Page 16 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

14 • Learning for All
The aim of UDL, then, is to provide access to the curriculum for all students, and to assist educators in designing products and environments to make them accessible to everyone, regardless of age, skills, or situation.
There is a growing recognition of the benefits of routinely applying UDL principles in education. Adopting “design thinking” as a mindset can provide educators with new tools and new approaches that often yield simple solutions to complex everyday challenges that they face in the classroom today, such as how to integrate technology and how best to engage students. Design thinking is a human-centred process that begins by understanding the needs and motivation of students, parents, and educators. It nurtures creativity, collabo- ration, empathy, and divergent thinking skills appropriate for twenty-first-century learning and teaching.
Design Thinking for Educators is a useful website co-hosted by Riverdale Country School, an independent school in New York City, and IDEO, an award-winning global design firm that provides real-life stories, resources, and training to help educators apply design thinking and methods to solve everyday challenges in the context of K–12 education. Information is available at www.designthinkingforeducators.com.
The core concepts of UDL can be summarized as follows:
Universality and equity. UDL is intended to ensure that teaching is tailored to draw on the strengths and meet the needs of all students. The “universal” in UDL does not imply that there is one optimal solution for everyone; rather, it reflects awareness of the unique nature of each learner
and the need to accommodate differences, creating learning experiences that suit individual learners and maximize their ability to progress (Rose & Meyer, 2002). This means planning learning opportunities that will extend the learning of all students, whatever their level of achievement, and help each one reach his or her potential.
Flexibility and inclusiveness. The planning of teaching and the time teachers allocate to students’ activities must be sufficiently flexible to provide real learning experiences for all students, regardless of their performance level. Students are accommodated through:
• a variety of teaching strategies and pedagogical materials that are relevant, engaging, and responsive to their learning needs; that make use of all the senses; and that vary in form, level of difficulty, and manner of presentation;
• a variety of technological media and tools;
• different types of assessment strategies, involving a range of media, formats, and response
options (Note: During assessments, students have access to the same supports that they
have during instruction unless those supports undermine the purpose of the assessment.);
• various ways of using space.
UDL encourages teachers to develop a class profile and
then plan, from the beginning, to provide means and pedagog- ical materials that are tailored to draw on the strengths and meet the needs of all students and not only those with special education needs.