Introduction

To fulfil the aims of Assessment for Learning (AfL), the role and experience of the student—what they do and say, think and feel in response to what happens in their classrooms—must drive learning processes and improvement initiatives. Student experience of AfL’s familiar repertoire of practices ideally offers all students multiple entry points to take past learning forward into future learning by mobilising their evaluative expertise. In theory, the generative power of AfL is realised because both students and teachers have opportunities to ‘seek, reflect upon and respond to information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in ways that enhance on-going learning’ (Klenowski, 2009, p. 10). AfL is thus promoted in schools for its positive effects on student achievement related to metacognition about learning processes and purposes (Andrade & Brookhart, 2019; Earl, 2013), self-confidence and motivation (Fletcher & Shaw, 2012; Harlen, 2006), and developing independence (Allal, 2016; Hill & Edwards, 2019). In practice, the potential of AfL’s interactive improvement cycle is frequently interrupted, compromising the ideal of ‘that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth’ (Dewey, 1938/1986, p. 475). Interruptions have been attributed to teacher practice (Schildkamp et al., 2019), the intrinsic demands of AfL (Deneen et al., 2019), external conditions including high stakes assessment environments (Carless, 2005; DeLuca et al., 2019), and by internal conditions including group and individual learner characteristics (Cumming & Van der Kleij, 2016; Van Gennip et al., 2010).

Student experience is central to the success of AfL pedagogical practice, which recognises ‘students as actors who make choices, and whose actions shape assessment practices in both anticipated and unexpected ways’ (Adie et al., 2018, p.2). As indicated in the 2018 special issue of this journal, AfL research rarely highlights students’ commentary on their own experiences. Mostly, they are represented by others (Bourke & MacDonald, 2018). Even less research focuses on the experiences of diverse student groups for variables like previous performance, cultural and language background, and socio-economic status. Efforts to understand the experience of learning from the point of view of the learner are crucial to the goal of enabling learners as powerful agents in the classroom, especially in secondary schools where the assessment stakes escalate and teachers rely on AfL practices to prepare students for the next steps in their schooling.

Understanding how students and teachers, in their diverse and complex classroom environments, can access the affordances of AfL pedagogies so that everyone can learn was the focus of a wider project investigating the accessibility of assessment. Only a handful of studies in secondary schools have explored AfL for students with specific learning needs (Miedijensky & Tal, 2009; Tay & Kee, 2019) and none document the experiences of students with language and attentional difficulties (Arnold, 2022). Students with language and attentional difficulties refers to students with either Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) or both. Together, they represent the largest and least supported disability group in classrooms (Graham et al., 2019). Their experiences of AfL are important to study given the cognitive and linguistic complexity of many AfL practices. Students with ADHD often experience difficulty in quickly managing ‘visual and linguistic complexity, distinguishing between important and unimportant information, and prioritising, organising and coordinating’ (Graham et al., 2018, p. 109). For students with DLD, demands ‘such as organising and structuring ideas and converting these to a written text, synthesising key ideas or themes from a written text, or deciphering important from unimportant information’ (Graham et al., 2018, p. 109) can be intrinsic barriers that interrupt student experience of AfL.

Our focus on the practical effects of AfL from students’ perspectives acknowledges students as competent agents whose choices and actions create new patterns of participation (Cowie, 2005) amongst students and teachers. Data were collected from 92 students in three large secondary schools in south-east Queensland to answer the questions: How do secondary students experience AfL pedagogies? and What differences are there in the AfL experiences of students with likely language and attentional difficulties?

Literature review

Paying serious attention to students’ AfL experiences reflects a sociocultural view of assessment and learning. In sociocultural theory, three principles highlight the student as the central focus. First, a commitment to a socially just ideal in which all students have the opportunity to develop reasoning and higher-order thinking skills (Gipps, 2002). Second, an orientation that considers the identities and voices of learners and teachers as equally important in the shared space of the classroom and learning as a ‘discursive social practice, involving dialectical, sometimes conflictual, processes’ (Pryor & Crossouard, 2008, p. 1). And third, a determination to realise the considerable evidence-based affordances of AfL by attending to classroom-level practices (Shepard, 2000; Stobart, 2008), especially: (1) explicit learning intentions and success criteria, (2) effective convergent and divergent questioning and other methods of eliciting evidence of student learning, (3) high-impact feedback, and (4) self-regulation processes, including peer-and self-assessment. It follows that teachers and the educational research community need a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of student experience of AfL practices.

