Abstract
This chapter presents the use of universal design for learning as a means to understand and develop more accessible and inclusive practices in Danish schools. The chapter sets the scene by highlighting the influence of global and local policies on inclusive and exclusive practices in schools. From this point of departure, the chapter outlines the universal design for learning framework as an educational strategy for implementing inclusive education. Based on two research projects, it is shown how the framework can contribute to bringing a new direction to understanding and working with inclusion, while also developing a teaching practice that helps overcome some of the dilemmas that teachers experience in their daily practice in classrooms. The chapter also presents perspectives on how universal design for learning can be part of and support development in a whole-school approach.
TopBackground
Roger Slee stated that Inclusion isn’t dead, it just smells funny (Slee, 2019). Inclusion, as it is stated in the Salamanca Statements, implies that government must give the highest policy and budgetary priority to improve education service so that all children could be included (UNESCO, 1994). Inclusion points to the need for a reform (Ainscow, 2020) of the entire school system, and this involves changes in terms of organisation, culture and the level of teaching.
Magnússon et al. (2019) argues that inclusive education as a policy phenomenon contains a range of ideas about the purpose and content of education and, furthermore, that the agenda of inclusion is competing with other political ideals regarding education, such as the agendas of accountability, testing and learning outcomes. Nordic research on inclusive education (Ensig & Johnstone, 2015; Köpfer & Oskarsdottir, 2019; Magnusson et al., 2019; Molbaek, 2018) has found that the Nordic education model (as a part of the social democratic welfare state) is challenged by transnational education policy with a focus on accountability and competition. Ensig & Johnstone (2015) analysed the paradoxical inclusive policy in Denmark, which legislated for both inclusive education (2010 and 2012) and increased learning outcome (supported by national tests measuring the same subjects as PISA). Thus, Engsig and Johnstone (2015) argue that the inclusion discourse in Denmark lies ‘on a continuum that ranges from Salamanca-inspired, equity-focused inclusion to a more US-inspired, accountability-focused inclusion’ (Engsig & Johnstone, 2015). In Danish ethnographic classroom research, the consequences of this policy are in focus. It has been found that although achievement and inclusion should be equally prioritised, teachers are focusing on achievement as their primary professional goal, and by doing so, they are promoting exclusion, albeit maybe not intentionally. The consequences of the neoliberal discourse on competitive individualism and the implementation of performance testing are focuses of subject teaching, whole-class teaching and teacher-controlled teaching—in sum, a more traditional form of teaching. This kind of teaching, as has been found in ethnographic research, is leading to increased exclusion, unequal opportunities and less democratic participation (Hedegaard-Soerensen & Penthin Grumloese, 2018). Similar research results have been found in Iceland (Gunnþórsdóttir & Bjarnason, 2014; Gunnþórsdóttir & Jóhannesson, 2014).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Collaboration: The action of working with someone to produce or do something.
Inclusion: The practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalised.
Professional Learning Communities: A method to foster collaborative learning among colleagues within a particular work environment or field. It is often used in schools as a way to organise teachers into working groups of practice-based professional learning.
School development: A way of strengthening the overall functionality of schools and improving the mechanisms for delivering education in the classroom as well as the broader school environment.
Teaching: Ideas or principles taught by an authority, imparting knowledge to or instructing (someone) as to how to do something.
Diversity: The state of being diverse and a practice or quality of including and involving people from a range of different backgrounds and with different needs and orientations.
Policy: A course or principle of action adopted or proposed by an organisation or individual.
Flexible learning environments: An approach to teaching in which students’ different needs and ways of learning are addressed and taken in account.