Equity & UDL

The National Center for Learning Disabilities highlights that UDL can be a central organizing framework to amplify the inherent benefits of personalized learning while addressing the strategy’s inherent limitations for students with disabilities. 

“Policy, particularly federal policy, has an enormous influence on the education of students with disabilities and has been a major factor in improving the educational status of these students” (Hehir). 

“The typical overreliance on printed text for presenting content and evaluating students clearly, and differentially, raises barriers to achievement for some students while privileging others. Such an environmental view fosters solutions that address the limitations of the learning environment rather than the limitations of the student, while making the student less of a problem, and more a part of diversity within the course. The advantage of such universal solutions is that, as with such approaches in built environments, they are likely to be useful for many individuals; built once, applied many times” (Rose, Harbour, Johnston, Daley, and Abarbanell).

I can integrate equity and UDL into my teaching by not seeing student limitations as the student’s problem, but rather as a problem with the curriculum or teaching style. This will help my students because I will try to implement various forms of teaching and diverse forms of media in order to help all the different students. 

My goals for equity and UDL are to simply make sure all my students get a fair shot. Whether this means that I spend more time with certain students, change up my lesson plans, or foster a safe learning environment, that is fine by me. This shapes my vision for empowered learning for my students by allowing me to understand and see the worth of each individual student and their individual capabilities. 

References 

Hehir, T. (2005). New directions in special education: Eliminating ableism in policy and practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. 

Rose, Harbour, Johnston, Daley, and Abarbanell. Universal Design for Learning in Postsecondary Education: Reflections on Principles and their Application. Wakefield, MA: National Center on UDL.