Episode 139: Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Andy Psarianos

Hi, I'm Andy Psarianos.

Robin Potter

Hi, I'm Robin Potter.

Adam Gifford

Hi, I'm Adam Gifford.

Andy Psarianos

This is the School of School podcast.

Welcome to the School of School podcast.

Robin Potter

Welcome back to another episode of the School of School podcast. I'm here with the usual suspects, Andy and Adam. Hello both. How are you today?

Andy Psarianos

Hello, hello.

Adam Gifford

Hi, Robin. I'm really good, thank you.

Robin Potter

Yeah, I heard it's-

Oh, sorry... or Andy, go ahead.

Andy Psarianos

I'm buzzing. I'm buzzing. I'm buzzing.

Robin Potter

You're buzzing. You're buzzing.

Andy Psarianos

Yeah. I'm excited.

Robin Potter

I wonder why you're buzzing. Oh my goodness. I think it's because... I know why it is. It's because we have a special guest here today, Jen Dousett. Jen is the Director of Teaching, Learning and Innovation at Collingwood School in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Jen, hello. How are you?

Jen Dousett

Hi. I'm great. It's really exciting to be here to talk about teaching and learning. Thank you for having me.

Robin Potter

Well, we are so excited to have you on. And what we want to talk about... and I know nothing about from just looking at it, UDL. UDL, what could that possibly stand for? I think it means Universal Design for Learning, but other than that, I know nothing about it. I think we need your help here. Could you expand on what this concept is?

Jen Dousett

I can absolutely expand on it. You are right by the way. It is Universal Design for Learning. And it's a framework that schools put in place prior to even meeting their students. Sometimes people think Universal Design for Learning is differentiation, and differentiation is when you see your class and you respond to each individual student's needs. And Universal Design for Learning are the structures that you put in place in your planning to ensure that more students are able to show success. The goal of Universal Learning is that you have students that are expert learners, they're purposeful and motivated, they've got the resource and the knowledge they need and that they're goal oriented.

And in order to do that, there's actually some framework you need to put in place in your planning to make sure that happens. And so there's three categories of UDL. You have to have multiple means of engagement. How are students going to learn the material? You're going to teach in a variety of instructional methods and models. You're going to give students a lot of chance to show what they know and can do, and we can talk about choice a little bit today as well.

And then they have different ways of showing and expressing their learning. It's this framework that lays beneath that students probably don't even know is there. That's like a step earlier. It actually promotes an equitable learning environment for everyone before that differentiation even happens where you meet the needs of the individuals.

A lot of times... I listen to this great podcast called 99% Invisible... I don't know, with Roman Mars. It's a great podcast about design. And Universal Design for Learning is very similar to that where they talk about sidewalk cutouts. Well, they're handy for people if you have a stroller or a wheelchair. They're necessary actually for people in a wheelchair, but they're also effective and useful for a lot of other people. And that's sort of what Universal Design for Learning is. It's when you put something in place that is essential for some of the kids in your class, but benefits everyone else as well.

Andy Psarianos

Just some of the people... We don't actually know who listens to this podcast, because I imagine some of the people might not even be teachers. I suppose if I were to try to bring it back to the lesson planning element of it. Obviously before a teacher performs a lesson, you want them to think about what they're going to do. You don't want them just walking in cold. And generally, my simplified version of the four questions they need to ask themselves are... just to summarise what you said is, "What are they going to learn? What am I hoping that they learn?" And hopefully whoever's teaching appreciates this, that's a different question than, "How am I going to..." or, "What am I going to teach?" Because what you teach and what they learn are not always co-related. They should be, but they're not always.

And the next question is, "How am I going to know? How am I going to know when they've learned it?" Because what's your assessment criteria? And that might look different for different people. How do you know if someone's actually learned what you need them to learn?

And then the next two questions are the ones I think that are really important in the context of what you're talking about, is "What am I going to do if they don't get it?" If I haven't succeeded in making sure that they learn it what am I going to do? You need to know what you can do, what are your strategies.

And the last one is, "What am I going to do if they already know it?" Because there's a certain amount of children that are going to come into class and they're like, "Okay, we're doing this today." And they're like, "Well, we've already done that. I know this." Those are the four kinds of things that teachers need to think about. In this UDL, this Universal Design for Learning, how does that address those things?

Jen Dousett

It does and it doesn't for certain things. When you talk about... I love this line, which is, "It's not about what you teach, it's about what they learn." This idea of using... one of the really big pieces of when you're assessing students is you're actually assessing yourself. Because I think in the olden days, you would give a test and you would be like, "Oh my gosh, they all failed. Well, I guess they don't know it." Well now we would actually say, "Whoa, I guess I did something wrong there as a teacher because my students didn't show their understanding. I clearly need to readjust my instruction and teach that again." I think if you keep what you want them to learn at the centre of every conversation as you said, I think you're winning. And then you have to go and say, "Well, if this is what I want them to learn, what are the ways they can show that?"

