … And tells us, um, the important parts clearly.’

Tallai: ‘they're helpful. Um, they try to work at your pace.’

While feedback is a known high leverage practice, students emphasised the need for feedback to be both explicit and accessible, noting that excellent teachers:

Yarran: ‘Like, actually give proper feedback. Like talk to you.’

Katelyn: ‘I also like teachers in, when it comes to assessments who, um, look at my work, they’ll sort of just look at it and they’ll go, ‘Oh hey, if you tweak this a bit, it’ll help you a lot here,’ and, um, also who give really detailed comments in things because I know quite a few teachers, who will just sort of put a question mark as, as like the comments and I’ll be like, ‘What does that mean, like is, is it you don’t understand, is it that it doesn’t fit in here’, and then I’ll spiral (laughs).’

Katelyn’s reference to ‘quite a few teachers’ suggests that this practice might not be commonplace.

Does your year 10 English teacher…?

To gauge how commonly students’ current English teachers use practices to support language and information processing, students were presented with 16 practice descriptors, drawn from previous research, on an iPad and asked to indicate whether their teacher used each practice ‘rarely’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘always’. Figure 4 displays the order of students’ estimated frequency of use, illustrating patterns that suggest some of these important practices might be more popular with some teachers than others. More than half of participating students reported that their teachers ‘always’ used seven of the identified practices: regularly repeating important information, clearly explaining the lesson plan, giving clear signals to support transitions, using familiar words, explaining things well, and using the board to provide examples. However, there is clearly some variability in teachers’ use of these seven practices with the percentage of students reporting that they are used ‘rarely’ or ‘sometimes’ ranging from just over one quarter of students (27.12%) to just under one half (49.15%).

Fig. 4
figure 4

Students’ Ratings of Teacher Practices that Support Language and Information Processing

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For six of the remaining nine practices, just over one half of students reported that their teacher rarely or only sometimes provides: additional explanation to support student comprehension, accessible word definitions, coherence within the lesson, a list of lesson tasks on the board, gestures that support comprehension, and routines/strategies to help students maintain focus and attention. Lastly, almost two-thirds reported that their teacher rarely or only sometimes provides accessible slides, pauses when explaining, or regularly checks in to maintain students’ attention.

Discussion

Secondary school English is a critical gateway to opportunity. Beyond the opportunity represented by choices in post-school education, training, and employment—as important as they are—is access to ‘powerful knowledge’ in works of literature that by examining what it is to be human across time and in diverse contexts help us all develop compassion, community, and criticality. Previous research has critiqued the restriction of students’ access to this opportunity and knowledge due to the organisation of different classes of knowledge across the curriculum hierarchy in which there are patterns of enrolment along socioeconomic lines. However, most research in this tradition focuses on formal access: whether, for example, there are higher-level units in schools serving low-socioeconomic communities (Perry & Southwell, 2014). Green et al. (2023) argue that these patterns in enrolment are circular in that enrolment is influenced by students’ subject choices, which is influenced by students’ perceptions of the subject and their suitability for it. We suspect that these perceptions are likely formed prior to Years 11 and 12 by the level of difficulty students’ experience with the subject and by the grades they receive. For students with disabilities impacting language and information processing, the difficulty of the subject is also likely to be affected by the in/accessibility of classroom pedagogy.

Research with Year 10 students affords insight into students’ experience of a (purportedly) common curriculum before they enrol in differentiated senior English subjects. Students’ experiences of English at this point in secondary school is critical for it can determine formal access to the ideas and concepts that are made available in higher-status senior subjects, as well as entry to some university degrees and professional occupations, some of which do not require a university qualification. Although formal access to Year 10 English is still mediated at the level of the school and classroom with some students being streamed into lower-level classes, all Australian students from Foundation to Year 10 are supposed to be receiving the same curriculum, the same entitlement to powerful knowledge. This can be achieved for all students with disability through the application of universal design principles and the provision of reasonable adjustments to students who still need them.

In the introduction to this paper, we distinguished between access to and the accessibility of subject English, noting that the accessibility of pedagogy and assessment is critical for students with disorders impacting language and information processing such as DLD and/or ADHD. To investigate these students’ perceptions of English and their own suitability for it, we began by asking students with difficulties consistent with DLD and ADHD whether they found English easy, alright, or hard and compared their responses to their term one levels of achievement. Four in five reported that English was ‘alright’, however, this question was early in the interview and their levels of achievement–and particularly the number of fail grades–indicated many may find English more difficult than the term ‘alright’ suggests. We asked students why they thought English was easy, alright or hard, and responses to this question were more illuminating. A small number of students interpreted ‘alright’ literally, as a middle ground between easy and hard. One third of remaining students attributed the ease or difficulty of English to themselves, such as their ability to write, to concentrate, to plan, and to get started on tasks, and two thirds attributed these difficulties to the subject itself. Importantly, not one of the 59 students interviewed in this study said that English is easy/alright/hard because of the intellectual content. Rather, students highlighted lack of clarity in success criteria, inflexibility of assessment requirements, and the in/accessibility of teaching. These barriers were evidenced by student reports that they worked to refine their work but received grades that were lower than expected or that they were unable to improve their marks despite making efforts to do so. These findings suggest that teachers’ intended feedback messages were not clear or comprehensible to these students, which is at odds with the aim of feedback (Yang et al., 2021). Importantly, many such barriers can (and should) be minimised from the outset, through the use of explicit, direct, and comprehensible language (Graham & Tancredi, 2024; Starling et al., 2012).

