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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

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Short video (why foster a sense of belonging w/students)

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Short video (why foster a sense of belonging w/students)

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Teachers & Students: Fostering a Sense of Belonging

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Article and example activity to connect students' identities to academic work (Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius)

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How a teacher used a mini-unit featuring poetry, music, and art to help her third-grade students learn more about themselves and each other.

Maria Carluccio / The iSpot

"It is our job as educators to not just teach skills, but also to teach students to know, validate, and celebrate who they are." -Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius

The "Historically Responsive Literacy Framework" from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius is a powerful planning and reflection tool. At my school we call it "The Genius Framework," which supports our belief that every student has genius. The tool includes five goals: Identity, Skill Development, Intellectualism, Criticality, and Joy. I used the framework to write a mini-unit on Identity, Joy, and Skill for a third-grade class.

Identity, Joy, and Skill

Below, write or draw about interests you have.

Is there anything you want me to know about you?

I'm a language and literacy equity coach, so I spent time prior to the unit building relationships with the students during literacy and art. I also asked students to complete a brief interest questionnaire:

Be aware of who I am and what I like.

Express myself, what I feel and like.

Accept everyone. We are all unique.

Treat everyone with respect.

Day one began with building consensus around agreements, to build trust:

I explained how the mini-unit builds off the skills (or standards) that students learned in a recent Character Studies unit and the project they created with our art teacher, where, inspired by the Kelsey Montague artwork depicting wings, What Lifts You?, every person in our school made a feather that included their identity and interests. Next, I read The Day You Begin, stopping four times for students to gesture, turn and talk, or respond to open-ended questions about character traits.

What you appreciate about yourself

When you felt proud learning or doing something difficult

When you felt courageous

I selected this text because it highlights the strength of multilingualism, which is especially important in a class with four multilingual students. To shift to students' thinking about their own character traits, I listed interests from the questionnaire, connecting them to specific traits. It's important to provide opportunities for effective oracy, so established, trusting dyads discussed one of the following:

You talked about _____. That showed _____.

I introduced structured talk stems for responding to each other:

Then, students wrote about their own traits. We concluded by having a closing circle where each student shared one thought:

One student said, "I feel excited to be learning more about myself," while another noted, "I learned that identity can be what you see and what is inside."

Identity

Who you are

The way you think about yourself

How you would describe yourself to someone who doesn't know you

Has multiple parts

How you are as a learner

Helps know self and others

Could include name, language, family, gender, race, religion, ability, etc.

Day two focused on the goal of Identity, while we continued exploring Skill. I responded to the feedback from the exit tickets (what they learned and questions they had) to build trust and relationships, and to model my learning and reflection. Then, I asked students what they knew about identity, and we developed a common definition:

Students added to their trait writing with additional words to describe their identities, both visible and internal. A video of The Reflection in Me introduced examples of visible and internal traits. We also explored how each student felt a sense of belonging and joy. Then, students again wrote exit tickets.

Joy

Day three opened with a Spark (an idea that comes from Zaretta Hammond), and students listened to, and read, lyrics from " What Else Can I Do? " I selected the music and other texts to instill a sense of joy in the students. I gave the meanings of several new words; then we deconstructed the lyrics to infer traits using text evidence. I introduced a broader definition of "text," including video, lyrics, images, picture books, and poems.

A key practice of the Genius Framework is to use layered, multimodal texts. We listened to Charles R. Smith Jr. read his poem " Allow Me to Introduce Myself," from the book Hip Hop Speaks to Children. Then students continued deconstructing texts in partnerships, choosing "What Else Can I Do?" or "Allow Me to Introduce Myself."

Day three ended with brainstorming ideas for our Identity Showcase Project. The art teacher and I provided time and coaching during Art Studio for students to work on their projects. The final projects included a variety of creative ideas: fingerprint, self-portrait, Venn diagram of self and friend, wooden heart, wooden frame. In the future I would also provide the apps GarageBand and WordFoto.

