In this chapter, we focus on creating inclusive and equitable Tier 1 learning environments for all students by focusing on inclusive practice, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), differentiated instruction, and deeper learning. One of our favorite sayings is “You can't intervention your way out of weak Tier 1.” Throughout this chapter, we discuss the components of an evidence‐based Tier 1 classroom that supports multiple tasks and formats while diverse students work toward grade‐level standards by engaging in authentic tasks.

The Power of Carrot Cake (Katie)

I love carrot cake. Ever since I was little, I have requested it on my birthday. To me, carrot cake is best when it's a whole meal. Think carrots, pineapple, walnuts, and cream cheese. When it's done right, it weighs a ton! When I'm introducing myself, I do not often lead with my love of carrot cake, but in a presentation last year, I did.

I kicked off a session on MTSS with an optimistic opener, inspired by CASEL's (2019) “3 Signature Practices Playbook.” The playbook offers “practical ways to introduce and broaden the use of SEL practices in classrooms, schools, and workplaces.” I used the Mix and Mingle activity, which builds community by encouraging participants to interact with each other, and sets the expectation that everyone's thinking and voice are valued. Below are the steps if you want to replicate the activity, and then I promise I'll get back to the carrot cake.

Since I was introducing MTSS using the baking analogy, I used the Mix and Mingle optimistic opening activity with this prompt: “What is your favorite dessert or treat that reminds you of your come‐from place?” The use of “come‐from place” is intentional not to exclude anyone who wasn't raised in what they would consider a home. On my card, I wrote “carrot cake.” As a part of the mingle, I chatted with a superintendent in a district in Vermont and shared details about my mother‐in‐law's famous recipe. When the timer was up, the session continued. A year later, that same superintendent invited me to his district to work with his amazing leadership team to support them in their MTSS needs assessment process. I was happy to be included in the meeting. When I arrived, however, he shared how happy he was to have me as a part of the team and then—wait for it—brought out a carrot cake so I would feel at home. I was nearly brought to tears by the kindness.

The act of being invited to the meeting included me, but the gesture to welcome me with something that was meaningful was inclusive practice. How can we create learning environments where everyone feels they belong? Certainly, I am not advocating that we bake desserts for all our learners, but that we get to know them deeply, that we learn about their interests, and that we design instruction with them in mind. It is not enough to invite them into our learning spaces if we cannot also give them what they need so they always hear the message, “You get to be exactly who you are, and you are welcome here.”

The Opportunity Myth

During the past decade, the concept of inclusive education has been evolving from simply placing students in general education classrooms to engaging all students in the general education curriculum through whole‐school applications, and providing full membership and belonging among age peers (Choi et al., 2018). There is clear evidence about what works for learners, but many students do not yet have access to the resources and support they need to succeed. A study, “The Opportunity Myth” (TNTP, 2018), summarizes the research on the practices necessary for student success.

Most students—and especially students of color, those from low‐income families, those with mild to moderate disabilities, and English language learners—spent the vast majority of their school days missing out on four crucial resources: grade‐appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations… . This lack of access is not random. It's the result of choices adults make at every level of our educational system. We're asking all adults whose choices affect students' experiences to commit to unraveling the opportunity myth.

As leaders, we can unravel the opportunity myth by creating systems and structures that ensure that all students have access to inclusive classrooms that provide them with grade‐appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations who make students feel as though they truly belong. This is the foundation for our multi‐tiered system.

All students, regardless of disability, English language proficiency status, income, race, or academic performance, can receive Tier 1, 2, and 3 services. All students are general education students first, and the focus of MTSS should be creating strong Tier 1 systems and supports. Recent research argues that inclusive education is connected to the movement for effective schools and school improvement, making it clear that what happens in general education classrooms, in terms of organization, interventions, and activities, has a critical impact on the academic success of all students (Arnaiz‐Sánchez et al., 2020).

