How to Create Self-Directed Learners through UDL
Imagine a world where everyone gets one loaf of bread daily (per family) for free. That’s right- free. Pretty nice, right? Not one family will ever go hungry. Everyone gets their one free loaf and the world is a better place. The problem, of course, is that not every family is the same. Some families are larger than others. One loaf may not be enough. Now imagine instead, that each town or municipality has an open bakery where anyone can come in and make their own bread. All the resources would be in the bakery, but the catch is- everyone has to learn how to make their bread. Sure, there could be a baker there that could explain what each ingredient is for or that would lay out exactly how much flour, yeast, sugar, milk, and water to use. But regardless, if you want sourdough, you learn how to make sourdough. You want rye, you learn how to make rye. There is no one type of bread. There is room for variability once you have truly learned how to make bread.
This is how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps to foster expert learners. Instead of being told what to do or just given the information, learners become self-directed. By using the UDL framework, learners have the motivation to set goals and strategically find ways to meet those goals in the best way possible. In many ways, UDL has shades of Albert Bandura and Social Cognitive Theory. There is a level of self-reflection that is achieved with expert learners. That ability to accept one’s own strengths and weaknesses builds a high level of self-efficacy. Once students feel that they can accomplish what they set out to do, it becomes a matter of giving them the resources they need. This is in contrast with (the more teacher-centric) Differentiated Instruction (DI), where there is a way that things are done and that is what is followed to achieve success. While that has certainly been a model for learning, it does not address a really important truth- that success is built on failure. If one cannot see how things go wrong, how do they know that things are right?
A big problem is that often times failure is equated to knowing nothing. Even in traditional grading scales, an “F” grade yields no credit for the student. If the student earns 50%, it is an “F”. Does that mean that the student knows nothing or does it really mean that they only know 50% of the material? While that problem may never get solved, perhaps education needs to move more towards the UDL framework where students are encouraged to work through a problem, even if it means that they run into a roadblock. After all, how can they learn to move ahead in the path, if they cannot figure out how to move over, under, around, or through what is in their way?
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