Today’s post
features a guest blogger, Deborah
P. Waber, Ph.D., Director of the Learning Disabilities Program at Boston
Children’s Hospital and Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Waber wrote the following explanation of
Universal Design for
Learning (UDL) in response to a post on the International
Mail List for Pediatric Neuropsychology questioning the usefulness of UDL, the
role of legislation
that supports UDL, and whether UDL can be supported by brain imaging
studies. This response was posted jointly by Dr. Waber and Dr. Paul Yellin, who
both serve on the Board of Directors of CAST.
I
am so glad that you brought UDL to the attention of this listserv. So few of us
are familiar with it, yet it can be hugely beneficial to the children we serve
as pediatric neuropsychologists.
UDL
(Universal Design for Learning) provides a comprehensive framework for education of diverse learners of all ages. It
is not a specific “intervention” like Orton-Gillingham, but a practical tool to
enable diverse learners to access curriculum and demonstrate knowledge and
skills.
UDL
is a variation on the “universal design” concept in architecture, which
provides access to people with disabilities who would otherwise be unable to have physical access. Here is an analogy that you may find helpful: If a child has a disability
that impairs the ability to walk into a school, one approach would be to
provide intensive physical therapy, hoping that someday the child will learn to
walk. In the world of learning disabilities, this is analogous to our current
practice of providing daily reading support to build reading skills so that the
child can one day access the general education curriculum. For the individual
who is unable to walk, however, the Americans with Disabilities Act legislates
that we provide a ramp so that the child can gain access to the school building
in a wheelchair. UDL, similarly, asks what needs to be done to provide the
child with LD access to the content
of the curriculum, even though he or she is unable to independently read and
write at grade level (and frankly may never do so).
Within
the UDL framework, learning problems are not conceptualized solely as a
function of the disabled learner, but also as a function of a fixed medium
(e.g., text) that is inaccessible to that learner. Technology, however, now affords
us flexible media that can be manipulated in a variety of ways that can provide
access to the learner on an individualized basis. For example, the student with
a reading disability can access content above his or her reading level if
provided digital text. A wide range of supports can be embedded in
digital media (e.g., definitions, translations, and links to other media) to
make content accessible to a wider range of learners. Moreover,
in a well implemented UDL classroom, the “disabled” learner is not singled out
for specialized treatment (as you know a big issue for older children) since
all students use the same platform but in different ways that are most
compatible with their learning profiles. Thus, the “disabled” learner can
become an equal participant in the classroom, rather than the broken child who
needs to be fixed.
Although
there are certainly reading and writing interventions that have been
successful, the reality is that for a significant number of children with
learning disabilities, the interventions do not “normalize” their performance
even though they may continue to gain skills. Randomized clinical trials for
children in this older age range have most often yielded disappointing results.
By the late elementary and middle school years, this situation often becomes
highly discouraging and demoralizing with the ongoing struggle and stigma of
being “different,” with negative social and emotional implications. The UDL
framework provides strategies for allowing all students to engage with
curriculum in ways that are most compatible with their learning profiles.
Now
for outcomes: neuroimaging is cool and interesting, and it has served two
important purposes in our field. The first is to inform the models or metaphors
we use to understand the behavioral phenomena we observe. The shift from
modular models to distributed network models is a good example of this. The
second is to confirm or give depth to behavioral observations. For example,
while it is very cool that we can document changes in brain function after a
reading intervention or a working memory intervention, I have actually not seen
instances where the neuroimaging suggests truly innovative ways of approaching
intervention. Indeed, if we found that an intervention was effective
behaviorally yet we could not document a change in brain function, we would be
ill advised to abandon the intervention. So even though UDL is informed
by a brain model, there is no reason to think that neuroimaging is needed to
document its value.
In
the case of UDL, outcomes can be defined in a variety of ways that are not
measured in growth of specific academic skills but rather in increased access
to curriculum and especially academic engagement and self-efficacy. The reality
is that if a child has been in special education for five years or so and is
not independent in the curriculum (and we all have seen tons of these kids),
it’s time to shift into a different mode. UDL can give these students
access to curriculum (a ramp) by leveraging the malleability of the digital
medium and providing tools and frameworks for teachers to engage these
discouraged learners. With UDL, outcomes are measured in metrics such as
time on task, engagement, and social/emotional state, not in the traditional
metrics we are used to (how did he do on the Gray Oral?).
I
am honored to be a member of the CAST Board and hope
that as a neuropsychologist I can make a unique contribution to their work.
What they are about is novel, innovative and frankly quite refreshing. It also
interdigitates well with my and my colleagues’ understanding of learning
disorders, which is that LD’s reflect normal variation in the human brain and
its capacities in the context of a rigid educational structure that attributes
the “problem” to a disabled learner rather than to a disabled curriculum.
We
should welcome the prospect that with the new legislation the UDL framework and
UDL designed media will become available to all children, and that (especially
for older students) they have options to engage with the curriculum even though
they do not have “grade level skills” and frankly may never have them.
Moreover, we are giving teachers tools to engage with these students in a
positive fashion that they find exciting and rewarding.