One of our favorite sayings is this: “You can't intervention your way out of weak Tier 1,” because Tier 1 general education classrooms provide the foundation for a multi‐tiered system. Understanding what effective Tier 1 programming looks like is critical to creating changes necessary to meet the needs of all learners.

Too often, inclusive placement is tangled with inclusive practice, as if physical presence in a room equates to being inclusive. It does not. Inclusive practice includes the removal of barriers concerning participation, achievement, and presence while also using instructional and behavioral strategies that improve academic and social‐emotional outcomes for all students, with and without disabilities, in general education settings (Ellery, 2020; Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2019).

Inclusive practice is at the heart of equity in schools. Waitoller and Kozleski (2013) defined inclusive practice as a movement that emerged in response to systemic exclusion of students viewed as different (e.g., students with disabilities, ethnically and linguistically diverse students, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds) from meaningful and equitable access and participation in education.

The United Nations (2020) recently published an article, “Universal, Inclusive Education ‘Non‐Negotiable’.” The article notes, “The core recommendation of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report is to understand that inclusive education means equal access for all learners, notwithstanding identity, background or ability.” According to UNICEF (2013) in the State of the World’s Children report, “Inclusive education entails providing meaningful learning opportunities to all students within the regular school system. It allows children with and without disabilities to attend the same age‐appropriate classes at the local school, with additional, individually tailored supports as needed” (p. 7).

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning is a powerful framework to operationalize the right to education, supporting educators in maximizing desirable challenges and minimizing unnecessary difficulties (International Disability Alliance, 2021). UDL is a framework for designing learning experiences, so students have options for how they learn, what materials they use, and how they demonstrate their learning. When implemented with a lens of equity in a multi‐tiered system, the framework has the potential to eliminate opportunity gaps that exclude many learners, especially those who have been historically marginalized. If we want all students to have equal opportunities to learn, we have to be incredibly purposeful, proactive, and flexible (Novak, 2021). UDL creates a learning environment that is the least restrictive and most culturally responsive and trauma‐informed for all students.

The term “Universal Design” was coined by architect Ronald Mace in 1988 who defined it as the “design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design” (Center for Universal Design, 1997). Buildings where all people could not enter were deemed “architecturally disabling.”

In Mace's (1998) last public speech, he shared more about his philosophy on UD. He said:

Universal design broadly defines the user. It's a consumer market driven issue. Its focus is not specifically on people with disabilities, but all people. It actually assumes the idea, that everybody has a disability and I feel strongly that that's the case. We all become disabled as we age and lose ability, whether we want to admit it or not. It is negative in our society to say “I am disabled” or “I am old.” We tend to discount people who are less than what we popularly consider to be “normal.” To be “normal” is to be perfect, capable, competent, and independent. Unfortunately, designers in our society also mistakenly assume that everyone fits this definition of “normal.” This just is not the case.

UDL is based on research in cognitive neuroscience that guides the development of flexible learning environments that can accommodate learner variability. UDL is defined by Higher Education Opportunity Act (PL 110‐135) as “a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that (a) provides flexibility in the ways information is presented, in the ways students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and in the ways students are engaged; and (b) reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports, and challenges, and maintains high achievement expectations for all students, including students with disabilities.” Given that inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings is contingent on teachers' ability to use inclusive instructional strategies, wide‐scale commitment to UDL will be critical in creating multi‐tiered systems (Scott, 2018).

Before effectively implementing inclusive practice, we must embrace the concept of variability. As stated in UDL Theory and Practice, a book by two of the founders of UDL, “From one perspective, human brains are remarkably similar. But to neuroscientists, this similarity is an illusion” (Meyer, Rose, and Gordon, 2014, p. 29). All learners learn in ways that are unique to them. This is referred to as variability.