Day four was a final project celebration-it still gives me goosebumps when I remember the day because of the sense of joy. I displayed the projects with fancy backgrounds in a gallery space. Students entered to music playing and viewed the artwork. Partners shared something new they had learned about each other's identity. In our closing circle I read a Change Sings excerpt to connect Identity to leadership and hope. Then each student shared with the class their answer to the question "What gives you joy?" or "What do you want to share from your Identity project?"

This unit taught us all a great deal. I knew work around Identity and Joy was important for students to understand themselves and to nurture their awareness of the richness of our differences. However, I had no idea of the depth of the positive impact that a four-day unit would have on students. Their understanding of self and acceptance of self surpassed my highest expectations.

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Fostering Identity, Joy, and Skill Development

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How a teacher used a mini-unit featuring poetry, music, and art to help her third-grade students learn more about themselves and each other.

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Do I belong at this school? How students respond to this question is closely linked to whether they succeed and thrive.

According to our research, students who feel a strong sense of belonging are more engaged and more likely to join school organizations, take on research opportunities, and make connections with peers, faculty, and staff. Not only that, students who feel like they belong in school earn higher grades and opt into and succeed in more difficult courses.

When students don't feel like they belong, the opposite is true, and they can become disengaged and disconnected. Feeling a sense of belonging in school is especially important for students from marginalized and stigmatized groups, such as Black, Latino, Native, first-generation, and financially stressed students. Because of the long history of exclusion and discriminatory treatment that their groups and families have experienced in the American education system, students from disadvantaged backgrounds have reasons to question whether instructors and peers value, respect, and welcome them.

Belonging can be even harder to foster during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the need for social distancing and remote learning. Indeed, it takes more focused intention and new strategies to support students' sense of belonging given these pandemic challenges. So how can instructors, administrators, and staff cultivate a sense of belonging and connection when so many are teaching online and stretched thin by the pandemic?

Our latest project, called the Student Experience Project, has been helping instructors, administrators, and staff understand the importance of students' feelings of belonging in class-and how to cultivate them, despite social distance. This past fall, over 100 faculty across six U.S. universities experimented with some of the most impactful, research-based teaching practices that help students feel a sense of belonging in class.

Some instructors were teaching online and others in person-yet all found ways to enact these practices that were authentic to their teaching style and classes. We measured students' psychological experiences in class at various points throughout the term to see whether instructors' practices made a difference, and our results revealed that students' sense of belonging in class increased. Another one of our studies suggests that for marginalized students in particular, attending to students' sense of belonging in school can help them fit in socially and academically and avoid dropping out.

How can teachers and instructors use this knowledge as they plan for the new term? Here are four research-based practices that you can use (and share) to cultivate a strong sense of belonging in your classes in 2021.

1. Normalize challenges to belonging and provide strategies to overcome them

When you explicitly acknowledge the challenges and struggles that can interfere with your students' sense of belonging and normalize their worries and experiences, students feel supported and are more likely to stay engaged and feel that they belong in class.

In the Student Experience Project's focus groups, marginalized students described the stress and isolation of feeling like they did not belong in certain courses. But they also reported how much it meant to them when instructors showed that they cared about their students and built in opportunities for connection.

At the beginning of the term, you can acknowledge to your students that this academic year has been a challenge for everyone-including for you-and that you understand the greater work and home responsibilities students may be juggling as they continue their studies. You can also note that you know that social distancing has made it more difficult to connect with and get to know each other.

However, you can assure students that you value connection and belonging-and that you know it is important for their success; therefore, you have built in ways throughout the term to help them build those connections, both with each other and with you. This might include group work (online or socially distanced in-person), drop-in or office hours, and supports that are available outside the course.

It's particularly helpful to share times when you questioned your own belonging-whether it was something that happened during the pandemic, or something from the more distant past, perhaps when you were a student yourself. Learning that successful adults, such as their instructors, have also questioned their sense of belonging is reassuring to students and helps them see that people succeed despite such challenges.

Normalizing these experiences and sharing some strategies that you have found useful for overcoming these challenges shore up students' sense of belonging. Give students time at the beginning of the term to identify their challenges to belonging and to brainstorm and share with each other the strategies they've used to address those challenges.

