Caring Classrooms in Crisis: COVID-19, Interest Convergence, and Universal Design for Learning

Abstract

This article explores how the University of Ottawa enacted interest convergence (Bell 1980; Dolmage 2020) during March 2020 when it changed its accessibility procedure because of the COVID-19 crisis. By looking to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), I argue that educators should take a universalizing and intersectional understanding of disability in the classroom, designing classroom methods in advance to acknowledge ability difference from the beginning of teaching. Through two proposed assignments, this article outlines how educators can better care for their disabled, BIPOC, gender diverse, and/or queer students by acknowledging difference as itself an alternative means of knowledge-creation.