We want to caution that embracing student variability is not the same as designing instruction based on learning styles. An article in the Atlantic, “The Myth of Learning Styles,” shares the pervasiveness of the learning styles myth (Khazan, 2018). More than 90% of educators in various countries believe in their presence and use them to design instruction. But spoiler alert—there is no such thing. This is not to say that we do not have a unique mix of strengths and weaknesses, cognitive variability, multiple intelligences, or preferred learning approaches. But our brains are not wired for a single “style” of learning.

If someone says, “I am a visual learner,” or “I need to hear it, to learn it,” this idea stemmed from the theory of learning styles. There is just one problem: the theory is not grounded in science. Multiple studies have proven that learning “styles” are no more than learning “preferences” and that a preference doesn't lead to better learning outcomes (Nancekivell, Shah, and Gelman, 2019).

If we cater to a student's “learning style” by giving the “visual learner” more visual information and more aural information to the “auditory learner” or more movement to the “kinetic learner,” we will shortchange their learning process. This does not mean we can't embrace multiple forms of intelligence and provide numerous scaffolds and supports. We should provide visual, auditory, linguistic, conceptual, and sociocultural scaffolds, but not because of learning styles—because of variability.

In UDL Now! A Teacher's Guide to Applying Universal Design for Learning, third edition (Novak, 2022), variability is unpacked in terms of interpersonal variability and intrapersonal variability. Certainly, as educators, we know that our learners are very different from each other. This is interpersonal variability. There are still models where “struggling readers” are placed in a different classroom than “advanced readers” because the student needs are different, but this doesn't embrace intrapersonal variability. For example, we may be in an “advanced” reader group. It is likely that our group will not receive options to listen to the audio version of the text or access sentence stems because we “do not need them.” But what about days when we are exhausted and having a terrible day, or when we forget to wear our glasses, or when the most responsible thing we could do for our mental health is to take a more accessible pathway to find balance? Instructional groups, when they are used for placement, do not embrace intrapersonal variability. Our needs are always changing.

The lack of appreciation of learner variability, especially intrapersonal variability, causes many learning environments to be restrictive and disabling to students. According to Liz Hartmann, an adjunct lecturer on education at Harvard University and an expert in UDL (2015), “When teachers embrace the conceptual shift of the UDL framework and learner variability, they understand that severe disabilities are part of the natural diversity that is to be expected and embraced in classrooms” (p. 58). When this shift occurs, educators are much more likely to provide the options and choices necessary for students with disabilities to thrive in inclusive classrooms.

Once educators embrace variability, inclusion, and the promise of UDL, they adhere to three principles when planning learning experiences: provide multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. Considering these principles removes the barriers that make curriculum and instruction “disabling” to learners, especially students with disabilities (Meyer, Rose, and Gordon, 2014):

• Provide multiple means of engagement. Student engagement is equal parts attention and commitment. For students to pay attention, they need learning opportunities that are relevant, authentic, and meaningful. Since students are different from one another, and because they are dynamic and their needs evolve based on context, no one lesson will be authentic to everyone. To be committed to authentic learning, students need to learn how to maintain effort and persistence, cope when learning experiences are challenging, and self‐reflect to help guide their learning. In a universally designed classroom, these skills are explicitly taught by providing students with opportunities to practice these skills in meaningful ways as they work toward their goals.
• Provide multiple means of representation. When teachers present information, they often use a single representation and provide the same lesson to all students. This is often done in a lecture, by playing a video, conducting a lab, or presenting or demonstrating information, teaching vocabulary, and so on. Because there is significant variability in students, they differ in the information they need to gather before applying it in an authentic assessment. By providing multiple opportunities and options for students to learn information, students are empowered to personalize how they build knowledge and skills.
• Provide multiple means of action and expression. Once students are interested in authentic learning outcomes and have learned the information by selecting the options that best meet their needs, they need to express their understanding in an authentic assessment. When students participate in discussions and complete assessments, they are taking action and expressing their learning. If we want all students to have equal opportunities to communicate their learning, we need to design flexible pathways. To do this, it is critical to unpack our standards and ask, “How can we design opportunities where all students can share their progress toward the standards?”