2. Make a plan to check in with students

Even during normal circumstances, simple check-in messages from their instructors communicate care and connection and mean a lot to students. This could be an email early on in the term asking students how they are feeling about the course and reiterating resources like office hours that are available to them, or using online polling sites during class to invite students to respond anonymously and then discuss what they show. In this time of greater uncertainty and challenge, these check-in messages are even more important because they make students feel seen and valued despite being socially distanced.

Throughout the term, you can plan for and schedule simple messages that check in with students, remind them that you care for their well-being and that you are there to support their learning and development, and encourage them to talk with you if they need support navigating challenges that are interfering with their learning.
Even if students do not respond directly to instructors' check-in messages, the vast majority interpret these messages as supportive (and may even share that with you later).

One instructor in the Student Experience Project posted an announcement inviting students to email her. She provided some starter questions: How was the term going? What shows were they watching? What activities were keeping them busy outside of class? Approximately 25% of students actually sent emails, and she responded to each one with brief encouragement. But just knowing they were invited to send emails appeared to benefit students-students specifically mentioned it in course evaluations at the end of the term and felt it made an impact.

3. Make a plan to give wise feedback when returning each assessment

Many students begin to question their belonging in class (and in school) when they receive critical feedback on tests or assignments. In remote learning, students may not have ever met you in person and, therefore, they might not fully trust your feedback or interpret it in the most constructive light. So it's especially important to make sure your feedback doesn't undermine their sense of belonging and self-efficacy.

How can you do that, while still giving actionable, critical feedback? Research shows that when instructors explicitly communicate to students that they are giving critical feedback because (a) they have high standards and (b) they believe that students can meet those standards, it helps students understand the reason for the feedback and reassures them that their instructor believes in their abilities to rise to the occasion.

If you want to shore up students' sense of belonging, make a plan for how you will deliver wise feedback when you return the first big assessment of the term. And then consider how you will continue to do so throughout the term so that all students continue to feel that you are invested in their learning and that you believe in their ability to be successful.

For example, instructors in the Student Experience Project have implemented exam wrappers, wherein they provide wise feedback to students after the first big test or graded project and have students complete a reflection activity about how that assessment went and what they can improve for the next one. Before the next assessment, instructors remind students of their reflections, and some instructors even share themes that emerge across different reflections to highlight common points of difficulty and strategies students can use to improve.

4. Shout out your favorite mistake

When students feel uncertain about whether they belong in school and vulnerable to critical feedback, they are loath to make mistakes that might further undermine their belonging in the eyes of their instructors or their peers. To instructors, this can feel like students are disengaged and unwilling to take intellectual risks.

However, instructors know that making mistakes is key to students' growth and development. Making mistakes is how we grow. How can you create a culture that celebrates (rather than shames) mistakes?

My favorite mistake is a practice whereby you regularly review and publicly celebrate a mistake (or mistakes) from tests or assessments that are your "favorites" because they reveal something about students' development or thought processes, or because they are a common mistake that students can correct and learn from. During class, when instructors celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn (rather than things to be avoided), students take more risks in the classroom.

In some of the classes that have made "favorite mistakes" a regular practice, we have seen students compete and get excited about being featured in "favorite mistakes" because the instructor has made mistake-making fun and rewarding. In these classrooms, mistake-making is welcomed and it shores up students' sense of belonging rather than undermining it.

In our experience, and from hearing from instructors who tried these strategies during the pandemic term of fall 2020, this approach not only improves the student experience and contributes to more equitable academic outcomes, but is also rewarding for instructors. Instructors told us they felt more connected to their students, found meaning in their contributions toward equity, and had more fun than they anticipated with pandemic teaching because they used their creativity. As such, fostering belonging in the classroom is a "win" for everyone-especially during a pandemic.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How to Help Students Feel a Sense of Belonging During the Pandemic

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Do I belong at this school? How students respond to this question is closely linked to whether they succeed and thrive. According to our research, students who feel a strong sense of belonging are more engaged and more likely to join school organizations, take on research opportunities, and make connections with peers, faculty, and staff.