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Classrooms are increasingly diverse, and many students with a variety of learning differences and disabilities spend the majority of their days in inclusive classrooms (Courey et al., 2012). As teachers strive to create learning environments that meet the needs of all of their students, many search for resources to help them do so more effectively. One thing is clear: providing all students meaningful access to STEM education requires effective curriculum design, and this is especially true for students with diverse learning needs (Basham & Marino, 2013).
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework for proactively designing curriculum for all students by ensuring that learning experiences support all students' access to learning tasks, build students' deep understandings of knowledge and skills, and develop students' internalized habits that support expert learning (Meyer et al., 2014). To achieve these outcomes, UDL-based curricula adhere to three principles: provide options through multiple means of engagement, provide options for content representation, and provide options for students to demonstrate understanding through their actions and expression (Basham et al., 2020). In two previous articles, we addressed strategies that support UDL, including (a) visual supports to address content representation (Mrachko, 2020) and (b) instructional choice to address engagement (Mrachko & Vostal, 2020). In this article, we will focus on the third principle-provide multiple means of action and expression-and offer a series of suggestions that support its application through enhancing students' executive functions within learning tasks.
The action and expression principle is divided into three guidelines that work in concert to allow students to navigate learning activities and show what they know (CAST, 2018). First, to ensure access to learning tasks, the physical action guideline emphasizes that materials used during learning must be sufficiently differentiated so that all students can successfully use them. Some students need access to assistive technologies to respond during tasks, but other students may simply benefit from materials that enhance their physical interaction with learning. For example, using a computer platform for learning tasks can offer seamless integration with some assistive technologies (e.g., voice-to-text software) so that certain students can actually access tasks presented to them, but many students can also benefit from different alternatives for physically responding to tasks and assessments (e.g., anything other than only pencil-and-paper responding)....