The three principles of UDL support educators in creating multiple pathways for students to learn and express what they know while empowering students to make choices about their learning. Although this framework does allow students with disabilities to thrive in their classrooms, it also increases the engagement and achievement of all students (Scott, 2018). Understanding the three principles is the foundation for building learning experiences that work for all students and make effective inclusion possible. The three principles of UDL support educators in providing options and choices so students have pathways for how they engage with learning, learn, and share what they know.

The UDL principles are further broken down into the UDL Guidelines (CAST, 2018), a collection of evidence‐based strategies that embrace variability and support expert learning that are continually evolving. As of the publication of this book, CAST's website notes, “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.”

UDL Now! (Novak, 2022) reminds readers, “Know that regardless of the language of the current or future Guidelines, they are just that—guidelines. They are not prescriptive and “one‐size‐fits‐all. Think of the guidelines as a Swiss Army Tool that can be used in many ways.” Because UDL and its core principles have evolved with education, it has grown to impact every major education initiative today.

UDL is sometimes confused with differentiated instruction, a complementary but different framework. Whereas UDL is about proactively designing flexible learning environments where students can make choices to self‐differentiate their learning, differentiated instruction is an approach where teachers modify curricula, methods, materials, and assessments to address the diverse needs of individual students and small groups of students (Tomlinson et al., 2003).

Given this discussion, the differences may not be obvious. Table 3.1 identifies what makes each of the frameworks unique.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD, 2021) published a research brief that examines evidence‐based approaches to accelerating learning. This brief discusses the importance of UDL and robust multi‐tiered systems. They advise:

• Streamline curriculum while focusing on grade‐level standards, which connects to UDL's focus on firm goals
• Allow for additional time to integrate necessary prerequisite skills
• Customize instruction based on strengths and areas of growth for each student
• Leverage student interests that lead to deep, engaging learning
• Use Universal Design for Learning (UDL), multiple modalities, and small group instruction

The connections to UDL are explicit, but there are also areas where differentiated instruction (DI) is necessary, specifically when noting that some students need “additional time to integrate necessary prerequisite skills” and using “small group instruction.” In inclusive classrooms, teachers use feedback from formative assessments to create groups of students. After reviewing the results of universally designed assessments, you will often find there are three categories of students (McGlynn and Kelly, 2017):

• Students who have fully mastered the content or skill and are ready to move on or access additional challenges
• Students who have a basic understanding of the content and/or skill
• Students who do not yet have an understanding of content and/or skill

In a universally designed classroom, students access firm goals and flexible means but their outcomes are not the same. To accelerate learning, teachers need to create small groups of students based on data to provide additional instruction or support. This is where differentiated instruction comes in.

These frameworks complement each other in a multi‐tiered system, but first, best instruction should be designed using the principles of UDL. When evidence suggests that students need additional support, intervention, or enrichment, teachers can differentiate instruction to supplement, not supplant, universally designed learning experiences.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is often thought of as simply providing choice, as a lesson planning template, or as a framework for curriculum design, but it is much more comprehensive. It is the expression of a belief that all students are capable of learning. When crafted and implemented with this belief, instruction can help all students succeed in inclusive and equitable learning environments. In UDL Now! (Novak, 2022), UDL is described in terms of beliefs, skill sets, and systems:

• Beliefs. In a universally designed classroom, teachers have to believe that all students can learn at high levels and that inclusive placement is necessary for success. Teachers must also believe that students are capable of becoming expert learners who can make effective decisions for themselves when given conditions of nurture and the opportunity to try. No exceptions.
• Strategies and skills. Belief systems are not enough. Educators must continually build a skill set to design with student variability in mind. They have to learn how to unpack learning outcomes and design assessments where students can share what they have learned in relevant, authentic, and meaningful ways. But a UDL skill set is more than lesson design. To eliminate barriers that prevent students from learning, educators must be trauma‐informed, culturally responsive, and know how to support students academically, behaviorally, socially, and emotionally.
• Systems. To create universally designed classrooms, schools, and districts, educators need district support. District professional development, leadership practices, high‐quality and flexible curriculum, available technology, and schedules all impact an educator's ability to meet the needs of all learners. Recognizing system barriers is important as we design action plans to create multi‐tiered systems. MTSS plans strategically address these barriers, which ensure that UDL can be scaled and optimized district‐wide.

