Slides of my presentation at the BC Inclusion Conference 2019 on May 23rd

1. Universal Design for Learning: From
curiosity to institutional buy-in
BC Inclusion Conference 2019
Victoria, May 23rd-25th
Frederic Fovet, School of Education and Technology,
Royal Roads University
#InclusionBC2019

2. Quick personal intro
• My professional trajectory here is relevant to my presentation, and will explain my
perspective.
• Research and practice in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (SEBD) in the
K-12 field (including 7 years as principal of a school).
• Over the period of my PhD I took on the position of Director of the Office for
Disabilities at McGill.
• Since end of 2015, returned to teaching as a faculty member in Education.
• Also a UDL consultant in both K-12 and Higher Ed sectors
#InclusionBC2019

3. UDL 101 – A brief definition
• During my four years in accessibility services within Higher Ed I
worked with my team at deploying UDL across a campus.
• Part of this task involved refining a definition that would be all
encompassing and exhaustive, yet simple.
• This is what we came up with:
• ‘UDL is a sustainable framework for the management of
accessibility issues that translates the Social Model of Disability
into every day practices’
• Why does it translate the Social Model into action? Because it shift
the burden away from individual differences in learners towards
the act of designing the learning experience.

5. The context
• UDL has been popular across Canada for now more than a decade
• Appearance of an authentic Canadian voice on UDL
• Great communities of practice and local initiatives
• BUT
• Few evidence of scaling up
• Communities of practice are finding it hard to model their outcomes
• We are hitting strategic ‘bumps in the road’
#InclusionBC2019

6. ‘Big picture’ objectives of this session
• Stress that UDL implementation is not an easy process.
• Understand that educational environments are complex,
multilayered environments and it takes more than good will to
reach systemic implementation.
• Create awareness around the inherent challenges of the scaling up
process
• Find sustainable (transferable) solutions
#InclusionBC2019

7. Interactive interlude
• I thought it might be useful to gauge the room a little before I begin.
• By show of hands/ object raised or waved, who feels that in general terms in
North America:
(a) Who feels that their institution is receptive to UDL?
(b) Who feels their institution has a strategic plan in place when it comes to
UDL?
(c) Who feels their institution has thought and discussed ‘ownership’ (i.e. which
units, individuals or position will take on the responsibility of promoting UDL)?
(d) Who feels they have clarity within their institutions when it comes to UDL
and the future?

8. Format and ongoing reflection about UDL
• Always difficult to model UDL in a 50 minute presentation
• Problem with the ‘do as I say not as I do’ approach
• For all of us presenting here though surely a simultaneous PD
opportunity is to led participants to reflect on how UDL permeates
all interface with a participant/ service user. Presentations in
academia should integrate UDL principles too.

9. UDL reflection around presentation
format
• What UDL reflection went on in the planning of this session?
• Multiple means of representation: The presentation will metamorphose into
a paper (contact me for a copy), PPT can be emailed to you on request; the
slides will be posted in Slideshare tonight.
• Multiples means of action and expression: All questions/ interaction
welcomed; hashtag is monitored before, during and after the presentation;
emails are welcome at any time; discussions over a drink or coffee during the
rest of the conference are welcomes too!
• Multiple means of engagement: page of resources & references on this topic
for the ‘browsing participants’; will continue to archive relevant info and
questions under Twitter hashtag #InclusionBC2019, discussion and questions
are woven into the presentation.

10. Interactive Interlude (5 min)
• Find a partner and describe your institutional journey with UDL?
• How satisfied are you with the process?
• Who bears the weight of promotion and development?
• What are some of the difficulties you have encountered with this model?

11. Anecdotal feedback: my own journey and
experiences
• Issues of ownership: who should take ownership of the implementation process?
Who will?
• Issues of ‘silo mentality’: Various stakeholders within our structures often claim
ownership of the UDL model simultaneously. Conflicts arise.
• Divergent interpretation on UDL across different units and professions
• Issues of rivalry/ politics between units and individuals: Often resistance has little to
do with the value of the agenda itself.
• Issues with ‘over-personalization’ of institution-wide UDL work and over-reliance on
specific individuals
• Issues of strategic planning and sustainability
• Issues of management of change
• Issues of burn out

12. Implementationacrossorganizations:Educationalinstitutions
are large, complexand multilayered environments
• Educational institutions are for the most part:
• Complex
• Multidisciplinary and multi-profession environments
• Anchored in tradition
• Political
• Multilayered
• Not always great at effective institutional communication
• Not great at management of change
• Inherently ambivalent
• Subject to their own external variables

13. Need for strategic cross-institution implementation
planning through the lens of ecological theory
• When we examine the UDL process, we talk about ‘barrier analysis’ within the
environment
• I am going to suggest we should apply a similar lens when examining wide
scale, systemic implementation in complex environments.
• An ‘ecological analysis’ is essential and will be the only way to guarantee
success.
• This is (sadly) not transferable from institution to institution as the variables
at play internally vary.
• This should happen before a blueprint for implementation is even devised
• Finally, ‘one size does not fit all’ when it comes to delivery in the classroom –
similarly ‘one size does not fit all’ when we consider UDL implementation
across an institution.

14. Introducing the notion of using ecological theory to
navigate institutional management of change
#InclusionBC2019

15. What an ecological pre-UDL implementation
‘mapping’ might look like.
Stakeholder
accepting
responsibility
Multiple
competing
stakeholders
Institutional
culture and
history
Size and
resources
Administrative/
strategic
planning
Relationship with natural
collaborators: students,
parents, etc.External variables
affecting all parts
of the organization
Interpersonal
relationships of key
advocates with
other professionals
Existing network
with others UDL
Communities

16. How is ecological theory helpful?
• Institutions avoid the trap of deploying resources and then experiencing a fail/ false
start
• Institutions avoid unnecessary costs (incurred while finding one’s way through errors
and false starts)
• Momentum is more quickly achieved, which in itself reassures divergent voices and
wins over people who are ambivalent
• Organizations avoid the trap of looking for the magical, preexisting blue print
• Organizations develop a blue print that is their own and addresses their specific
reality
• UDL is not then perceived as ‘another trend just out of the box’
• Advocates do not burn out in the ‘plateau phase’

17. The pressing need for literature on strategic
institutional development in the field of UDL
• We will need to import resources and frameworks from other
fields
• Issue at this stage is not about introducing UDL or explaining its
worth.
• The challenge is management of change
• Other fields (Management, Industrial Relations, Psychology, etc.)
will provide us rich lessons and speed up the process of
developing a strategic expertise around UDL implementation.

18. Questions
• We will have time for a few questions from the audience

19. Resources
• Leech, S., A. Wiensczyk, and J. Turner. 2009. Ecosystem
management: A practitioners’ guide. BC Journal of Ecosystems
and Management, 10(2), 1–12. Retrieved from:
http://forrex.org/sites/default/files/publications/jem_archive/ISS5
1/vol10_no2_art1.pdf
• Leonard, J. (2011). Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory to
understand community partnerships: A historical case study of
one urban high school. Urban Education, 46 (5), 987-1010.
Retrieved from:
http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&c
ontext=education_faculty_pubs

21. Contact details
• Dr. Frederic Fovet, Associate Professor and Program Head for
MAELM
• School of Education and Technology, Royal Roads University
• Frederic.fovet@royalroads.ca
• implementudl@gmail.com
• www.implementudl.com
• @Ffovet