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In this article, Don Glass, Anne Meyer, and David H. Rose examine the intersection of arts education and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to inform the design of better art, curricula, and UDL checkpoints. They build a case for the contribution of the arts to expert learning across the affective, recognition, and strategic neural networks and argue for making affective and reflective learning outcomes more explicit in the arts. Throughout this piece, the authors call for a vision of the arts playing an increasing role in providing engaging learning options in an integrated general curriculum.
Few readers of this special issue of the Harvard Educational Review will need us to draw attention to the continuing marginalization of the arts in education. We share the view that this marginalization impoverishes not only art education but education more generally. We also share a concern about a different form of marginalization - the marginalization of large numbers of students in our schools. We have come to believe that these two forms of marginalization reflect a common underlying problem: traditional curricula are too narrowly conceived, designed, and implemented to prepare students - any of them - for their future. The result is a persistent and pervasive disabling of many of our students, the educational system, and the arts.
In this article we - an arts educator, a neuropsychologist, and an educational designer - seek to address the underlying problem that these two marginalizations share. We will do that by advocating for curricular reform in which the power and diversity of arts education are combined with the power and flexibility of curricula designed from the outset to embrace and enhance the natural variability of learners. The framework for this approach is encapsulated in the reform movement called Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
After briefly reviewing the framework of UDL, we examine the intersection of UDL and arts education. We argue that UDL is a helpful adjunct to arts education that can make it more universal and more central. Following that, we argue that the arts can play an increasing role in providing the rich, meaningful, and engaging types of learning options that UDL demands. By situating arts teaching and learning in current neuroscience evidence, we highlight where arts content,...