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To foster meaningful engagement in learning, educators must recognize, support, and value each learner's unique interests and intersecting identities—including race, culture, gender, language, and disability. Since what engages learners can vary widely and shift over time, it's crucial to create inclusive environments that affirm learners' full identities and evolving interests. This helps ensure all students can access and fully participate in the learning process.

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Learning is a continuous process that requires effort and determination. Since learners differ in what motivates them—especially depending on the context—effective learning environments should provide meaningful goals, support for challenging tasks, opportunities for collaboration and belonging, and ongoing, practical feedback. These elements help both individuals and groups stay engaged and committed to learning.

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A key part of human development is learning to recognize emotions, manage behavior, and empathize with others. Emotions and rational thinking can coexist, and effective learning environments help students build emotional regulation skills. While some people develop these skills naturally, others need direct support. However, many schools don’t explicitly teach emotional skills, making them inaccessible to some learners. Educators who intentionally foster emotional development and offer flexible approaches aligned with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are more effective. Importantly, learners should not have to adapt to unfair learning conditions—the environment itself should be equitable.

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Learning becomes impossible when information is imperceptible to the learner, difficult when it is presented in formats that require extraordinary effort or assistance, and oppressive when it reinforces stereotypes or deficit thinking. To reduce these barriers, it is essential to ensure that key information is equally perceptible to all learners. This can be achieved by presenting information through multiple modalities—such as vision, hearing, or touch—offering content in formats that allow user adjustability, like enlarging text or amplifying sound, and incorporating a variety of perspectives, including diverse authors and authentic representations of people, cultures, histories, and identities. Providing multiple representations not only ensures accessibility for learners with sensory or perceptual disabilities, but also enhances comprehension for a broader range of learners. Moreover, when students see themselves reflected in the curriculum ("mirrors") and are exposed to the experiences of others ("windows"), they are more likely to form authentic, meaningful connections with the content, leading to deeper and more inclusive learning experiences.

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Learners differ in how well they understand various forms of representation—like language, symbols, graphs, or images. What clarifies a concept for one student might confuse another, especially due to differences in background knowledge or cultural context. Relying on just one way to present information can create inequalities in learning. Therefore, using multiple representations is a key teaching strategy to improve accessibility, clarity, and shared understanding for all learners.

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Education enables learners to turn accessible information into usable knowledge and foster new understandings. Cognitive science research shows that this process is active, not passive, involving skills like making connections, synthesizing, questioning, and integrating new information with prior knowledge. Constructing usable knowledge often involves collaboration, where learners work together to share diverse perspectives and refine ideas, resulting in deeper understanding. Collaborative environments promote shared inquiry, problem-solving, and collective knowledge advancement. Given the wide variation in learners' prior knowledge and approaches to learning, intentional curriculum design and multiple ways of presenting information are key to ensuring all learners have access to meaningful knowledge.

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Traditional educational materials, such as print textbooks or workbooks, offer limited ways for learners to interact, like turning pages or writing in provided spaces. Similarly, many educational software programs only allow basic navigation through a mouse or keyboard. The physical design of learning spaces, such as narrow aisles or rigid seating arrangements, can also restrict access. These limitations create barriers for learners with disabilities, such as physical impairments, blindness, or conditions like dysgraphia. To support all learners, it’s crucial to design materials and environments that accommodate diverse interaction needs and preferences. Well-designed curricular materials should seamlessly integrate with assistive technologies, allowing users to navigate and express knowledge using tools like voice-activated switches or specialized keyboards. Additionally, flexible physical environments are necessary to support all learners' engagement in the educational process.

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Not all forms of expression work equally well for every learner or type of communication. Some media may be less effective for certain types of expression or learning. Therefore, offering multiple ways for learners to express themselves helps reduce communication barriers and supports them in sharing their knowledge, ideas, and concepts effectively.

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The key to effective learning is the ability to act skillfully and purposefully, which involves "executive functions." One important aspect of executive function is strategy development, which relies on strategic networks in the brain, including the prefrontal cortex. These networks are involved in managing short-term reactions, setting long-term goals, and planning strategies. They help learners monitor progress and adjust strategies when necessary, making the most of available resources. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework focuses on enhancing executive capacity in two ways: 1) by reducing the need for executive processing in lower-level skills, and 2) by improving higher-level executive skills and strategies. This guideline specifically addresses scaffolding to support and strengthen executive functions themselves.

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This website offers many resources and tools to help with UDL and describes how they can be utilized.

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This website offers many resources and tools to help with UDL and describes how they can be utilized.

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This website offers many resources and tools to help with UDL and describes how they can be utilized.