Page 48 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

UDL is, among other things, based on brain research; it starts from the
idea that students learn and are motivated in different ways, that they
treat content and instruction in different manners, and that learning
outcomes have different manifestations. UDL is about designing learn-
ing environments so that the goals, methods, contents, and forms of
assessment are diverse enough to meet the full spectrum of needs of
the learners. It is possible to diversify the way in which content is deliv-
ered, the forms of assessment, and the learning environment in such
a way that certain physical or mental limitations will not lead to fall-
ing behind or having a deficit. UDL can thus be seen as an integrative
design approach which fully assumes that students learn in different
ways and that the learning environment should, from the very onset,
be designed so that everybody can learn at their best. Ideally, this
means that adjustments for specific groups are no longer necessary.

The student as the Other
Strictly speaking, this ethical perspective may not truly be an edu-
cational perspective. It does, however, often show up in relation to
matters of schooling and has its own specific method of pushing the
student towards the centre. It is thus relevant to briefly mention it.

This perspective assumes that a pedagogical relationship is always an
intersubjective or interpersonal relationship. Very much like the rela-
tionship between child and parent, the relationship between student
and teacher is also considered an interpersonal relationship. Inspired
by authors like Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Der-
rida, but also in line with religious or secular meanings of personalism,
the instrumentality of relationships in education is questioned; doubt
is raised about forms of goal-oriented thinking in which education is
presented as the utilisation of the right means in order to reach goals
efficiently and effectively. The non-instrumental and ethical aspects
of the pedagogical relationship are emphasised, as this perspective
posits that an instrumental relationship reduces the student to an
object or an instrument in the hands of the teacher or school system.
According to this ethical-pedagogical approach, both the student and the
teacher are then de-personalised or de-humanised. The reference to
the personhood of being human is thus a reference towards human

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