Examining the effectiveness of inclusive teaching practices for students with ADHD in post-secondary education: one size does fit all!

Abstract

Although some students succeed in their academic journey without major obstacles, a significant proportion of students with ADHD face considerable academic challenges when exposed to traditional teaching strategies. Despite attempts at reasonable accommodations, the current understanding of effective teaching approaches to alleviate these challenges remains limited. This study aims to identify effective inclusive teaching practices for post-secondary students with ADHD. An online survey including testing 49 inclusive teaching practices was completed by 850 post-secondary students who were officially registered with their academic institution with a functional disability, including 355 students with ADHD. Two-mode partitioning of the 49 inclusive teaching practices and 18 ADHD symptoms revealed a clustering of four inclusive strategy type cluster by one ADHD symptom cluster solution accounting for 88.10% of the variance. This finding suggests that, regardless of ADHD symptomatology, the likelihood of perceiving the four inclusive strategy types of 'flexible', 'emotionally supportive', 'engaging' and 'representational' practices as effective, is high (probability rates between .53 and .89). The current study provides a first insight into effective practices that universally promote academic success for all students with ADHD, despite the heterogeneity of this condition.