An ideal AfL student experience

A number of key messages emerge from research that represents student experience of AfL. Students can participate effectively, even if they are not always aware of the pedagogical goals (Aarskog, 2020; Kyaruzi et al., 2019). However, student experience is more generative if the processes and purposes of AfL practices are in the minds of both the teacher and the learner because students can more readily recognise, respond to, participate in, and even initiate practices (Charteris, 2015; Sicherl Kafol et al., 2017). Students’ positive regard for AfL is another important precursor to participation and positive learning outcomes (Yin & Buck, 2015), especially when students are positioned as developing disciplinary experts (Cowie & Moreland, 2015; Willis, 2010). Students recognise and value existing teacher practices like questioning and feedback (Kyaruzi et al., 2019) and improved teacher facilitation of routines like communicating clear learning goals, feedback (Hill & Edwards, 2019), sharing or co-constructing success criteria, and peer- and self-assessment practices (Brooks et al., 2021; Krijgsman et al., 2019). Intentionally cooperative AfL practices are reported as making students feel more secure, satisfied and happy in their learning (Plank et al., 2014; Rotsaert et al., 2017). However, fear, anxiety, frustration and disappointment can interrupt continuous learning in the dynamic interactive space of the AfL classroom (Willis, 2011; Cowie & Moreland, 2015).

Although AfL strives for a more equal assessment relationship between students and teachers, traditional power dynamics have been difficult to shift in meaningful ways. Students are often acutely aware of being ‘done to’—of not having choice or voice in classroom processes (Bourke, 2016; Crichton & McDaid, 2016). However, when AfL practices are underpinned by consistent school and system level messages that prioritise authentic learning and formative approaches to assessment, change is possible (DeLuca et al., 2018; Jónsson et al., 2018). AfL can improve dialogic interactions between and amongst students and teachers, especially when students are offered choices in the mode and audience for their assessment (Miedijensky & Tal, 2009; Tay, 2015) and when there are structured opportunities like co-constructing success criteria and peer assessment (Van Gennip et al., 2010). AfL further contributes to students, including students with additional learning needs (Bourke & Mentis, 2013), being more active, more help-seeking and self-evaluative, and more likely to be explicit about what they do and do not understand (Birenbaum, 2016; Cowie, 2012; Gamlem, 2015). Researchers also point to the need for authentic learning (Bourke & Loveridge, 2014; Swaffield, 2011) that has meaning for and values the life worlds of students.

AfL has potential as an inclusive pedagogy

In its 10 research based principles, the Assessment Reform Group (2002) indicated that AfL is intended as inclusive pedagogy:

‘Assessment for learning should be used to enhance all learners’ opportunities to learn in all areas of educational activity. It should enable all learners to achieve their best and to have their efforts recognised.’ (p. 95, our emphasis)

How it is inclusive can be inferred from AfL’s key practices being generally regarded as clarifying, enabling and growth-oriented. Questioning and other activities that elicit evidence of learning involve students and provide high quality evidence to inform the next steps in learning (Hayward, 2014). Effective written and verbal teacher feedback redirects and suggests strategies individuals can use to move their learning forward (Brooks et al., 2021). Finally, peer- and self- assessment enable a social environment where students can safely learn from each other and have time to apply their developing understanding of quality (Van Gennip et al., 2010).

The challenge of realising the potential of AfL as an enabling or inclusive pedagogy was raised as early as 1988, with Black & Wiliam (1998) noting earlier research that observed differential feedback effects on learners (Butler, 1988). Limited attention since has been paid to how AfL works for different learners (Arnold, 2022; Cumming & Van der Kleij, 2016). Braund and Deluca (2018) flagged the inherent demand of AfL with checklists in self-assessment as evidence of teachers managing complexity in this metacognitive process. Self-regulatory skills seem essential for formative processes like peer- and self-assessment (Chen & Bonner, 2019; Panadero et al., 2018) but AfL is also socially demanding. Gathering evidence of learning involves interaction amongst peers and teachers that depends on trust and a willingness to reveal current learning (Heritage & Wylie, 2018). These demands for all students may represent significant barriers to participation for neurodiverse students, especially students with language and attentional difficulties, who must work hard to meet cognitive, linguistic and social expectations (Graham & Tancredi, 2019). To realise the inclusive potential of AfL, teachers need to know more about student experience.

Conceptual framework

Student experience calls for an interest in the student’s point of view of how AfL practices connect present experiences with subsequent experiences to secure momentum in learning overall (Fig. 1). This conception is linked to pragmatic philosophy (Dewey, 1938/1986; James, 1907/2004; Peirce, 1903/1998) which argues that we are clearer about how we conceptualise something when that thing is defined in terms of its practical effects (Peirce, 1878/2016) and further that ‘(t)o attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations are we to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare’ (James, 1907/2004, p. 134). In pragmatic terms, it is insufficient for teachers to enact AfL practices without knowing about their students’ experiences. Following this reasoning, student experience of AfL is the conceivable practical effects of AfL pedagogies—the sensations students report and the reactions they produce when teachers are facilitating AfL practices. AfL has a demonstrably pragmatic character because it is concerned with the anticipated, tangible effects of a suite of practices on student learning outcomes. Educative experience is predicated on sensations like (metacognitive) awareness, confidence and motivation, social and emotional safety, and a willingness to be aligned with agreed classroom processes and their purposes. Students are supposed to prepare reactions related to the key actions of collecting, interpreting and responding to evidence as well as interacting with peers and their teachers.