In the past, I just give an example, it probably was a test or an essay or some sort of presentation. And now we would actually go through and say, "Well, what steps in the process do I need to make sure that I check in with students? How am I going to let them check in?" And so we say this a lot at Collingwood, but we have firm learning targets and flexible means, and this is where UDL comes in. We can't give students a choice on everything because there are skills they have to learn. Sometimes you actually have to write something, sometimes you actually do have to present something. But if we can give them a choice on how they show their understanding of something and we can remove the anxiety piece from that assessment... "If I have test anxiety, I'm not going to perform as well on a test as I might if I can explain it to you in person. If I don't like presenting, then I still have to practise that presentation skill and I have to be assessed on the presentation skill, but maybe not with that type of content."

It's making all those decisions of, "Where can choice be offered for students to show what they know and can do," and "Where can it not be offered?" Because if students chose all the time, they'd be like, "I'll present everything." And they wouldn't be building their writing skills and they wouldn't be building those other communication skills.

Adam Gifford

Looking at this, I think this is really difficult. As a teacher, I think I would find this really tough, genuinely. Because if someone said to me, "You're about to do a lesson on fractions..." whatever, it doesn't matter. And I need to do all of this stuff, and I've got to give them a chance to do all of this, and I've got to engage them in multiple ways and all that sort of thing, I'd find that really challenging. Did you find that as a school and across departments that you almost had sub-models that you could then go, "Right, well, these are the different things that you could do." In terms of engagement, these are the options that you could use time and time again. Did that go hand in hand with it? Or is that developed as it's gone along or...

Jen Dousett

Yes.

Adam Gifford

Does that make sense?

Jen Dousett

Yeah, it does make sense. A couple things, one thing we do is... We've been doing a lot of other improvements and innovations at Collingwood so this is just being worked on for those really innovative teachers. And we always would say, "Start small." What's a unit you've done or even a lesson you've done that you think, "Okay, I could actually apply this to that lesson or unit." And you can start there. We aren't having teachers... Some teachers do this for everything right now because that's just a lot of change. We've got longer classes, we've got other things that teachers are really working on. But we also have the benefit of having an inclusive ed department at Collingwood where we have experts in Universal Design for Learning that can come in and they can observe a lesson, they can talk to a teacher about their planning and say, "Here are the different ways you could have students show what they know and can do in this way. Would you like to try these two?"

One thing that's interesting feedback from students is if you don't do it well, it actually causes them more stress. Sometimes we'll say like, "Oh, you can have a portfolio project and it can have one of these many things." And they're like, "This is too overwhelming. This is too much information. I don't know what you expect from me." And so that's why we're being really slow and purposeful with it. Don't just go, "You can do a presentation, a video, a podcast, a this..." Because then the students are like, "I don't know how to show all this." We've been really starting small. For some people it's just one activity and for some people it's just one unit. And it seems to be working quite well. And then people can ask for help as needed because we do have a team of teachers as well.

Adam Gifford

I just think that's really important. I just think that their understanding that, that that is part of the process and that it takes time, I think is... Yeah, it's really important. That's really encouraging.

Robin Potter

And you mentioned, Jen, you have experts in Universal Design and Learning. How does one become an expert? Are there courses for this? Is it something that's just, I don't know, learned over different experiences? How do you become an expert in UDL since this is even a concept I don't even... I have never heard of it before.

Jen Dousett

Well, you've probably never heard of it because we would've originally siloed this into special education. If you were trained as a special education teacher, or you've worked in... we now call it inclusive ed... but if you've worked in that department before, this is what you're trained in. You're trained in the ability to reach students who in the past didn't reach through the traditional means of teacher talking to students and students responding. They would go for support. And the support methods used to help those learners would be around this framework. And now the frameworks coming into all classes because what we've realised that we didn't know is neurodiverse learners are all around us. Just because you don't qualify for an IEP doesn't mean you don't learn differently or you have a different way of approaching things, or you need the opportunity to communicate your learning in a different way.

And so that's slowly something that we're taking away from being a department you go to, to, "Well, let's see what helps all learners. Let's give everyone support. If you don't need the support, you don't take the support. But if you do need it becomes essential for you to show your learning." This would've previously been... There's a lot of great professional learning on this now, and it's now becoming even more popular because they're doing it... You can have universal design for equity and so to make sure you're meeting learners of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, that you're bringing all perspectives into the classroom. Universal Design is just growing and growing as it's coming out of this siloed area and more into every classroom.