We have had many leaders and educators ask us for UDL‐driven resources focused on what an educator must possess to successfully engage in UDL for students. To look at this another way, what capacities does an educator need to have/be able to do to remove barriers to learning when designing Tier 1 instruction that is inclusive and equitable? Table 3.2 identifies skills necessary to universally design instruction. Consider using Table 3.2 in one of the following ways:

• Share Table 3.2 in an upcoming faculty meeting or professional development session. You can encourage colleagues to use the tool as a self‐assessment. Educators can consider areas where they identify relative efficacy as well as areas where they would benefit from collaboration, feedback, and support. We all have areas where we can grow. That is what being an expert learner is all about.
• Use the tool to vet your current professional development offerings. Are you providing ongoing support for all learners to eliminate barriers that may interfere with learning? Is your professional learning focused on designing instruction to meet each learner's needs academically, behaviorally, socially, emotionally, and culturally? If not, how could you begin to share or model strategies as you work as a team to scale inclusive practices in your school or district?
• Use as a tool to inspire mastery‐oriented feedback within informal or formal observations. When you identify practices that may create barriers for learners, share some resources to support educator practice and growth.

UDL can also offer a framework for viewing and calibrating inclusive instruction to help increase teacher efficacy. Building teacher efficacy is the practice of building “teachers' confidence in their ability to promote students' learning” (Hoy, 2000). The team at Novak Educational Consulting (2022) created a UDL look‐for document to help teams calibrate their understanding of UDL (see Table A.1 in Appendix A). This tool can be used by teachers, instructional coaches, and evaluators to observe and set goals for more universally designed learning opportunities in the classroom. The tool was designed with a focus on instructional coaching, and instructional coaching questions, because of its documented impact on teacher efficacy. Research is clear that instructional coaching can significantly impact teacher efficacy when the following elements are in place (Javius, 2020):

• Trust with a teacher is developed and leveraged to have honest conversations surrounding the current level of efficacy.
• The coach has to develop an uncanny knack for assessing the “will and skill” of the teacher.
• The coach provides high‐quality and timely feedback to the teacher to engender immediate instructional action.
• The coach can cultivate a “psychological safe space” with the teacher to engage in racial equity, if applicable in the coaching relationship.
• The coach solicits feedback on their coaching to examine their efficacy of coaching‐up teachers.

Deeper Learning

The book Equity by Design: Delivering on the Power and Promise of UDL (Chardin and Novak, 2020) demonstrates the need for deeper learning experiences aligned with UDL. Not only do students need access to classrooms that are engaging and universally designed, but they need those classrooms to celebrate their identity. The section “Where to Begin? Reflecting on Ourselves, Our Students, and Our Systems” notes, “Education today should be designed to elevate and celebrate the voices of students. A focus on teaching advocacy and channeling student passions in our classrooms needs to replace our focus on depositing knowledge to students sitting passively in rows” (p. 6). This is a call for deeper learning experiences for all students.

The Learning Policy Institute defines deeper learning as “teaching and learning practices that enable students to learn core academic content in ways that apply their knowledge to relevant problems” (Hernández and Darling‐Hammond, 2019, p. 3). Deeper learning approaches help students think critically and solve meaningful, complex problems using mathematical, scientific, and creative reasoning.

