Written by Dr. Kari Muente

It is a challenging time to be a teacher. As our WELS classrooms are becoming more academically, culturally, and linguistically diverse, tension is rising between curriculum and instruction. Federal and state mandates are requiring students to pass tests, which leads to a more fact-based curriculum, while 21st-century learning encourages the engagement of students in more critical thinking skills.

As our classrooms become more diverse, students are challenging the traditional instructional design framework with their various backgrounds, cultures, and learning abilities. Diversity of learners, or the exceptional learners, require teachers to engage in more inclusive instruction and practices. Teachers struggle and even feel inadequately equipped in designing and delivering inclusive instruction to engage and train all their students to become expert learners (De La Paz, 2005; Minarik & Lintner, 2016). Inclusive instructional practices require not only close teacher involvement but instructional support for all learners.

Reactionary Differentiation
The challenging, inclusive classroom is leading teachers to design a learning environment and instruction around a reactionary differentiation approach to learning (Tomlinson, 1999). Differentiation decisions focus on individualizing content, product, and process to meet a student’s specific learning needs as he/she struggles within the learning environment. It’s a process that takes place after the curriculum and instructional decisions are made. Thus, academic decisions center on the average, middle-of-the-bell-curve students, neglecting the exceptional learners. Also, reactionary instructional design molds to more traditional teaching decisions focused on lecturing, textbooks, worksheets, and memorization of facts, with little to no inclusive lesson modification to address all the students’ needs.

The reactionary differentiation approach can be inflexible in providing genuine opportunities for building expert learners, especially for exceptional students (De La Paz, 2005; Robinson & Meyer, 2012). Subsequently, this has led many students to view core curriculum as boring, non-relevant, or useless for their future life experiences.

Successful inclusive practices desire a more proactive approach toward academic decisions. Accomplishing proactive instruction requires classroom teachers to shift their teaching mindset toward the whole curriculum and all the learners. This is a difficult task for many teachers. After all, we have the instructional belief that if it is not broke, why fix it? However, our academic decision-making is broken. Average students no longer make up our classroom. Lutheran school classrooms are more academically and culturally diverse. Teachers who have the mindset that engaging exceptional learners separate from most of our average students, believing someone else will be teaching the exceptional learners, needs to be reevaluated (Grant & Perez, 2018). One way to help move our teaching mindset to more inclusive practices is to engage in the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework (Rose & Meyer, 2002; CAST, 2019). UDL provides a fundamental instructional framework for making the teaching shift to proactive, inclusive instruction.

Universal Design for Learning
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL), initially designed to provide more support for students with significant learning needs (Meyer & Rose, 2006), is based on brain research centered on creating a learning environment that allows every student to become an expert learner. The UDL principles inform an inclusive instructional framework shift to guide a teacher to recognize potential curriculum barriers that may hinder a student’s learning development. Curriculum barriers are situations and structures that prohibit involvement, learning, and expression, leading students to be separated, physically or academically, from the classroom, lesson, or overall learning environment (Rose & Meyer, 2002). Curriculum barriers can include (but are not limited to) reading levels, background knowledge development, cognitive levels, or organizational skill sets. To help lessen these barriers, classroom teachers must anticipate challenges in delivering the curriculum, which may lead students to confusion, limited comprehension, or failure in grasping the information (Minarik & Lintner, 2016). The UDL principles promote a proactive, inclusive instructional framework, designed to recognize potential curriculum barriers before students enter the learning environment.

UDL principles organize curriculum decisions around three broad learning processes:

• Multiple Means of Representation of information to students – the what of learning
  • In this principle, a teacher provides students access to the ideas, concepts, and themes presented within the historical information, while at the same time providing support for decoding that information to ensure the what of learning.
  • Example: providing options for comprehension through multiple media sources, such as text-to-speech apps or closed captions.
•  Multiple Means for Engagement of students – the why of learning
  • In this principle, students recognize themselves as learners and know what it means to be self-determined, thus breaking down the why of learning and the meaning of becoming an expert learner.
  • Example: optimizing individual choice and autonomy by allowing students to participate in the design of the classroom activities or academic tasks while involving the learner in setting his/her own academic and behavioral goals.
•  Multiple Means of Action and Expression by students – the how of learning
  • In this principle, students demonstrate their knowledge and match that demonstration through a variety of options and opportunities. The how of learning allows students to show what they know and move toward becoming strategic and goal-directed learners.
  • Example: providing options for executive functions through supporting planning and strategy development; options include modeling, mentoring, or coaching students by scaffolding various learning strategies.

The UDL principles embrace inclusive instruction and curriculum development that works for everyone—not a single, one-size-fits-all solution, but a flexible approach that can be adjusted and customized to scaffold and support learning (Meyer, Rose & Gordon, 2014). Engaging the UDL principles requires an inclusive instructional mind shift, from the traditional teacher-centered, fact-based approach to a more student-centered learning approach. UDL provides a proactive academic decision-making pathway that emphasizes the opportunity for all students to become expert learners.

Conclusion
The tension between curriculum and instruction is a 21st-century reality. Balancing this tension while meeting the needs of a diverse group of learners is more of a reality. The UDL framework provides the means to overcome these tensions by considering multiple ways to look at core curriculum and removing barriers in our instructional design. Classroom teachers need to take an honest look at how they teach, from their influences on their curriculum decisions to their perspectives on how students learn. For UDL to work, classroom teachers need to see the challenges in their curriculum design and be willing to shift their teaching towards delivering inclusive instruction to engage all their students in the learning process.

MLC offers a graduate-level course, Teaching Social Studies in an Inclusive Classroom (EDU5111), that addresses curriculum barriers, inclusive instructional design, and how to make the lesson plan shift towards implementing UDL in our classrooms. Although the course will look specifically at the social studies curriculum, the overall course objectives can apply to any core curriculum. If you are interested in learning more about UDL and inclusive practices, please consider signing up for the course or contacting MLC for more information.

Dr. Kari A. Muente (MLC ’99) is a professor of social studies education at MLC. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Missouri in Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum in Social Studies Education with an emphasis on special education, UDL, and inclusive practices. Dr. Muente teaches several social science general education courses and Teaching Social Studies in the Middle and Secondary Classroom.

References
Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) (2019). Retrieved from cast.org

De La Paz, S. (2005). “Effects of historical reasoning instruction and writing strategy mastery in culturally and academically diverse middle school classrooms.” Journal of Educational Psychology. 97(2), 139-156

Grant, K. & Perez, L. (2018). Dive into UDL: Immersive practices to develop expert learners. Portland, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (2006).

Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordon, D. (2014). Universal Design for Learning: Theory and practice. Wakefield, MA: CAST.

Minarik, D. & Lintner, T. (2014). Social Studies & the Exceptional Learner. NCSS.

Rose D. & Meyer, A. (2002). Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design of Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Tomlinson, C.A. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, INC.