Abstract:

Diversity in higher education is increasing, but teachers do not always feel competent to create a powerful learning environment for all students (Emmers et al., 2015). For example, many students are faced with incomprehension, do not receive the support they should receive, and there is still a higher drop-out rate from students with certain diverse characteristics such as migration background, a disability, low socio-economic status, and so on. Universal design for learning offers an excellent and state of the art answer to this challenge. Teachers need to be professionalized on the basis of three important factors. They must work towards an inclusive culture with open values and norms about students with disabilities in higher education. They must also be made more competent in practice by learning to differentiate, collaborate, and experiment with new forms of education in accordance with the principles of UDL. Lastly, these two previous forms of education must be anchored in a sound inclusive education policy in order to propagate and communicate the right vision about inclusion and inclusive education. This paper provides an applied scientific framework to implement UDL in higher education with insights from practice. The UDL framework is systematically analysed an framed by 5 clear practical examples that are linked to the theoretical insights from the scientific literature on inclusive education.

Keywords:

Universal design, inclusive education, teacher training.