November/December 2005
Since the Harvard Education Letter
first reported on Universal Design
for Learning (UDL) nearly four years ago (see “Curriculum
Access in the Digital Age,” January/February 2002), this
approach to teaching, learning, and assessment has gained currency
in education policy and practice across the United States as a means
of improving education for all learners, including those with disabilities.
For example, the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act requires that “state and
districtwide tests adhere to ‘universal design principles’
to the extent feasible.” Meanwhile, states such as Kentucky,
Louisiana, Ohio, Maryland, and New York are providing training and
support to school personnel to apply UDL to curriculum development,
technology planning, and classroom practice. In one pilot program,
the state of Kentucky is supporting UDL implementation in 100 middle
schools with professional training, digital textbooks and other
accessible curricular materials, and technology assistance.
While many educators may be familiar with
UDL, misconceptions about it persist, says Grace Meo, director of
professional development programs and outreach services at the Center
for Applied Special Technology (CAST), which originated the
concept. Here, Meo identifies and responds to some common questions
raised by teachers and administrators participat-ing in CAST’s
professional development program.
Is UDL a software program or a prepackaged
curriculum? Is it something my school has to buy?
UDL
is an approach to classroom planning and practice, not a shrink-wrapped
package. It is a way of thinking about students, teaching, and curriculum—a
way of recognizing the diversity of learners, reducing barriers
to learning, and addressing students’ different needs right
from the start. In any class, students will represent a heterogeneous
mix of abilities, backgrounds, and learning styles. Some may have
specific learning, physical, or sensory disabilities. They’ll
probably have diverse reading abilities. In universally designed
classrooms, teachers aim to give all students access to the same
high-quality content and to ensure that they meet similar learning
goals. But they use a variety of techniques and strategies to do
so, and provide students with choices in how to achieve those learning
goals.
What kinds of teaching strategies are
used in a UDL classroom?
The key to a UDL classroom is maximizing options
for both students and teachers in order to enable students to learn
in the most effective way. So teachers don’t limit their presentations
to lectures and printed materials, since these will not engage all
students or be accessible to all. They might use concept maps or
graphics to enhance and illustrate concepts. Students might be encouraged
to use alternate means for note-taking, such as audio recordings,
depending on what works best for them. Students can also demonstrate
what they know in multiple ways—for some, that means creating
a diorama or writing a story. A UDL classroom might have cooperative
groups where students take on different roles, share resources,
and support each other’s learning. These are just a few examples.
It sounds like UDL is just good teaching.
What’s the difference?
Good teachers do many of these things no matter
what, so in that sense UDL in practice looks like good teaching
at its best. But UDL provides a framework for being explicit about
what good teaching is. It helps teachers recognize the diversity
of their classrooms—because even those that might appear to
be homogeneous are not. It helps them be explicit about the goals
of the lessons and offer choices and alternatives for students to
reach those goals.
In your professional development courses,
there is a big emphasis on computer-supported learning in the UDL
class-room. Does UDL require computers?
New technologies are an important tool for effective
UDL implementation because of the incredible flexibility they give
teachers in presenting and accessing material. This does not mean
that the principles of UDL—to provide students with multiple
representations of information, multiple ways to approach and engage
in learning tasks, and multiple means to express themselves—cannot
be applied in a classroom without technology. They can. What technology
promises is the ability to offer customized, individualized curriculum
in ways that can be taken to scale. Even in a class of 20, providing
individualized learning support is a daunting task.
The UDL-based technology solutions we are exploring
at CAST incorporate research-proven teaching methods in digital
learning environments. They give students both physical and cognitive
access to the curriculum. Students with low vision, for example,
can physically access the curriculum through digital text-to-speech,
refreshable Braille, and other innovations. A student with cerebral
palsy can use a chin switch and other tools to write a response
to a text, making appropriate assess-ments possible. For other students,
however, the exclusive use of print may present a cognitive barrier,
not a physical one. For example, a student with a learning disability
may be able to see the text clearly, but because of his disability
may struggle to identify the main points in a text and may need
prompts and model answers to scaffold his understanding. He may
be easily distracted if he has to leave his seat to access background
knowledge and vocabulary help—something a technology tool
can offer on the spot. Highlighting and underlining tools can also
help that student stay on track and digest the text. So the media
and materials we choose make a huge difference.