Fig. 1
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Pragmatic conceptualisation of generative experience of learning in AfL (adapted from Krutka, 2017)

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For Dewey, ‘all genuine education comes about through experience’ but not all experiences are ‘genuinely or equally educative’ (Dewey, 1938/1986, p. 247). He further suggested that the quality of an experience in education depends on two interrelated principles that connect past and future experiences: continuity and interaction. Continuity refers to the ways students respond in concert with their surroundings such that they: see and feel certain things; plan their future actions and interactions; and formulate emotional and intellectual attitudes. Interaction refers to social practices in the particular environment of a school, where there is an intention to improve and provide equitable opportunities. Continuity and interaction are affected by internal conditions, like individual and group characteristics, and external conditions, like assessment policy, school culture, or other circumstances beyond the classroom. ‘(P)resent experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences (Dewey, 1938/1986, p. 478) may be thought of as generative experiences of learning.

Consideration of student experience of AfL was through a pragmatic theoretical lens and drew on sociocultural theory as it relates to the centrality of the student role. James’s concepts of sensations and reactions foreground what students see and feel, how they formulate attitudes, and how they plan for future actions and interactions in the processes of generative learning. These practical effects of AfL on students’ experiences of learning were usefully categorised for descriptive purposes into a six dimensions (Table 1) from a review of the literature about student experiences of AfL in secondary classrooms by Arnold (2022). Student experience includes students having: (1) knowledge of and affiliation with AfL practices such that students see themselves as participants, (2) emotional responses to teachers’ facilitation,Footnote 1 (3) evaluation of the effectiveness or point of AfL practices and interactions, (4) awareness of agency or, conversely, of being ‘done to’, (5) active and interactive responses in which students seek, interpret and use evidence, and (6) interactions beyond the immediate context). These dimensions allow a comprehensive analysis of reported student experience associated with accessible AfL practices.

Table 1 Six dimensions of student experience of assessment for learning
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While conceptually distinct for the purposes of data analysis, each dimension can be present in an experience and connected with the others. For example, when students appreciate teacher practice, they can also experience greater agency, produce more potentially productive emotional responses, and be willing to act and interact with teachers and peers. Selecting, interpreting and using evidence secures stronger knowledge of and affiliation with classroom assessment practices, which in turn improves student evaluations of AfL practices. The dimensions of students’ AfL experience in Year 10 English classrooms in Queensland enabled us to recognise what might enable greater points of connection and interaction, especially for students with language and attentional difficulties.

The context: assessment in secondary school in Queensland

Participants were completing Year 10 English in Queensland, a state known for prioritising students and teachers in its approach to assessment. From 1971, the assessment system was based on internal assessments designed and conducted by teachers and consensus-moderated between schools (Maxwell, 2010). In 2020, Queensland introduced new senior assessment processes that disrupted decades of assessment tradition to reintroduce some tightly controlled internal and significantly weighted external examinations as the end point of senior secondary schooling. School-based assessment remains an important feature; however, a more traditional approach to senior assessment has accompanied swift and significant changes in school-based policies and processes (Cumming, 2020; Willis et al., 2019). It has simultaneously prompted preoccupation with scores, concern for preparing students for high stakes tasks, and renewed interest in teachers’ AfL practices.

Methods

92 year 10 students from three large secondary schools in south-east Queensland participated in interviews and focus groups, from a total pool of 220 students who provided ethical consent in the Accessible Assessment ARC Linkage project. Students were allocated to Group1 or Group 2 (Table 2), according to their teacher’s participation. 32 students were identified as being likely to have language and/or attentional difficulties, determined by a combination of parent/carer information and additional language and attention screening tools conducted by the project team. The interpretation of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills Student Language Scale (TILLS; Nelson et al., 2016) and items 1–18 of the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham Teacher and Parent Rating Scale (SNAP-IV; Swanson et al., 1982) was conducted by a qualified speech pathologist on the research team. Parents were given a summary report, reassured that the report was not a diagnosis, and provided with information about options for clinical assessment and communicating with their school. This process explains the language chosen to refer to the subgroup of participants in this paper: students with likely language and attentional difficulties. It is notable that many students with likely language and attentional difficulties have average or higher than average intellectual capability (Graham & Tancredi, 2019) and that the project did not include students with an intellectual disability, which could be an area for future research. A second ‘not L/AD’ subgroup was matched to the L/AD subgroup for age, gender, and language background. They are most often referred to in this document as ‘peers’ or ‘students without likely language and attentional difficulties’. Invitation to either an interview or a focus group was based on the priorities of: individually interviewing at least one student with a likely language and/or attentional difficulty (L/AD) per class; conducting one focus group of no more than six participants per class; convenience (in Group 1 some students had not returned consent before Time 1 interviews); and with consideration to individual students’ comfort or convenience.

