Radical Alterity

The ideas behind UDL are, in some ways, pretty radical. As teachers, we “plan from the margins.” That is, we think about some of our most disadvantaged students as we contemplate our instruction.

Maybe you think this is not possible?

In response to this, my contention might be that we always have a student in mind when we plan our lessons. Perhaps this student is ourselves? While this is not a bad place to start—indeed, can we ever start from anywhere else but our own experiences?—I would argue that it is not enough.

For our own experiences as a learner only take on their full shape and meaning as we put them into dialogue with other experiences. In this way, I would argue for a type of “radical alterity” to be put at the heart of our planning.

That is, we should think about the children who might be most different from us in order to spot both commonalities and differences. To see what in our experiences is helpful for our teaching practice and to see where our own experiences might not actually be all that helpful as a guide to the learning needs for some of our students.  

If we are always thinking about the “average” student, we risk treating all of our students as average—as typical, as not unique, as not a gift to the world. 

But of course all children are gifts and carry with them gifts that the world is in desperate need of. When we plan from the perspective of those in most need of our assistance, hope and support, then we perhaps plan in ways that work harder to uncover those gifts.

As I pointed out in the context of our immigrant and refugee language learning students, we never want to be caught unawares by the trauma and tragedy that our students might have lived through.  The work of uncovering gifts happens best, perhaps, when we start to recognize the shadows that keep us from seeing our students in their best light.