Can you give an example of the kinds
of technologies that work for a wide range of students?
The digital Thinking
Readers are full-text computerized editions of middle school
novels—books like The Giver and Tuck Everlasting—that
provide built-in supports based on reciprocal teaching, which two
decades of research has shown to be an effective approach to reading
comprehension instruction. The Thinking Reader novels include reading-strategy
prompts, model answers, background knowledge, and vocabulary support.
All of these can be accessed and responded to in multiple ways,
depending on what students need. For example, students with a learning
disability such as dyslexia may benefit from text-to-speech or synchronized
highlighting features that can help the reader track words on a
page and associ-ate the way a word looks with the way it sounds.
Those same features can also help students who do not have learning
disabilities but who may need extra support—English-language
learners, for example—and the text-to-speech function will
benefit students with low vision.
The programs capture all kinds of just-in-time
data on each student to help teachers monitor their progress, identify
what students are learning, and adjust instruction to meet each
student’s needs. These are powerful supports for teachers
and students that technology makes possible in a busy classroom
setting.
Some children in my classroom use assistive
technologies, like Braille. Is UDL intended to replace these kinds
of as-sistive technologies?
Teachers tend to confuse the two. UDL is compatible
with assistive technology, not in competition with it. There will
always be a need for assistive technology. In fact, Universal Design
for Learning grew out of CAST’s research and development of
assistive technologies. We realized at one point that assistive
technology placed an emphasis on fixing the student—retrofitting
the child to accommodate inaccessible curriculum. With UDL we shifted
our focus to fixing the curriculum.
We have a lot of students who are not
identified as special needs—some who are high achievers and
others who struggle to learn. What does UDL offer them?
One of the things UDL points out is that we all
have special needs, talents, strengths. We all struggle to learn
in some ways. There is enormous diversity among us in spite of the
fact that some individuals have a label attached to them.
In our trainings, teachers do an exercise in
which they brainstorm how they would learn to cook an Indian meal.
Suddenly you have people demonstrating widely different styles,
preferences, needs. Some say, “Don’t make me read the
directions. I want to experiment.” Others want an exact recipe
to follow. The “Aha!” moment comes as they realize that
we all are different—our students, too. Some of us work best
in digital environments and need the supports they have, whereas
others do fine with “old-fashioned” texts.
Because of the nature of our educational system,
UDL tends to be placed in the special education category. But in
fact, UDL is really a merging of general education and special education,
a sharing of responsibility, resources, and ownership. It gets away
from the “their kids/our kids” divide between general
ed and special ed.
How does UDL apply to assessment?
Test results often say as much about the medium
of the test—usually paper and pencil—and its limitations
as they do about what students really know. If the point is to assess
skill learning in deeper, more meaningful ways, then students should
have various means of expressing what they learn. This might mean
having the option of writing or speaking final reports, creating
an animation or video, or crafting a story in graphic form. Again,
technology makes it easier for a teacher to provide every student
with multiple options for expression. In Thinking Reader, students
can accumulate a whole portfolio of responses to the embedded strategy
prompts and questions, journal entries, audio-recorded reactions
to the text, and more. This gives a teacher a lot to work with.
On a broader scale, CAST is conducting very promising
research on universally designed large-scale assessments. For example,
one project looks at giving students with learning disabilities
access to computer-based tests that, again, let us fo-cus on finding
out what content students have actually learned rather than on whether
they can work in a cumbersome medium—printed text.
For Further Information
Center for Applied Special Technology,
40 Harvard Mills Square, Suite 3, Wakefield, MA 01880-3233; tel:
781-245-2212. www.cast.org
A. Meyer and D.H. Rose. Learning to Read in the
Computer Age. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books, 1998.
D.H. Rose and A. Meyer. Teaching Every Student
in the Digital Age. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2002.
D.H. Rose, A. Meyer, and C. Hitchcock.
The
Universally Designed Classroom: Accessible Curriculum and Digital
Technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2005.
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