Table 2 Group 1 and 2 by participating teachers
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Students with likely language and attentional difficulties were either interviewed individually or included with their peers in focus groups to discuss ‘their interpretations of the world in which they live, and to express how they regard situations from their own point of view’ (Cohen et al., 2018, p. 506). Questions in the 40-min student interviews included both structured and open-ended responses about students’ overall AfL experiences during the period of a professional learning inquiry and their reflections on the specific learning episode nominated by their teacher for consideration. The sequence addressed the six dimensions of student experience and the research questions, ‘while also leaving space for study participants to offer new meanings to the topic of study’ (Galletta, 2013, pp. 1–2). Wait time and multiple forms of representation were ‘material practices that make the world visible’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018), including verbal prompts, flash cards and response placemats to support the participation of students with diverse needs to make sense of student experience of AfL.

Focus groups are useful for exploring perceptions, feelings, motivations and attitudes (Peterson & Irving, 2008), important aspects of the six dimensions of student experience that feature in this paper, about a topic of collective interest and experience (Acocella, 2012). They also provided support for students with language and attentional difficulties, who may sometimes find it challenging to share their views and opinions with adults (Gillett-Swan & Sargeant, 2018). Students were encouraged to reflect upon everyday aspects of their experiences as students that may be taken for granted (Morrison, 1998) and the focus groups further offered a glimpse of ‘social processes in action’ (Kitzinger, 1995, p. 117). For example, peer support was evident when students provided additional context to help others recall the learning episode or clarify a question. The protocol design balanced an alignment with student interviews and the flexibility to explore unexpected issues and encourage students to elaborate on or confirm peer responses (Kitzinger, 1995; Krueger, 1994). The sequence encouraged a snowballing of ideas Krueger (1994), steering participants away from providing the ‘right’ answers and towards more contested topics (Clark, 2009). Challenges for researchers facilitating inclusive focus groups include that their flexibility and openness can lead to digressions as part of data generation (Hendershott & Wright, 1993). Talkative members may take up so much time that not every participant has the opportunity to speak. For example, in one larger group there were excited reminiscences about shared primary school experiences that were becoming lengthy so the facilitator checked with students for connections to their current class focus. To counter the likely problem of forgetting their idea by the time it was their turn to talk (Acocella, 2012), students wrote initial ideas on a post-it note and these were used as prompts in the discussion and a visible reminder to the group for turn-taking. Each interview and focus group was audio recorded, transcribed, and the data reviewed by both authors. The abductive analysis approach described below enabled data to be contextualised and confirmed within the broader project observation data.

Data analysis

Following the theoretical orientation of pragmatism, an abductive analytic strategy attended to evidence of the practical effects of AfL on students’ experiences of learning. In an abductive inquiry (Fig. 2), the analytic process refers to ‘a creative inferential process aimed at producing new hypotheses and theories based on surprising research evidence’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012, p. 167). It involves deliberately identifying unexpected or puzzling moments evident in patterns of student responses wherein: the inquiry illuminates a surprise—either a novelty (new experience) or anomaly (unexpected experience) (Peirce, 1934); the researcher draws on or extends existing theory to propose an explanatory hypothesis; and additional data is located to confirm the inference or offer alternative insights. Abduction builds on qualitative research methods for induction—like producing codes, categories and themes—and deduction, by calling on relevant conceptual and theoretical positions (Lipscomb, 2012; Thompson, 2022). Indeed, abductive reasoning is sometimes described as moving back and forth between induction and deduction (Morgan, 2007; Vibha & Christine, 2019). But importantly it goes further ‘to create new narratives about the phenomenon we are trying to explain…when we encounter observations that do not neatly fit existing theories’ (Timmermans & Tavory, 2014, p. 5). The process began with immersion in theory and current literature, and then experiential data was gathered from the field. The data sources for this paper were student interviews and focus groups. At the same time, the research team was facilitating the professional learning inquiry, conducting lesson observations, and ultimately interviewing teachers. Thus, interpretation of the data was informed by first-hand knowledge of the teachers and their practice, and by observations of student experience in the classrooms. While the analysis overall referenced theoretical and empirical literature on AfL, the data were also analysed recursively and openly amongst research colleagues, in order to identify entry points for further analysis that were interesting to explore and had potential to address the research questions.

