In this article, author, Bill Wilmot, explores how school leaders can apply UDL to support personalized learning. The article explores ways principals, as instructional leaders, can create school structures and environments that help educators  focus on student learning.

How does it relate to the UDL-SICC?

This article aligns with the Leadership and Management Domain, Element 1 (D3, E1), and it explains how school leaders actively lead, support and monitor UDL Implementation across the school community ensuring systematic, intentional and sustained UDL implementation.

How might you use it?

• School leaders can use the article to reflect on how these elements exist within their school.
• Principals can reflect on how their practices promote conditions for the growth of UDL in supporting new mindsets, envisioning teachers as expert learners, and implementing structural changes.
• School leaders can solicit feedback from educators at their school to discover elements of the three areas discussed in this article, supporting new mindsets, envisioning teachers as expert learners, and implementing structural changes, and how their practices support these ideas.

How can you help learners become expert learners?

In personalized learning environments, learners understand their strengths and challenges and are able to deploy strategies to support their learning. Daily, they are developing the skills needed to be self-directed learners, able to monitor their progress and make connections to prior learning.

These learners can also choose and use the right technologies for the task. As they progress, the anticipated result will be expert learners who are truly prepared for their future. The continuum toward mastery provides learners of all ages with a blueprint for building expertise. Lets take a look at the Stages of Personalized Learning Environments and how we can develop expert learners by helping them develop the skills at each stage along the Continuum of an Expert Learner.