Andy Psarianos

And also, I think a lot of this is a reflection also of an understanding that what works for those who are struggling a little bit doesn't just work for those who are struggling a little bit. It actually works for everybody. In mathematics, for example, which is obviously what I know the most about, is if you look at the work of Jerome Bruner, as an active, iconic, symbolic, or buzzword for it nowadays, is a Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract. The idea that when you introduce a mathematical concept, you first introduce it in some kind of concrete form so that children can actually concretize the idea. They can play with the idea and feel it a little bit, sort of what Zoltan Dienes talked about, the play stage of learning. Where you can play with an idea in a concrete fashion before you actually start introducing the language and the jargon. It just helps to solidify the idea.

And that is absolutely necessary for those who are struggling. And then of course, you want to move to the abstraction. You want to get to the abstraction. That's where you want to get to. Now that's fundamental. If you don't do that with those who are struggling, they will never get it. But if you do it with those who are advanced, their depth of understanding, just like... it's huge. Then you're getting into this idea of mastery, this idea of... it's not a question of accelerating children who are showing more promise, let's say, but really focusing on the depth of understanding so that you can...

And then now you're going into Joe Buller's work. It's like saying this low floor high ceiling concept. You need an activity or a lesson that everyone can succeed at one level, but that it's crafted in such a way that the most advanced learners may be thinking about it at a completely different level than those who are maybe struggling with a concept. It makes teaching a lot more difficult in the sense that you got to be a lot more selective about the examples that you use, and you need to understand how to teach a very varied classroom. But if you do it, the payoffs are massive.

Jen Dousett

Agree. And our math department is very good at low floor high ceiling problems. They engaged in that work a few years ago. And they're also really good at the leadership piece. You're a student who... you're understanding at a different level, well, how do you go over to this other group and support them with your understanding so all students feel engaged in the classroom. And students really learn from their peers as well. It's working out quite nicely.

But I think the point that you made as well, which is, not everybody needs it, but they benefit from it. I was showing a video about nothing. It was like a video for the first five like, "Come join this club." And I started playing it and the class said, "Can you pause it?" I paused it and they said, "Can you put the subtitles on?" And I was like, "Okay, sure." Because it was just some... a student had recorded it. And I thought, "Isn't that so interesting that..." They could all hear it? It was really loud. But they wanted to look at the subtitles. And this was just a class of grade nines that that's something that they know helps their understanding of it. They're reading along and watching. And it's the simplest thing, and I probably should have done it from the start.

Adam Gifford

But I think... jumping on one of the things that's being said. What's being described happens when someone doesn't understand something, as a teacher... I know traditionally, what do most teachers do? You just repeat the same thing, maybe a little bit louder, maybe you slow your voice down, something, but effectively you just do the same thing until you just don't know what to do. But what it forces us to do in education, of course, is to think, "Right, well, I've got to come at it from a different angle," if we're being professional about it and not just giving up. "I've got to come at it from a different angle," which makes us think about the concept more deeply. But of course, that same thing that we might think is quite a basic level for someone else might be well beyond the reach of somewhere. Because it is just an idea.

The idea itself doesn't change, it's just whoever's accessing it changes. And I think that's the thing, I think that it's probably been staring us in the face for a long, long time, is that when do we really have to think about understanding an idea or really have to think about how I can support someone's learning of an idea? We tend to do that when people are stuck. And so then there's that immediate relationship with, "Oh, this is for struggling learners." And of course, it's such nonsense, isn't it? Because that makes us think as educators harder than anything else.

If people are just doing stuff, our jobs are dawdle. If they're just doing it and we've kind of got it right, and it's that Goldilocks, all is good. But that same idea is the same idea whether it's someone who's struggling with it, whether someone's okay... It's the same idea. And it is really interesting that we're still, I think in education, a bit trying to throw off those shackles of, "This is an approach for when people struggle," as opposed to, "No, this is the level of thinking that we need to give these ideas before we teach them so we can understand that better to start with. And I'm also equipped better." It's just that same stuff, but we have to see it or reframe it slightly differently, which is interesting.

Andy Psarianos

Also an understanding of what does really, truly understanding something look like. Because it's easy to get caught up on... And I'm going to refer back to mathematics, because it is an obvious one. If someone can generate the correct answer, often we just tick the box and say, "This person understands, they're functional, they've got it." It was a real eyeopener for me... I know the research says this, but it was a real eyeopener for me when I was working with my study group that had... One of the children that I was working with was like... Parents were constantly spending money on Kuma. And she was like a human calculator. She could calculate anything. And at the point where I said, "Okay, she generated the correct answer almost instantaneously on the somewhat relatively complex arithmetic based problem. I said, "Okay, well can you draw a diagram that illustrates this?" She couldn't do it. It took a lot for her to do it.

