Allison Posey is a curriculum and design specialist at CAST, a nonprofit education research and development organization that works to expand learning opportunities for all individuals through Universal Design for Learning (UDL). She is working on a book on how emotion affects learning and how to use brain science to design emotionally compatible learning environments, to be released by ASCD in late 2018.
Laura Varlas: How does UDL shift teaching, as Howard Gardner suggests, from asking, "How smart is this student?" to "How is the student smart?"
Allison Posey: CAST founder David Rose used to say, if I'm shooting hoops in my backyard, I might do really well. But put me in downtown Boston at TD Garden during halftime, and I might completely choke. The point is that learning is an interaction within in an environment; your ability is dependent on the context. UDL theory argues that flexible learning environments allow individuals to show their smartness in different ways, and the learning context no longer becomes a barrier to demonstrating mastery. We can open up the learning environment by giving students multiple ways to build background knowledge, show what they know, and engage with learning on an emotional level. UDL shifts the focus away from analyzing the student to analyzing the design of the learning environment.
LV: So, if curbs or stairs are barriers to universal design in architecture, what are the barriers to designing schools that all students can use?
AP: If students can't physically perceive the information they are learning, if they physically cannot show what they know, if they have no authentic reason for learning—these are what we consider the basic barriers to accessing an education. UDL carves ramps into the learning environment by giving students multiple ways of hearing, seeing, and perceiving concepts, multiple means for expressing knowledge, and a relevant connection to learning that recruits interest or makes students want to answer the question, "why?"
UDL is a framework for thinking that can be applied to any context. When I go to Starbucks, can I perceive the menu? Why am I interested in going in there, in the first place? Do I have options? Can I get a hot chocolate if I don't drink coffee? That sort of thing.
LV: UDL combines elements of multiple intelligences, differentiated instruction, Understanding by Design® framework, and Marzano's strategies research. It can seem overwhelming; where does a teacher start?
AP: You start by identifying your learning goal. It's like your GPS: once you know your goal or destination, then you can be flexible in which route you take to get there. Often, as educators, we have so many goals in our lesson. Backwards design aligns really nicely with UDL because it helps us clarify our goals and where we're heading. Make sure you have a goal, that it's really clear and learners are aware of it, and that it's relevant to them. Be able to state the goal and why students should care about it.
Then you can start thinking about "What options do I already have for representing information, acting on and expressing learning, and engagement? Are there barriers to any of these aspects of learning? Where do I get really tired teaching? Where do students ask the same questions twenty times?" That's where you start with UDL, and you can use UDL guidelines then to ask, "OK, is this a barrier to executive functioning? Let's look at what expert research there already is [because that's what makes up the UDL framework, existing research on how we learn] so what can I do that is research-based and aligns with supporting executive function, to help students with that barrier?" UDL provides a roadmap for educators to be intentional and proactive in how they design the learning environment.
LV: What shifts must schools make to allow teachers to adopt UDL?
AP: I think we have a lot of the materials available already to support UDL. What needs to shift are mindsets. We've spent so much time labeling students and putting the burden on them. We're removing students from the classroom for interventions. What a lot of UDL educators will do is take the list of all the IEP [individual education program] requirements for an individual student and make those options available to every student. It ends up benefitting learning for all, which is the ultimate goal.
Another barrier is feeling like we, as educators, have to tell students what they need and [in doing so, we are] owning the learning for them. As opposed to opening it up and saying, "Here's a high-level goal and here are two different ways we could get there. Go ahead and make a choice." That's totally different from saying, "You're a level 2 reader. You need to read this book, at this time, and you have this long to do it." That's disempowering for the learner, and often for the educator who's following a scripted curriculum. Instead of removing students, we're including students, in high-level, metacognitive thinking about their own learning—what works and what doesn't work.
LV: What's the biggest misconception about UDL?
AP: There are two big ones. One is that UDL is differentiated instruction (DI). A lot of teachers have been trained in DI, and UDL aligns nicely with it, but it's fundamentally different because UDL looks at the environment. An analogy we use at CAST is that UDL is like planning a buffet. You know there's going to be some variability in your eaters, so you have vegetarian options, gluten-free options, and dairy-free options available for everyone to use or not use. And depending on your goal, you're going to design a buffet one way, and that's going to be different whether you're hosting dinner for a hockey team or you're providing snacks for a faculty meeting. With DI, it's often that we're making the plate for each individual.
UDL makes it easier to differentiate because DI is baked into the design of the learning environment. As you teach your students, you help them navigate options. Maybe remind Johnny that he's lactose-intolerant, so stay away from the cheese. A lot of times, we are already doing all of these practices. UDL is just a way of thinking about them differently. UDL is not an initiative, it's a way of thinking.
The second biggest misconception is that UDL is only about options. Sometimes teachers will learn about UDL and then go and make all these options available. And then students hate it and teachers hate it, and that's because options have to be really goal-directed and purposeful to be worthwhile. I'll use another food analogy. If someone just says, "Where do you want to go to eat?", I'm thinking, "I don't know; wherever!" But, if you know you have a $20 budget and you only have an hour … all of a sudden, you can make a much more purposeful and appropriate decision about what to eat. UDL is the same way. Unless you have a clear goal, you don't really know how to design the options, and the kids don't know how to select them.
LV: CAST founder David Rose has said, "A large part of UDL is being able to read the emotional climate of the classroom." Can you talk more about that?
AP: In 2007, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang wrote the groundbreaking article, "We Feel, Therefore We Learn." (Last year, she followed it up with the book, Emotions, Learning, and the Brain: Exploring the Educational Implications of Affective Neuroscience.) She describes that, for patients who have experienced brain damage to the emotional regions of the brain, it's learning that ends up being compromised. Educators have intuited this for a long time, but brain science is supporting that, to even get to perception, or to get to action and expression and strategic thinking, we have to be engaged. And engagement is driven by the emotional climate of the classroom. To use a blunt physical analogy: if you are having a bad day, you will perceive an incline to be more steep than you would on a good day. Literally, emotion drives perception. That's really powerful.
When students are shut down emotionally, for whatever reason—could be a fight with a friend or they think the teacher doesn't like them—that really shuts them down for learning. Thinking back to the idea that learning is about the learner's interaction with the environment, how can we create some flexibility for the student who is emotionally shutdown? Maybe the learning goal for the day is for students to give an oral presentation about spiders. The teacher needs to consider, is the goal the verbal presentation or content knowledge? From there, he or she can determine options to help students move toward their goal. Maybe the student records their presentation or delivers it to a smaller group. Or, if content knowledge is the goal, maybe they can listen to the text via headphones in a quiet corner of the classroom. When we give students some space, and autonomy, in determining how they get to a learning goal, they are more engaged, and learning follows.