Fig. 2
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Abductive inquiry

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Student interviews and focus groups were transcribed using a professional transcription service, and then checked and corrected against the recordings, as part of a familiarisation phase common to other forms of qualitative analysis. Question responses, arranged by dimension of experience, were categorised on a spreadsheet, to make it clear in the analytic process that the conceptual frame was being considered in tandem with empirical data. This is an important analytic stance to take because the conceptual frame provided a theoretical sensitivity to the potential relevance of surprises in the patterns of information, while the generation of inductive codes was used to ‘defamiliarise’ the data (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). It was then that several surprises were evident that did not neatly fit existing theories, including: discursive similarities between students and teachers; the possible impact of how complexity was managed by teachers for students; apparent tensions between assessment and learning that were more pronounced than expected at this year level; and the ways students with likely language and attentional difficulties used classroom artefacts for self-regulation at home. Influenced by our ‘cultivated position(s)’ (Timmermans & Tavory, p. 173) as researchers with expertise in English curriculum and assessment scholarship, as well as an affinity with the field of inclusive education, we recognised some potential links between these observations. Revisiting the literature on students with language and attentional difficulties suggested disruptions to continuity were a recognised problem, especially when continuity was theorised as essential to generative learning. The data further showed evidence of additional fragmentation in AfL practices that were theoretically supposed to provide coherence. Exploring observations of fragmentation meant revisiting the literature, and theorising which dimensions of student experience could be hypothesised as reflecting the practical effects of how AfL constrains and enables generative learning. This was a surprise that went to the core of AfL theory and it became the focus of further investigation and this paper.

Findings

What was surprising about finding student experience of AfL was fragmented was that AfL pedagogies are intended to overcome fragmentation. AfL is intended to provide coherence between learning activities or lessons, or enable students to see the connections between their work and quality indicators. When practices are experienced as fragmented and students are more or less able to reconstitute the connections, the potential of AfL is not realised and students with language and attentional difficulties may have additional barriers to scale. The effects of fragmentation and cohesion are illustrated below in two parts. Part A provides an account of ‘typical’ AfL experience, followed by a summary of practical effects across the data set in dimensions 1–3. In Part B, an account of ‘promising’ student experience of AfL is followed by insights from students described in dimensions 4–6.

Part A

A typical AfL event

Mr Morgan’s class were given an example short story and a writing scaffold that explicated the qualities of success for the upcoming summative task. Working independently, students compared the example with information in the scaffold and had the opportunity to apply their developing understanding of quality when they began writing their own story. The scaffold included information about the purpose of each writing phase, sentence starters, a series of questions in checklist form, and a place to write. As they read, compared, and wrote, Mr Morgan moved around the room. He gathered evidence about how individual students applied the elements of quality by asking questions and offering verbal feedback. This event exemplified AfL practices of the use of examples and checklists to build a shared understanding of the criteria for success.

Student experience—or ‘the practical effects’

Cam, Petri, Jesse and Alex were students in the class without language and attentional difficulties. Asked in focus groups to provide a movie title for this AfL experience, Cam suggested The Young Padawan because ‘a Padawan is someone being trained, so this lesson was kind of like a training session or helping us understand more of what we need to do.’ Even though they were initially confused by the teacher’s explanation about why they were using the checklist with an example story, ‘once he explained more it got a bit easier to understand,’ (Petri) and Jesse found it ‘really useful. For the most part, students were interested and motivated to begin writing their summative task response, initiating actions like: ‘talk to friends,’ ‘concentrate on the assignment’, ‘be creative,’ ‘put the story together,’ ‘decide,’ ‘discover,’ and ‘slack off.’ After they began, they used the scaffold to:

…think of a story using the starters so we could write our own and find where we had weaknesses. Basically, we’d think of ideas of where we could use the sentence starters and he would come around and help us find where we got stuck in the story, where we’d misplaced stuff, and where we could improve. (Alex)

Thus, with the support of the AfL resource and their teacher, students made connections to intended curriculum about how to create quality literary texts in the context of preparing their summative assessment response.

Parker, a student in the same class with language and attentional difficulties, found it difficult to recall the processes and see the purpose. For him, the purpose was ‘to learn from the example what to include in the paragraph. So, sort of, like, a checklist of what to fill up or use and to create, like, an essay or paragraph- I think.’ His grasping at the disciplinary language indicates an uncertainty characteristic of students with language and attentional difficulties. Parker’s experience reflects how students are expected to hold the parts of the whole together when teachers shift fluently between genres, text structures, and language features. Moreover, initially unclear explanations by the teacher that were resolved by other students wrongfooted Parker. Because the summative task sheet had not yet been distributed, he thought the teacher wanted them to practise ‘what they could do in the final 'cause practice is important.’ He missed the cues that they should begin work on the summative task:

‘Cause also at that time, I didn’t know what the assignment was going to be. I thought this was just gonna be school work, homework and stuff…it’ll take a while and it’s a lot of work.

To fully participate, Parker needed to attend to the studied text (the myth of Theseus), the complicated scaffold document, the example, his own developing story ideas, and teacher directions; however, these connections were an inferred and therefore fragmented experience. Thus, while he was struggling with the cognitive demands of the disciplinary language and negotiating the procedural demands of the classroom practice, he missed the opportunity to make connections and apply the scaffold to his own writing. He generally saw the value in practising for some future time but ‘it didn’t really help that much’ and he did not use the scaffold (at least in this lesson) for its intended purpose.

