How Universal is Universal Design?

• In Event: The inclusive work of schools and classrooms

Proposal

The concept of Universal Design for Learning evolved from the field of architecture, where the term “Universal Design” was first coined by architect Ron Mace. The term broadly referred to the design of accessible design of buildings and homes, and complementary principles began to be adapted for classrooms in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, the US Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST) examined diversity in the classroom and posited that Universal Design for Learning (UDL) occurred when teachers developed lessons with multiple means of representation (how learning materials were shared), multiple means of response (how students demonstrated knowledge or mastery), and multiple means of engagement (how students actively participated and created learning in classrooms) (Rose & Meyer, 2002).

UDL has been cited as an important educational strategy for promoting inclusive education. Edyburn (2010), for example, described how students considered “disabled” were better able to participate and achieve when UDL was practiced by teachers. Further, Johnstone and Thurlow (2012) highlighted the various facets of literacy and how accessibility provisions in classrooms could promote inclusive literacy. Despite widespread acceptance of UDL, however, challenges have existed for education systems and teachers who lacked access to technologies that could facilitate easy adaptation of materials. To address this gap, UNICEF commissioned a webinar and technical booklet in 2014 that provided an overview of UDL approaches for low- and middle-income (LMI) countries (Johnstone, 2014). In 2018, USAID followed wirh a UDL toolkit specifically focused on promoting literacy through UDL in LMI countries (Hayes, 2018).

This Applied Research formal presentation reports on findings from case studies in Armenia related to UDL. In December of 2014, Armenia passed legislation requiring that all students attend inclusive schools. Following legislation, ministerial units, donors, teacher training institutions, and civil society organizations began supporting teachers in the use of inclusive pedagogies. UDL in particular was a strategy that had appeal and provided teachers with instant strategies that could be used in classrooms.

In this presentation we report on case studies of teacher application of UDL in an inclusive Yerevan school. Specifically, we report on how “Ofelia” – a history teacher with students with special educational needs (SEN) in her classroom, designed peer-assisted learning, made use of nonverbal response formats, and enhanced visual learning opportunities for all of her students. The changes were partially aimed at students with SEN, but had a positive impact on the general learning and environment of her classroom.

Through these findings we argue that UDL may have universal components (i.e., a focus on accessibility and design that incorporates multiple modalities), but that the implementation of UDL is necessarily localized to national context, local resource availability, and classroom demographics. UDL research, then, may benefit from additional case examples in highly localized contexts to provide a shared database of what can be done while acknowledging the non-universal considerations of the specific contexts in which teachers work.

Authors

• Christopher Johnstone, University of Minnesota

• Armenuhi Avagyan, Associate professor at Armenian State Pedagogical University