Universal Design for Learning

As part of our discussion on screening and assessments for students who  have learning difficulties, some of which may rise to the level of a disability, I recently wrote that screeenings, which many of us seem to use, can confirm deficits to learning. And from that information we can design teaching methods that will assist our students to be more efficient learners. These teaching techniques often fall into the category of Universal Design for Learning.  [UDL]

UDL is defined as a blueprint for creating flexible ways to accommodate learner differences. And, not blow our own horns, but Adult Educators are some of the best in figuring out innovative ways to engage and teach all sorts of learners!

 UDL focuses on three areas; Multiple Means of Representation: giving learners various ways of aquirirng information. Multiple Means of Expression: providing learners with alternatives for demonstrating what they have learned, and Multple Means of Engagement : enlisting learner interest as a teaching tool to challenge and motivate  investment in the curricula. The latter is sometimes referred to as Student Directed Learning.

UDL is an effective way of teaching because it allows us to teach to every student's individual strength while exposing all the other students to multiple ways of learning. This concept is especially effective for  those with disabilites, diverse backgrounds, varied language development or expertise and inefficient processing styles. I believe this is what most of our instructors do everyday but may not know the fancy term for it! 

In CT we find that it removes the need for diagnostic testing for many of our students who simply need to be taught differently. However, and this is a big HOWEVER, there will always be those students who we can not reach with Universal Design Techniques. These students do need to be assessed for significant learning problems by professional who can diagnose and perscribe specific techniques. We do find that after attempting multiple UD strategies we garner much information that can help the clinician performing the assessment to target his/her focus.  Thus lowering, but unfortunately not elimiating cost. Hopefully we will hear more from colleagueswho have foundwaysaround this issue. In CT we have a learning disbility advocacy group that has a list of clinicians who will assess on a sliding scale. But they can't meet the demand.

In addition we struggle with an ethical question . A student with learning difficulties can master the curriculm with teacher's efforts to accommodate  through multiple means of representation and multiple means of expression . But if those particular  methods are not allowed by the high stakes testing services [GED], post secondary ed or employment, without a documentation of a disability., And the student can't access that assessment. Is it fair for us to begin using those mehtods in the classroom knowing that the student won't be able to use them  for the ultimate goal of GED, employment or postsecondary Ed?

I'm intersted in your experiences with UD and of course in our "ehtical " dilemma!!

Comments

I have a perennial and to me highly ethical question in return:

Why are educators not clamouring for modernisation of English spelling?

Nearly all educational problems in English-speaking countries, and the endless discussions about them, are largely the result of learning to read and write English being exceptionally difficult and time-consuming. We now have ample proof that this is due to the inconsistencies of English spelling:

http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/spelling-reform-would-make-difference.html

 

But even if there was no research evidence, anyone who has listened to learners read or corrected their misspellings, has no difficulty seeing, that most of their reading difficulties are due to letters with changeable sounds (lead, head, friend, fiend, once, only).  Such spellings clearly cause writing difficulties as well.

One of the big costs of English spelling inconsistencies is the need for careful monitoring of progress, because when something takes a long time to learn, there is more scope for not keeping up. Hence the many literacy tests that English-speaking pupils have to be subjected to in the course of their education. In Finland, where most children learn to read proficiently in three months and to write in a year, there is no need for any. Pupils acquire those skills and move on to using them as tools for other learning.

English spelling inconsistencies incur a wide variety of costs, apart from the greater need for testing: http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/costs-of-english-spelling.htm

So why not start serious discussions about how they can be reduced? Why not look to addressing the root cause of the problem instead of merely forever dealing with its consequences?

 

One of the most complex areas of English spelling is the short and long vowel system: http://improvingenglishspelling.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/long-and-short-vowels.html

Many learners take a while to grasp it, even when learning it just with words which use it consistently, as in 'rat – rate – ratty'. What gives them a really hard time, however, are:

1. More than 500 words of more than one syllable

    failing to double a consonant after a short, stressed vowel

    (habit, very, city, body, study) .

2. Another 239 words with doubled consonants which are

    unrelated to keeping a stressed vowel short

    (accommodation, hello, immense, occur, hurrah).

3. At least 188 words with a short vowel which end with a misleading, surplus –e:

    (have, promise  – cf. gave, surprise).

4. Nearly 200 words with irregular spellings for the short vowels e, i and u

     (bread, pretty, touch) which have different pronunciations in other words

      (treat, great, petty, ouch).

     These are sometimes combined with missing doubled consonants as well:

     (many, women; money).

5.The ‘open’ vowel method of  a-e, i-e, o-e  is disobeyed by

    87 words for long a (made - paid;  make - break),

    79 for long i (while - whilst,  mime  - climb)

    100 for long o (mole – bowl, roll, soul)

The ‘e-e’ spelling is used in just 86 words

    and different ones in 366 (eke – seek, speak, shriek).

 

Just dropping the clearly redundant –e endings would already help quite a bit.

Adopting consistent consonant doubling (shoddy – boddy, poppy – coppy, hidden – hiddeous...)

would cut the current 4,000 rote-learning burden of spellings by at least 1000 words.

 

Perhaps this cannot happen until more teachers become better informed about the history of English spelling – how its  more consistent system which was redeveloped in the 14th century  was destroyed by people who did not care how easy or difficult it made learning to read and write:

1) 9th C scribes who thought that having the letter u next to m or n made reading difficult (munth) and so used o instead (month, mother, mongrel).

2) Court clerks who were annoyed about having to switch from French to English (around 1430, after the end of the 100 years war between France and England), and changed simpler earlier spellings like 'hed, welth, heven' and 'reson, seson, speke' to 'head, reason, etc.'

3) First English type-setters (starting 1476) who were fond of adding extra letters to words, because they were paid by the line (come, some, have, give, inne, itte, hadde).

4) Dutch, Belgian, German and French printers of Tyndale's New Testament of 1525 and then his whole bible, because in England the printing of them was illegal until 1539, but people were desperate to read them. The bishop of London kept buying them up for burning in St Paul's yard, but they kept being reprinted in many places, with their spellings becoming more and more varied.

 5) Private tutors to the rich who compiled the first English dictionaries and were not in the least interested in making learning to read and write easy for anyone, especially not the masses. They wanted to protect their jobs and superior status.

6) Samuel Johnson who thought that it would be a shame to lose all of the rich variety of English spelling (e.g. thare, their, ther, thair, there) and decided to link some of them to different meanings (their/there).

7) Jonson's veneration of Latin which led him to exempt many words of Latin origin from the English consonant doubling rule (as in 'diner – dinner) and bequeathed us the likes of 'habit, mineral, very',  leaving the whole English short and long vowel spelling  system in tatters (rabbit – habit, minnow – mineral, very – merry).

http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/history-of-english-spelling.html  gives a fuller account

During the past 600 years, English spelling was once improved slightly. The pamphleteers of the English Civil War (1642-9) removed surplus letters from the likes of 'inne, olde, worlde, shoppe, hadde'. We could surely at least complete that?

Hi Marsha: You are right in that the longer it takes to process information, the more complex the information and the less reliable cognitive structure the less likely to cement learning. Your examples of the evolution of english spelling [rules??] is are illustrative. Being a disability professional with emphasis on cognition I am unable to comment on any remedies for this situation. But I'm anxious to hear the thoughts of others.