Deeper learning experiences require collaboration, effective communication, and self‐directed inquiry, enabling students to “learn how to learn” and develop academic mindsets that increase perseverance and productive learning behaviors (Roc, Ross, and Hernández, 2019). When classrooms are designed with UDL and deeper learning, all students can demonstrate mastery, identity, and creativity, defined below (Mehta and Fine, 2019).

• Mastery is evident when all students develop the knowledge or skills outlined in the standards and practices, with the ability to transfer that knowledge across situations.
• Identity is evident when all students become more invested in the discipline by thinking of themselves as active agents who do that kind of work. To support a shift in thinking from “I'm learning about biology” to “I am a biologist,” educators affirm each student's cultural and racial heritage and leverage their funds of knowledge, experiences, and interests.
• Creativity is evident when all students shift from receiving the knowledge of a discipline to acting or making something within the discipline. Students engage with tasks that have multiple paths to multiple standards‐aligned solutions.

The book In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School (Mehta and Fine, 2019) offers the following explanation of the three virtues:

In the spaces that teachers, students, and our own observations identified as the most compelling, students had opportunities to develop knowledge and skill (mastery), they came to see their core selves as vitally connected to what they were learning and doing (identity), and they had opportunities to enact their learning by producing something rather than simply receiving and knowledge (creativity). Often these spaces or classrooms were governed by a logic of apprenticeship; students had opportunities to make things under the supervision of faculty and older students who would model the creative steps involved, provide examples of high‐quality work, and offer precise feedback (p. 7).

Incorporating deeper learning into your MTSS work is critical to ensure that all students have access to enriched environments where they are challenged and stimulated, and higher‐order thinking and performance are expected (Noguera, 2017). Deeper learning draws directly from research on culturally responsive pedagogy, which ensures that diverse students engage in academically rigorous curriculum and learning, feel affirmed in their identities and experiences, and develop the knowledge and skills to engage the world and others critically (Escudero, 2019). Gloria Ladson‐Billings (1995) proposed three main components of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: a focus on student learning and academic success, developing each student's cultural competence to assist students in developing positive ethnic and social identities, and supporting students' ability to recognize and critique societal inequalities. All three components must be utilized to lead students to academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical awareness. It is critical to ensure that all students have access to culturally sustaining pedagogy, a theoretical stance proposed by Django Paris (2012) that “seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 93).

The integration of this research and the focus on mastery, identity, and creativity in the definition of deeper learning is based on a deep belief that all students can engage in authentic, meaningful, and rigorous learning experiences with their peers. We want to design systems that consider student safety, foster belonging, and support agency (Riley, 2018).

We want to ensure that each student's physical and psychological safety is central to the design of our systems and environments. Here, not only are students' physical safety needs being met, but they feel safe to make mistakes in our classrooms or come to an adult when they need emotional support. When it comes to belonging, we want to make sure that all students feel that they are valued members of our learning community. We also want to promote agency so all students, regardless of identity, feel empowered to play an active role in their learning.

Summary

The purpose of MTSS is to ensure that all students have equitable access to Tier 1 classrooms that meet their needs academically, behaviorally, socially, and emotionally. Equitable MTSS requires significant shifts in mindsets, skill sets, and how our systems and structures are designed. When leaders are immersed in strategic work to create more comprehensive multi‐tiered systems, they have to demystify what it means to have inclusionary practices and inclusionary placements and share the importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and deeper learning as core frameworks in inclusive classrooms.

Reflection Questions

1. At the beginning of the chapter, we asked you to consider what you know about UDL, differentiated instruction and deeper learning and to pose questions about the frameworks. Return to those questions to reflect on if your understanding of the frameworks has evolved.
2. UDL requires schools and systems to focus on beliefs, skills, and systems work. In your experience, which areas are the most challenging to address?
3. What systemic shifts can you make to create conditions, so that deeper learning occurs in all settings?
4. What specific indicators can we monitor in our system to ensure that UDL and deeper learning occurs in all settings?