Student-Centered Learning Through the Lens of Universal Design for Learning

Abstract

The field of teacher education holds lessons on how to transform the higher education classroom into one that is more student-centered, differentiated, and supportive. This chapter explores the case of a yearlong assessment and planning course for prospective K-12 classroom teachers. The pedagogical framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) informs the instructor’s decisions that support high levels of students’ cognitive engagement. UDL requires that students have multiple ways to engage in learning the content. This way, the pre-service teachers have opportunities to experience student-centered learning (SCL) themselves. They read about SCL in Nave’s book, Student-Centered Learning: Nine Classrooms in Action, analyzed in student-led group discussions, and they make connections with their student teaching internship classrooms, both through their observations of their host teachers and through their own lesson planning and delivery. These learning experiences in a UDL-informed, student-centered university classroom give these pre-service teachers a strong sense of agency, empowering their application of these practices in their K-12 field-based internship placement. This chapter also provides a case study of how three pre-service teachers’ learning in university classrooms guided their applied practice in their high school internship placements. Learning in an SCL context and internship expectations to carry out SCL in high school classrooms give these developing teachers opportunities to learn, practice and implement student-centered pedagogy. The chapter presents examples of SCL in both university and high school classrooms, and we discuss implications for higher education classrooms.