Reviewing the UDL Guidelines

"Teachers need to be expert learners themselves, continuously growing and changing."

-Meyer, Rose & Gordon (2013)

As the Far North Literacy Development Consortium ushers in its third year of grant development, teachers spent their first workshop of the 2023-2024 school year reviewing and applying the UDL guidelines to problems of practice. The UDL guidelines are a powerful tool for design as they can be used proactively and reflectively to analyze the learning experience for potential barriers as well as offer potential options to help reduce or minimize those barriers to learning. Employing the UDL guidelines gives teachers a common language to approach their teaching and learning. Furthermore, as teachers practice using the guidelines to design inclusive, accessible, and equitable learning experiences, they help foster the conditions that optimize expert learning--the ultimate goal of UDL. It's in this process of iterative design, that teachers get to experience the power of becoming expert learners themselves.