This account was typical of many of the lessons observed by the research team and nominated by teachers as AfL episodes for students to discuss. Across 37 lessons, it was common to see practice where the criteria for success was identifiable to students and there were connections with the summative task. Less common were connections for building a shared understanding of quality and opportunities for students to apply those understandings to their own learning. If teacher practice did not clearly communicate and revisit process and purpose for AfL practices, all students were left to work out how to participate. Some students overcame this barrier by inferring connections—gathering evidence, anticipating purpose, making inferences, trusting the teacher, and collaborating. Students with language and attentional difficulties had to expend greater effort to make sense of how to participate, rather than benefiting from otherwise generative experiences of analysing what successful performance might look like and applying it to their own work in progress. These practical effects were most evident in student knowledge, how much they valued the practices, and their emotions (dimensions 1–3) (Figure 3).

Fig. 3
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Dimensions 1–3 of student experience of AfL. Dimensions 4–6 of student experience of AfL

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Student experience as knowledge & affiliation, evaluation, and emotion

When students recognise and value of the processes and purposes of AfL, they can more meaningfully participate in and initiate learning). Students actively looked for purpose. Sometimes meaning-making was interrupted by a teacher’s lapse in clarity, requiring students to develop an understanding of what to do and why they were doing it as the lesson progressed. This effect was more challenging for students with language and attentional difficulties (see Table 3):

Table 3 Differential experience of AfL knowledge & affiliation
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So, while all students recognised a range of AfL practices, some did not secure alignment with their teachers’ purpose, resulting in weaker connections to AfL knowledge and affiliation.

Students valued AfL practices for their connection with the summative task, ‘so we can understand what we have to do to get the grade we want.’ (Jo-L/AD) The dominance of summative assessment priorities was most clearly evident in teacher feedback and exemplar-based practice, especially successful examples from past students. While all students appreciated this guidance, the effect on students with language and attentional difficulties seemed to be a strong deferral to the teacher’s perspective (Table 4):

Table 4 Differential experience of AfL for evaluation
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Such transactional purposes oriented student experience of AfL and sent strong signals about what matters, with students’ positive regard and readiness to participate directly tied to the utility of AfL practices for the summative assessment task.

Artefacts of classroom practice additionally emerged as enablers for students with language and attentional difficulties because handouts and digital resources could be used to overcome procedural barriers; that is, the elements students were required to incorporate to meet the assessment criteria in the summative task (Graham et al., 2018). Artefacts clarified and exemplified quality, supported students’ recall, and kept them on track at home:

Share an example of an A level work in class and so you could look off that and then look on your own work and like match like not copy but like see how you can change it to make it more understandable or like easier to read. (Billie)

When I get an assessment [task] I think of ideas, but then when I see an example I kind of build on those ideas...So I think of it before I actually start doing it, but then when I get to doing it I forget all those ideas, so I can just go back to examples. (Quinn)

Such observations show how fragments of classroom practice were re-connected through materials students could use to move their learning forward, independently or with a support person.

Consistent with high recognition and appreciation of teacher practice, students reported feeling confident and motivated. Even feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration were catalysts for learning when students resolved them by seeking new information, practising an unfamiliar skill, or solving a problem. AfL prompted emotional connections through novelty and trust, with movement and paired work providing additional resources for connection. However, if emotion is connected positively with learning (Ansell & Geyer, 2017) it follows that differential experience in this dimension is worth investigating. Students with language and attentional difficulties were less interested, confident and motivated by their teachers’ AfL facilitation than their peers. Importantly, they were more likely to be bored, anxious or worried (see Table 5):

Table 5 Differential experience of AfL for emotion
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These findings are logical in pragmatic terms. Interest, confidence and motivation are inherently forward-looking emotions that signal current experience is likely to live fruitfully in future experience. The findings are also concerning. Students with language and attentional difficulties shared how fatigue from earlier activities or classes meant they struggled to make connections in AfL interactions. Some reported feeling tired or even ‘burnt out.’ (Storm) For Jac, tiredness—which may have looked like laziness or lack of engagement to a teacher—was compounded by the side effects of medication. AfL practices were catalytic, prompting student responses and alignment with the teacher’s purposes when connections to purposes were clearly accessible. More consequential effects were evident in lessons that made connections to expertise or life purposes beyond summative tasks.

Part B

Promising practice

In groups, Ms Boston’s students investigated expert writing, moving between workstations to learn how types of punctuation (e.g. semi-colon) was used in published media articles. While they read each text, discussed the effects of the punctuation, and applied their new understanding to their own writing-in-progress, their teacher gathered evidence about how students came to understand elements of quality. She observed their interactions, asked questions to check for understanding, and provided verbal feedback. Afterwards, groups reported to the class and contributed to a shared document containing samples of punctuation everyone could use as a guide. Note that the response genre and granularity of focus for this learning episode is different from the one described in Part A; examining the use of punctuation in a media article is not like learning to plan a narrative, though both are challenging and common in English. The intention here is to illustrate promising practice that is accessible because it connects past experience with future growth.

