Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
Licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras con énfasis en inglés
Materials, Media and Mediation
Valentina Cruz Cuervo 20182265012
The importance of developing materials with universal design for learning to create
diverse and innovative classrooms
Since the beginning of English teaching, materials design has been a worried for
teachers and specially for all of those who wants to develop efficient strategies to improve
the educational process of their students through the innovation and motivation. For this
purpose and with the knowledge that each country develops its own curricula according the
educational panorama present there, the socio-cultural aspects and the different educational
quality standards makes difficult to converge in a general model that not only achieve the
learning goals established for the educational ministries around the world but also covers
all the needs of the students and incentive the interest and motivation in classrooms.
According to Dalton (2005) as cited in Dalton (2017), UDL (Universal Design for
Learning) means a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that:
provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or
demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways, students are engaged. Also, it reduces
barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and
maintains high achievement expectations for all students.
As teachers UDL must be a need, not just other way to develop learning strategies,
because of the diversity of our classrooms. We used to think that there must be a standard
to teach, to create material and to motivate students, but the reality is that there is more than
one way to address the educational process, as well as there is not a no standard student. In
classrooms we can find lots of students, each one different from the other, with different
ways to learn and different ways process, represent and reflect the knowledge. All of those
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
Licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras con énfasis en inglés
Materials, Media and Mediation
Valentina Cruz Cuervo 20182265012
variables make impossible pretend that learning strategies could be static and equal for our
students.
‘While the concept of standard may exist statistically, it does not exist in the reality
of the classroom or other learning environments. Every student is a unique individual with
different characteristics, preferences, abilities, and beliefs that deserve consideration when
designing curricula and instruction. Data and statistics can be standardized, but people
cannot’. (Dalton, 2017, p.18). To cover of all of those needs UDL was created with the aim
of achieve the equal learning worldwide, offering multiple options of represent, act and
engage the knowledge, providing to English teachers’ specific guidelines to design and
implement their contents in classroom with the understanding of diversity and different
ways to learn of students.
With the considerations presented above there is a challenge for teachers in terms of
implement UDL to the modern educational models and also taking advantage of the new
tools that technology has provide us. Today teachers have lots of apps, programs and
platforms to facilitate the guidelines of this model specially in representations stage, that
sequentially will improve students act and express responses.
As a conclusion UDL has to be taking as an advantage to improve students’
learnings and class management, following the guidelines to cover all the needs that each
classroom present according to teachers needs observations and understanding the different
factors that this model helps to consider. Nowadays the implementation of this model has
been facilitated by technology and the emergence of tools like apps, platforms and
educational games that offer to teachers a help to achieve their students’ educational goals.
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
Licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras con énfasis en inglés
Materials, Media and Mediation
Valentina Cruz Cuervo 20182265012
References
Dalton. M. (2017). Beyond Universal Design for Learning: Guiding Principles. Journal of Media
Literacy Education, 17 – 29.