And you see, in that sense, that's kind of what you need to understand as a teacher, is that the success criteria is not always obvious. What does it truly mean to be advanced? Because what the danger is with these pupils is that of course, they skim the surface all the way through. They get accelerated. And of course, when it does get to a point... And if you get into university level mathematics, that's not going to carry you through. And then they hit that wall. And then they just collapse.

And it's time and time again you see those students who get accelerated all the way through, and when it does get really, really hard, they just fall over. Because they don't have those skills to dig in deep and say, "Okay, now I'm going to have to really work to find the answer." They don't see it as that. Use Rosie Ross's... She said to see that math is actually a creative thing it's not a speedy thing. And that's a big thing. The whole culture of assessing and success criteria for teachers and all that needs to change really to be successful at this kind of thing.

Adam Gifford

But I think in the past... and this is just a general statement, but I've been in education a while... is that I think that we made it easier on ourselves by saying things that totally supported what you've just said in a bad way, that it doesn't matter how they get the answer, as long as they get the answer. Well, that's utter nonsense. Because if you've got children furiously counting on their fingers or writing a big thing down, when you say, I don't know, "What's the difference between 2,001 and 1,999?" They're busy writing it all down and whatnot and not just knowing, just seeing it's two. That sort of stuff.

But I think also, I think that there was an accepted attrition rate is that we just accepted that there was always going to be some children in the class who just didn't get it. How easy is that, right? We could just say, "It doesn't matter how they get it, as long as they get it," read into that, "It doesn't really matter as long as they pass my year and my attainment scores look good, and then my colleagues, they can pick up the slack or whatever afterwards." That there is an attrition rate, so it doesn't matter because you always get that.

And all of these things fed into that. There was no onus on looking to support that. Now, good teachers have always done that. They have looked for it in those, but I think as a general culture, I think that that was pretty persuasive. And thank God for all of those children now, there's more emphasis on doing your job properly. And that's right and proper and we have to think about it and what it does do, especially if you've been in education a while, is you realise that, "Yeah, you have to work hard to do it." And that's reasonable, and that's right. Anyway.

Andy Psarianos

No, yeah, absolutely. And the cost of not doing it is immense. It's immense for those individuals.

Adam Gifford

It's not fair. It's wrong.

Andy Psarianos

That's right.

Adam Gifford

It's all of those things. But yeah, it's massive.

Robin Potter

And so are other schools doing this? Are they calling it UDL?

Jen Dousett

Yeah, there's schools doing it. It's a big movement in the states right now. There's also the big... Based on what Andy and Adam were just talking about, we used to teach kids to do school well. Now we want to teach them to learn. That's the difference that we used to go, "You're good at doing school, you can get these math questions, and if you didn't get them, maybe you weren't as good at doing school and we focus on the learning."

But yes, there's a really great book that just came out recently, and I've given it to some parents as well to say, "Here's what we're trying to do to support you through this." And yeah, there's frameworks... It's really taking off now that it's being unsiloed from that special ed department. That would be the only thing right now holding people back is just a mindset shift of, "Oh, this is for..." As you both said, this is just for these kids. No actually it's a framework and it's not a significant amount of change it's just...

Even things like your classroom routines, recognising that really clear routines, how you start the class, how you close the class, how you engage, how you transition through activities. For some students at the high school level, that's a difference maker on how they do in the class because it's unpredictable. They don't know what's going on. There's that anxiety at the high school level. Well, if you can firm those up in your classroom, that's a UDL framework practise, that's actually just going to benefit everyone. Even the kids who don't even care about frameworks or they don't care what's coming next. But that sense of predictability and calmness, and even though the learning's going to be hard, the space I'm in is really safe and I know is supportive. That's a huge part of Universal Design for Learning as well.

It's all these underlying elements that good teachers... I think Adam said it. Good teachers always have done, how do we bring that to the forefront to say, "Hey, this isn't just for a few kids this is actually really good for all of our students."

Adam Gifford

Jen, what was the name of the book?

Jen Dousett

I have it right here. It's called Seen, Heard, and Valued: Universal Design for Learning and Beyond by Lee Ann... I think it's Jung. It might be Young. J-U-N-G. It's a really nice... It uses Hattie's research and it talks about each thing you can do and the effect it would have on learning. It's a really nice read.

Andy Psarianos

Thank you for joining us on the School of School podcast.