Students also spoke to assessment-related subject/pedagogy barriers, including fixed assessment modes (e.g., giving a speech, or writing essays). Students’ statements suggested that there was no option for flexibility or choice in assessment mode. These are unnecessary barriers that have likely washed back from the senior English curriculum for Years 11 and 12 (Willis et al., 2023). However, there is no requirement in the Australian Curriculum for students in Foundation to Year 10 to produce specific response types. In fact, the Australian Curriculum does not prescribe modes, such as speaking or writing, because some students may use alternative forms of communication. Instead, the Achievement Standard states ‘By the end of Year 10, students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and multimodal texts… With a range of purposes and for audiences’ (ACARA, 2023c, Achievement standard: Year 10 section). Students could achieve this by creating a video or animation, together with a discussion about their submission, where the teacher can ask questions or seek additional explanation from the student. Students are also not required to speak in front of a minimum audience size, with the term ‘audiences’ equally applying to an audience of one (e.g., the teacher), a small group, or a class. Flexible assessment options are best implemented proactively through universal design and the provision of choice, as reasonable adjustments are typically retrospective and—as we have already noted—many students with ‘hidden’ disabilities, including those with language and attention disorders, do not receive them (Graham et al., 2018a, 2018b). Too often, the outcome of unadjusted barriers to access is that students experience repeated failure of the type so poignantly described by Ruby when she said, ‘in English, if you’re not that good, you kind of get pushed aside’.

As language is the medium of classroom instruction, it is not surprising that students with language and/or attention difficulties identified high levels of teacher talk in the classroom, with nearly seven in ten students reporting that some teachers talk too much. Unique to this study is students’ report of lost focus and cognitive overload when teachers ‘drone on and on’ or ‘over-explain’, rather than letting them get on and ‘do the work’. These reports are unsurprising, given the inherent developmental limitations of working memory, which does not reach adult maturation until age 15 (or later for students with neurodevelopmental disorders; Gathercole et al., 2006). A likely consequence of superfluous teacher talk is disruption to students’ processing of information due to the overload of working memory at which point students can find it difficult to re-engage with the lesson. Barriers to student comprehension have significant implications for learning over time (Cowan, 2014), a problem Pippy spoke to when she reported difficulty ‘catching up’ and processing/comprehending layers of meaning during lengthy episodes of teacher talk. Importantly, students’ insights about what makes an excellent teacher suggest that teachers have the power to address many of the barriers these students experience when learning subject English.

We derived this question from previous research with 50 junior secondary school students with learning and behavioural difficulties (Graham et al., 2022). As in the present study, a majority of those students’ statements (40.9%) when asked what makes an excellent teacher referenced practices that support learning including frequent repetition, a student-friendly instructional pace, question/answer cycles, and use of familiar vocabulary and language structures. However, in the present study with students identified as having language and/or attention difficulties, the percentage of statements was even higher (50.56%). Students in our sample also emphasised teachers’ use of clear explanations and ‘simpler words’, ‘going through it’ several times and in different ways, a moderate lesson pace (with time for information processing), and ‘going one-on-one’ via check-ins to ensure student comprehension. Importantly, students in our sample did not suggest that teachers only use familiar language in subject English; rather, when communicating complex or abstract ideas and themes, students indicated that they can best understand when teachers use clear and concise language and when they explain what new words mean (Titsworth et al., 2015). Vocabulary building through efficient explanation using clear and concise language will also support a range of other learners, including those who speak English as an additional language or dialect (Alford & Tancredi, 2024).

Whole class teaching practices that minimise language complexity and support information processing are beneficial to all students but are essential for those with language and/or attentional disorders (Gathercole et al., 2006; Graham & Tancredi, 2024; Starling et al., 2012; Sweller, 2016). Though it might be assumed teachers are already implementing these pedagogies, our findings suggest otherwise. When asked about 16 practices from the literature that support language and information processing, 50% or more students reported nine of the sixteen practices were occurring only sometimes or rarely, suggesting inconsistent or ineffective use of accessible teaching practices. For example, nearly three in five students said teachers rarely or only sometimes listed what students needed to do on the board. The use of pauses during explanation to help students keep up was also uncommon in the view of students with most rating it as occurring rarely or sometimes. Lastly, almost one in four said their teacher did not consistently provide check ins to support attention. While such practices benefit all learners, they are essential to help students with language and attention difficulties manage the working memory and comprehension demands of subject English (Sweller, 2016). When teachers repeat important information using familiar, concrete language and use a moderate lesson pace, the requirement for students to independently hold information in mind is reduced. This frees up working memory capacity to enable students to engage in the intrinsic cognitive load of subject English, which includes grappling with the rich and sometimes unusual language of literary texts, synthesising themes, making connections between new concepts, and engaging in text creation (Cowan, 2014).

Conclusion

Subject English is a gateway to powerful knowledge and opportunity, particularly in the secondary school years. Our study with 59 Year 10 students with language and/or attentional difficulties sought to understand their perspectives on subject English, as shaped by their subject experiences and the grades they receive. Students’ experiences pointed to a dominance of factors that were attributable to the subject itself and the ways it which is sometimes taught, including vague success criteria, flexibility in assessment, and inaccessible teaching practices. Despite students’ professed efforts to work hard and use teacher feedback to improve their marks, a preponderance of external factors contributed to negative experiences that impacted their views of English and themselves as learners. However, when asked to share their views as to what makes an excellent teacher, students identified a range of teaching practices that support comprehension and working memory, thereby offsetting the intrinsic linguistic and conceptual complexity of subject English. When used consistently and effectively, these practices may provide students with language and/or attention difficulties with access to the powerful knowledges that are often buried in complex literature, language, and literacies.