Dr. Seanna Takacs; Junsong Zhang; Helen Lee; Lynn Truong; and David Smulders
It is important to acknowledge that case studies are important to learn how to mobilize UDL principles by knowing what we are looking for in a situation. They help us understand how the theory we are learning shows up in real life and helps us learn to generalise our knowledge into what we might expect to see in the classroom.
Universal Design for Learning is about taking a stance of curiosity about the situation or problem, analysing the problem into pieces, parsing out the meaning, and translating it into action or intervention. We have to acknowledge and understand our own sense of meaning and our own biases. When we are confronted by an unexpected teaching problem or learning that doesn’t proceed along the course we expected, UDL provides us some heuristic or procedure that we can follow to figure out what to do next.
In the exercises on UDL that follow, an important piece of the puzzle will be the learning disposition you take even before you start looking at the problem. In the same way as you thought about your ideal student, accounted for jaggedness, and developed a user-centred approach. When you are reading the case studies, try to:
- Think about how you feel and how you would approach the case studies
- Jot down some of these ideas as you’re reading through and connect them to what you’re already doing.
This process will help you tune into the beliefs you hold about your skills and abilities as you are about to embark on learning about UDL.