Cracks in the Foundation: Personal Reflections on the Past and Future of the UDL Guidelines (Part 1)
By David Rose
(with contributions and review by Jenna W. Gravel and Nicole Tucker-Smith)
[Note: This is the first installment of a six-part blog series by CAST Co-Founder David Rose, part of CAST’s UDL Rising to Equity initiative, a multiyear, community-driven effort to revise the UDL Guidelines to identify, name, and redress systemic barriers to equitable learning and outcomes. We encourage you to join the conversation in the comment boxes, by using the hashtag #UDLrising on your favorite social media platform, or by emailing your feedback to udlguidelines@cast.org.
Access parts two, three, four, five, and six on the UDL Center blog. You may also download an accessible version of the complete paper on the CAST website.]
A couple of years ago, Boston’s iconic Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) was expanded and beautifully redesigned. A new wing made the building much easier to enter and navigate, for everyone. The long and imposing stairway at the front of the building had been augmented by a smooth and elegant entrance with no stairs, automatic doors, haptic signage, easy access from the parking lot, and so forth, making it much more universally accessible and less intimidating.
But in 2020, a busload of middle school students arrived on a field trip from one of the nearby inner-city schools, mostly Black and Brown students. After a relatively short time, the visit was curtailed by the teachers and principal because both they and the children felt unwelcome: The guards followed them around suspiciously, the staff spoke to the children punitively rather than educationally, and the other guests at the museum shunned them or expressed racially charged sentiments. These barriers made them feel as if they didn’t belong at the museum.
Within days, the incident was reported in the Boston Globe and full apologies were issued by the museum — initiating a year-long analysis of racial and ethnic prejudices and biases that, from top to bottom of the institution, needed to be recognized and remediated. That analysis, and the subsequent remedial changes, were not conducted by architects but by professionals who focused more on addressing mental and social barriers rather than physical ones. Making the museum fully accessible will require fixing more than its building.
The episode at the MFA illustrates two outcomes that are relevant to the foundations of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). First, the new wing has made the MFA a more accessible building. The principles of universal design in architecture are readily evident in its design and have eliminated many critical barriers — notably for people with disabilities but also for anyone who comes to the museum with baby carriages or strollers, with wheeled luggage and carts, as well as those who are tired or injured.
Second, many other barriers remain. The principles of universal design did not help to make the overall institution more accessible or welcoming; they did not help to reduce the barriers that Black and Brown schoolchildren faced, among many others. There are lessons there for the future of UDL.
As it is well known, the universal design movement served as a powerful founding metaphor for the development of Universal Design for Learning. The two movements share a common approach — design for diversity and equity from the outset rather than attempt costly structural repairs and accommodations later. Like UD, the principles and Guidelines of UDL have been widely adopted and implemented, in both policy and practice, both in the US and throughout many countries in the world.
But, the story of the MFA is a cautionary tale about both the strengths and limits of UD as a metaphoric foundation for UDL. At this time of social unrest and disruption, when the inequities and injustices in educational systems (and in cultures more generally) have been highlighted yet again, it is clear that there are many barriers that the UDL framework and its associated guidelines do not explicitly address.
Those barriers are quite different than the barriers that are evident in buildings or in classrooms. They are typically institutional or systemic, they are more often about identity than ability, and more often implicit rather than explicit. They are barriers that affect people primarily on who they are rather than what they can do: Barriers such as racism, genderism, ethnocentrism, and ableism.
These barriers have always been apparent and abhorrent to most advocates of UDL but they have often seemed outside of our expertise, our experience, and unfortunately, our priority. It is time to re-examine the role of UDL in addressing those other kinds of barriers.
Why now? The last revision of the UDL Guidelines — a very minor one — was published 10 years ago. We have learned a great deal since then and one thing we have learned is that the UDL Guidelines need to be updated and revised to meet the needs of the expanding populations of teachers and students who now use them both locally and internationally.
But, it is impossible not to recognize the urgency for change at this moment in the United States and in other countries as well. The intersection of two infections — one biological and the other cultural — have re-exposed and highlighted the inequalities, injustices, vulnerabilities, and barriers that many people face in every culture.
I believe that UDL must play a stronger, more explicit, role in addressing those other kinds of injustices and barriers. For three reasons. First, one of the things we have learned is that classroom barriers and injustices — for any of its most vulnerable learners — cannot be fully addressed in isolation. Unjust and inequitable institutions, systems, and cultures inevitably project, either implicitly or explicitly, their inequalities into their primary means of enculturation — our schools and classrooms.
Second, as a white, middle-class, highly resourced educator, I recognize that I have inherited special privileges and advantages from the people and cultures that have shaped and matriculated me. As part of all that shaping, I have also developed problematic prejudices, unrecognized biases, and weaknesses that set limits on what I see and experience, on what I know and what I can do. I have still a lot to learn, and so does the field of UDL.
Third, a number of particularly innovative and highly-motivated educators have already demonstrated that they can apply and extend the existing UDL Guidelines to address the wider barriers in our school systems and institutions. Their individual adaptations, formerly inaccessible, are now becoming available in published form (e.g., see recent books by Andratesha Fritzgerald, Mirko Chardin and Katie Novak, Patti Kelly Ralabate and Loui Lord Nelson, Caroline Torres and Kavita Rao, in references) and in major presentations (e.g., Cornelius Minor, Marian Dingle, Lizzie Fortin, Cody Miller, Kass Minor, and Jon Mundorf at the 2020 UDL Symposium). Their work foreshadows the kinds of explicit recommendations, exemplars, and research that could deepen and diversify the impact of the UDL Guidelines in the upcoming revisions. The Guidelines need to build on what they have learned.
Why Me? As one of the prime creators of the UDL Guidelines (with Jenna Gravel and many wonderful colleagues at CAST) it seems appropriate for me to contribute some reflection and conversation on the next iteration of the UDL Guidelines. Now that I am at the age where reflection dominates projection, I have chosen to anchor my thoughts in four short stories (all true, but probably embellished) from the most formative year of my life as a teacher.
From the vantage point of those stories, I will try to revisit some of the basic foundations of the UDL principles and guidelines. My intent is to focus primarily on the cracks that have been revealed by history and practice. My intent is not primarily to undermine the foundations of UDL, but to strengthen them. Perhaps my intent can be much better captured in the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s most moving poem and song called “Anthem.” The pivotal line in its chorus is this:
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
So, I want to take you back to 1968 in Boston. There were lots of cracks that year, and a lot of light got in.
[Go to part two of this six-part series. Or download an accessible version of the complete paper on the CAST website.]