Student experience—or ‘the practical effects’

In the focus group, students demonstrated knowledge and affiliation by calling the lesson Punctuation: the spaces between words and clearly explicated the purpose: to link disciplinary knowledge in relation to the studied genre to ‘find out why this type of punctuation is used, where in the exemplar it was used, how it creates a conversational tone in the essay and what sort of effects it has on the reader’ (Rae) with ‘how to incorporate it in our own essays for our assessment piece.’ (Dani) The lesson inspired interest and confidence, encouraged connections beyond the immediate task, and prompted reflections on past experiences of learning:

In my lessons in the past few years it was more like just briefly covering it. It was interesting to know that there was punctuation that I never even heard of before. ... I was confident using it after that lesson because before that lesson I might think, ‘Oh, I’m not using that ‘cause I don’t know what it means’. (Codi)

Students were active in the learning—purposefully reading multiple examples, annotating, moving between groups, collating notes—and they interacted with their peers and the teacher in groups.

In common with other students with language and attentional difficulties, Aiden found it more difficult than his peers to sustain his attention through the workstations. In this way, his experience was inevitably interrupted, fragmented: ‘It kind of lost a bit of its meaning of understanding why they’re using this kind of punctuation and just trying to just find the punctuation and then just chucking it in and then moving on to the next one.’ However, ‘at the end of the lesson, I was more happy because we discussed other groups’ ones and what notable examples were and that kinda redeemed it.’ Teacher clarity, interactions with his peers, and a whole class reflection provided multiple points of re-entry for Aiden to reconnect with the purpose and secure his participation. Insights about how to secure these practical effects were most evident in student commentary about agency, participatory actions and interactions, and connections beyond the classroom (dimensions 4–6) (Figure 4).

Fig. 4
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Dimensions 4–6 of student experience of AfL

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Student experience as awareness of agency, action & interaction, and connectedness

Empowering students to be agentic participants in authentic learning is a purported benefit of AfL; however, awareness of agentic possibilities was limited to a narrow range of choices for paying attention, doing homework, responding to feedback, using dot points or complete sentences, and selecting a subtopic. Students with language and attentional difficulties exercised autonomy dependent on their individual confidence and personal support networks. For some, getting ‘stuck’ was a terminal barrier when their teacher wasn’t there to help. Others were remarkably unanimous on how they exercised agency in managing time (Table 6):

Table 6 Differential experience of AfL for agency
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Overall, while students were aware of not having agency, they did not necessarily regard that as being problematic. Many accepted their limited opportunities for control and even appreciated that ‘In class sometimes, it’s great just to be told what to do and do it.’ (Shannon) However, it was also common for students in these English classes to want more say in the studied texts ‘so that we can pick something that we’re more interested in. ‘Cause I found that the assessments which I have engagement with, I do a lot better on.’ (Winter) Even small agentic opportunities were notable:

Shannon: I think literally every lesson she asks us, at least one thing like, oh, how do we want to spend this 10 minutes of the class?

Jay: Yeah. Like do you want to do a paragraph, do we want to do a thesis? Do we want to go over something?

Offering incidental choices about interaction possibilities was notable in lesson observations as uncommon but surprisingly powerful. While they were largely uncritical of their marginal role in the assessment relationship, students could nonetheless recognise the value of having a say in what and how they learned. One explanation for this seeming contradiction may be that the unexpectedly strong washback effect of senior assessment to Year 10 classroom practice obscured the value of invitations to agency from students.

Student experience as action and interaction could include everything students reported but striking in this data was the reconstitutive potential of collaborative learning and its infrequency. Indeed, peer assessment, where ‘I was reading theirs, they were reading mine, and we were reading each others’ (Terri) happened more often outside the classroom than in it. When students were asked about opportunities for working together, the most common response was to appreciate facilitated opportunities to learn with and from their peers.

Shannon: We do group work but we get the ideas as a group and then we split and do our own thing. Like we get an idea for a paragraph as a group and all of the evidence that we could use and how we can use it. And then we can write out our paragraph and stuff like that.

Interviewer: Is that something you've done much in English before?

Shannon:No, but it's really helpful. I think that's how I learn better.

Digital collaboration spaces enabled seeing and talking about other students’ writing. For students with language and attentional difficulties, sharing ideas was especially important because ‘you don’t always have the same ideas as someone next to you. And then when you’re sharing ideas it just helps you get a better understanding of the task or what you should be doing.’ (Lee) The key observation here is that students themselves are often the initiators in establishing purpose and securing continuity and interaction with peers, and that teacher facilitated opportunities for interaction further contributed to a cohesive experience of learning for all students.

