This post is loosely-based on a thought I shared on LinkedIn earlier in the week.
I am a dedicated practitioner of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in both my teaching and faculty development work. For me this means designing flexible and accessible learning experiences with multiple ways to engage, perceive information, and participate. I have been working with UDL pretty much since I first learned of it during grad school when I was a novice teacher. I believe it was first explained to me as a way to plan for a wide diversity of students rather than an imagined average - an idea that instantly resonated. Something about my particular combination of experiences and interests lead me to intuitively grasp the importance of this approach. When I later learned that UDL’s origins were in attempts to design learning that was accessible to students with disabilities from the outset, without the need for retrofits, that intuitively made sense as well.
However, as I have learned as a faculty developer who does UDL advocacy, UDL does not intuitively “click” for everyone. Continuing with the theme of “humility” that I have been working with in the last few posts, I have been thinking about ways that faculty developers sometimes skip over explorations of motivations or rationales for certain teaching practices, assuming that they can generate buy-in from participants with a few references to research on a slide. When I try to implement humility here, I start to admit to myself that this doesn’t always work.
One of the most valuable things that the UDL framework has offered me is the idea that people vary in their motivations, and that this should be recognized and embraced in a learning context. You might be thinking, “Okay, that sounds like common sense. What would even be the alternative?” Some forms of UDL advocacy are in fact (ironically) a perfect example of what happens when we don’t take varying motivations seriously enough. If you have been to a presentation about UDL, it is likely that you heard some version of “this is a neuroscience-based, inclusive framework that limits the need for accommodations and benefits all students.” I have personally seen a fair number of participants ask questions about this statement, wondering what exactly that neuroscience research says, why accommodations should be limited, and many other questions that never quite get addressed because of the necessary transition to application: the UDL guidelines, course design, selection of technologies, and so on.
I wish I had a pithier way to say this, but I think faculty developers need to make more space and provide more ways for participants to get excited about, interested in, and convinced by teaching ideas - in UDL parlance, the “why” of learning. Of course, this advice bumps up against the time constraints that every faculty developer is faced with. Often when I plan a session or an event, there are requests to use half or more of the time for “applications” and strategies (“What can I do in my classroom tomorrow?”). It is possible that this kind of format can work for people who are already bought-in, engaged, and know “why” they are there - that is to say, someone like me, for whom UDL “clicked” immediately. But I have seen it work pretty poorly for people who don’t have much incoming knowledge of disability, accessibility, and inclusive teaching methods. I have tried to challenge myself not to assume that UDL is “obvious,” to everyone, and that has led me to do more research into the history of UDL and related ideas to find more potential paths into the practice.
A pretty unpopular position that I take in my neurodiversity teaching is that introductory programs for educators on neurodiversity should first focus on context (history, terms and their definitions, key figures, and texts) rather than “applications.” As I mentioned above, everyone wants “practical strategies” for responding to neurodiversity in the classroom, and “best practices” for supporting neurodivergent students. I often say that neurodiversity is an umbrella concert encompassing a number of different experiences and conditions, which means that it is definitionally difficult for a specific teaching practice to be inclusive of “neurodivergent students” as a group. Rather, it is likely that access friction will arise when we aim to recognize neurodiversity in the classroom. But this is the type of nuanced conversation that is sometimes missed when we avoid the background, context, and initial engagement that is so important throughout the learning process.
In this spirit of recognizing how much context is often left out of faculty development programs, I wanted to offer my own contribution to the “why” of UDL, in the hopes that it might help someone out there, whether an instructor, faculty developer, instructional designer, or student. Next week, I’ll be sharing some expanded thoughts about the basic goal of UDL: designing learning that is accessible to the greatest number of students without “retrofits” and why that is important. I’ll be discussing what “retrofitting” is, and its downsides in the context of learning and in general. If you have ever thought to yourself “I keep hearing about how UDL can reduce the need for accommodations and I don’t understand why that is important or valuable! Aren’t accommodations a good thing?” then this post will interest you. My attempt will be not to absolutely convince every single reader or UDL skeptic, but simply to fill in some of the context that often gets skipped in favor of applications.
Let me know if you have questions or thoughts on this matter in the comments (if you are signed in to Substack) or contact me. I hope you have a good weekend!