September 2021

The Universal Nature of UDL

I first came across Universal Design for Learning (UDL) after I had left the classroom. I was at a conference session led by a representative from CAST, an organization designed to remove barriers to learning for ALL students. It was both fortunate and unfortunate for me to stumble upon the UDL framework at this point in my career. The unfortunate part (to get the bad news out of the way first) was that I was no longer a classroom teacher, and therefore could not implement the strategies directly with young students. The positive part though was that I was, and continue, working with adult learners, who, while different in needs, wants, and some elements of learning theory, are students as well. In fact, the principles of UDL apply to all of us.

If you aren’t familiar with UDL, it is a framework for supporting all students that relies on brain science to develop and implement learning supports. The premise is that if we want to truly remove barriers to learning, then we need to make sure that all students are provided with multiple means of engagement (our affective neural networks), representation (our recognition neural networks), and expression (our strategic neural networks). Within each of these categories are a variety of checkpoints or benchmarks. For instance, to strengthen engagement, brain science says that we should focus on building persistence and sustaining effort. And to do that, we can work on cultivating collaboration skills for all of our students so that when we encounter obstacles, our combined persistence and collective efficacy will help propel us to the finish line. Basically, UDL isn’t only good science. It makes good sense.

And, what is even more interesting is that the principles and strategies within the UDL guidelines (you can find CAST’s great chart here) apply to everyone. Regardless of the person, who isn’t more engaged when distractions are minimized?

So, how can we incorporate these guidelines into the work we do with all learners? One way is to make sure that we all know and recognize that the UDL framework and guidelines exist and that they align well with other frameworks for thinking and working in the learning, teaching, and leading realm. Take Understanding by Design, the process envisioned and written about by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Through that process, unit of study planning is done through a “backwards design” model and through the use of a valuable template. In effect, we start with what we want students to know and be able to do and build out assessment measures before we build out activities and other student experiences. While I’m simplifying the process, you can see how UDL and UbD could connect around educators appropriate goal setting, building in structures for mastery-oriented feedback, and other elements of effective teaching and learning.

Another way to incorporate? We can visualize what each of the UDL checkpoints looks like in our current role (the UDL guidelines provide some examples, but visualizing them by ourselves or with a team can be more fun and more interesting). By conceptualizing how learners meet these checkpoints, we become more capable of actually putting them into action. For instance, one of the checkpoints or benchmarks for perception focuses on providing alternatives for auditory information. In designing professional learning, and thinking of our current state, providing a written transcript (through the Zoom transcription service, for instance) provides workshop attendees with another resource for considering and reflecting on information and ideas from the learning session.

As far as frameworks go, UDL provides us with a lot to learn from. By thinking of the benefits of teaching, learning, and leading through a UDL lens, we can prompt ourselves to do more for learners and more for ourselves.