Students with language and attentional difficulties had some sound advice for making stronger connections to authentic learning beyond the immediate demands of the summative task: ‘Have a reason for wanting to be better at it—not just because you have to because of school.’ (Callan). Storm wanted ‘a mentality of letting students improve from their mistakes instead of just giving them a yes or no. I feel like that would be extremely beneficial for everyone.’ They also had insights related to work and sports interests, competence and experience. Jac suggested collaborative learning might work better if it was arranged like the procedure they follow at McDonalds: ‘Have a ‘control’ [the main person that does it—more senior or skilful] and a ‘follow’ [finishes it off—control makes sure they’re doing the right thing, gives feedback/answers questions].’ Ash and several other students with language and attentional difficulties who were accomplished athletes and musicians identified possibilities to ‘Help me identify small things I can improve, so that getting better English is more like getting better at sport.’ Agency, interaction and connections beyond summative assessment purposes were seen as consequential by students but underutilised.

Discussion

Student experience, or the practical effects, has been identified in this paper as access to the benefits of AfL via connection and interaction opportunities (Fig. 5), with important and illuminating differences for students with likely language and attentional difficulties. The abductive analytic process acknowledged the puzzle of student experience, elevating unexpected patterns as provocations to further inquiry, not anomalies to be smoothed away. Knowledge & affiliation, evaluation and emotion emerged as ‘catalytic’ dimensions when they secured connections to the processes and purposes of AfL and built attitudinal readiness. But what were students ready for? They indicated readiness for activating ‘consequential’ opportunities for agency, interacting in the dialogic space of the classroom, and making connections to authentic learning, despite fewer opportunities to do so.

Fig. 5
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Pragmatic conceptualisation of generative experience of learning in AfL

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Attending to the experiences of students with language and attentional difficulties separately and in combination with their peers in focus groups highlighted some addressable barriers to AfL. Students struggled, with varying degrees of success, to make connections to move their learning forward when AfL was characterised by unclear or inconsistent explanations, few points of re-entry to the point of class activities, and routines disconnected from each other. Students with language and attentional difficulties knew about AfL practices but, in their fragmented recall, needed to make additional efforts to put the pieces together to decide: How does that work with this? The emotional connections that underpin continuity like interest, motivation and satisfaction were often displaced by tiredness, anxiety or frustration when students were not able to see how one part of the learning process was connected to the next. Having to climb over the barrier of fragmented AfL to find purpose and meaning thus interrupted the interactive flow of evidence, interpretation and response on which learning relies. These effects were felt as a kind of ‘double fragmentation’ by students with language and attentional difficulties—and they could accrue to any student – when disconnected AfL practice compounded internal cognitive barriers. Thus, accessible opportunities for interaction and continuity are essential to secure access to the benefits of AfL.

Given interruptions to continuous learning are inevitable, importantly this data identifies how cohesion was reconstituted. Teachers (and students followed suit) most frequently established cohesion via summative assessment demands, reframing the reason for say peer- and self-assessment as improving task scores. Narrow views of learning purposes increase the dependence of students on their teachers for feedback and reassurance (Hargreaves, 2005; Torrance, 2007). More generative ways to reconstitute or, as Aiden put it, ‘redeem’ a cohesive AfL experience were nominated by students with language and attention difficulties, including revisiting materials and thinking with peers or family members. These agentic possibilities for learning beyond the immediate activities of the classroom were some of the abductive surprises that challenge the deficit discourses of learning often associated with students with disabilities (Graham et al., 2020). To enable students to focus their energies towards purposeful connections within classrooms ‘students need to be explicitly taught AfL concepts, terminology and use over time’ (DeLuca et al., 2018, p. 91) so they can see connections beyond their teacher’s explanations. AfL also needs to be practiced as re-enforcing suite or, as Frances (L/AD) told us at the beginning of the study, ‘It’s kind of all interlinked, and it’s kind of all important.’

Conclusion

Time for students to seek, interpret and use information in dialogue with their teachers, themselves and each other (Klenowski, 2009) is not only how students develop capability to assess their own learning, but also provides extra opportunities for reconnection and accessibility. Teachers should know that accessible, generative learning does not demand ‘perfect’ practice; fragmented experience is a typical corollary of teaching and learning in complex classrooms. However, there are practices in the everyday teaching repertoires to help students reconstitute a cohesive experience. Schools can support teachers to prioritise authentic disciplinary learning by acknowledging the pedagogical pull of high stakes assessment and affirming the value of collaborative learning and making connection with purposes for engaging beyond scores on summative tasks. Assessment for Learning benefits from studies that prioritise disciplinary connections (Backman et al., 2022; Cowie & Moreland, 2015) and connections beyond school (Bourke, 2016, Vattøy & Smith, 2019), contributing to an understanding of purposefulness and the learning trajectory (Smith et al., 2013). The field can benefit from more studies that include students with language and attentional difficulties who, like all students are ‘expert witnesses’ (Groundwater-Smith, 2023) to educative practices. Their insights here in part illuminated possibilities for enhancing catalytic dimensions of experience. But catalytic is not consequential. It is access to consequential experiences of AfL that allow ‘that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth’ (Dewey, 1938/1986, p. 475).