Warm-up Activity
Many educators have had experiences with children who they found to be challenging. Sometimes the challenges are attributed to the characteristics of the students alone. However, we know that many aspects of the environment contribute to the success of students in the classroom or early years’ program. In this activity, students can reflect on their experiences and the challenges that they have had in creating or participating in programs that aim to be inclusive. Through sharing their experiences, ask your students to identify key aspects of the environments and relationships that they feel contribute to radical inclusion of children, educators and families.
Discussion Questions
Create small groups of 3-4 people and begin by asking students to describe an experience as an educator, student, or parent where they believe “inclusion did not work”. Ask students to discuss the following questions:
- Why did you choose this as an example of inclusion?
- Note for instructor:
This is a “trick” question because if you have an example of “inclusion” that didn’t work, then it
wasn’t inclusion.
Inclusion should not be defined by the presence of one or two students who are disabled. Inclusion requires that all people in the space, including educators are treated with respect and are expected to have needs and requirements for participation. The educators, policy and community, should not define those needs and requirements for others. In every group there is diversity of many kinds, and inclusion means that everyone is understood to be a part of the community, and the group adapts for everyone.
- Note for instructor:
This is a “trick” question because if you have an example of “inclusion” that didn’t work, then it
wasn’t inclusion.
- Thinking of the examples that your group has generated, do you think
that Universal Design for Learning,
routines-based approaches or differentiated approaches could have helped in this situation?
- Note for instructor:
Universal Design for Learning is a strategy that can support overall design of the environment to
maximize inclusion.
However, UDL should not be exclusive of differentiating for individuals when it is appropriate and
in collaboration with
the student and their family. Conversely, differentiation should not be done without universal
design being considered.
It is important to recognize that disabled people’s movements have resisted inclusion discourse
when it works to “erase”
disability” as part of human variance and a positive part of identity. For example, ‘erasure’
would result if the goal
is to ensure disability is not evident in a classroom.
What aspects of disability and linguistic justice should be considered when we engage in inclusive early education practice? Universal approaches can support a more welcoming environment, but there are many forms of care and education that deaf and disabled people require and that are not universal. Weber and Syker (2022) note: “UDL has not led to universal accessibility or the elimination of barriers and reduction of biases against deaf, deafblind, and deaf and disabled students in collegiate settings” (para. 5).
- Note for instructor:
Universal Design for Learning is a strategy that can support overall design of the environment to
maximize inclusion.
However, UDL should not be exclusive of differentiating for individuals when it is appropriate and
in collaboration with
the student and their family. Conversely, differentiation should not be done without universal
design being considered.
It is important to recognize that disabled people’s movements have resisted inclusion discourse
when it works to “erase”
disability” as part of human variance and a positive part of identity. For example, ‘erasure’
would result if the goal
is to ensure disability is not evident in a classroom.
- Thinking of your example, what characteristics of the environment
and relationships do you think may be barriers to
full participation?
- Note for instructor:
Often-individual traits of children/students are defined as barriers. However, disability is a
social construct, and
should be understood as a way that we organize people in our social environments. People who
experience disability in
this way (and all people are subject to this social construct) may identify as disabled. But
anti-ableist education is
not about responding to individual needs – it is about recognizing disability discrimination and
joy.
How might you adapt the physical space, social relationships, and the temporal pacing to respond to exclusion or create a more inclusive environment?
Page updated June 2026.
- Note for instructor:
Often-individual traits of children/students are defined as barriers. However, disability is a
social construct, and
should be understood as a way that we organize people in our social environments. People who
experience disability in
this way (and all people are subject to this social construct) may identify as disabled. But
anti-ableist education is
not about responding to individual needs – it is about recognizing disability discrimination and
joy.