UDL and ESL in the Context of Global Studies

By Sherine Ebadi, Geography 

Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2026  

Teaching Global Studies, I emphasize developing students’ critical thinking, reading, and writing skills as primary learning objectives of the section. However, my own experiences in academia have taught me that struggling with these skills cannot merely be explained by lack of aptitude or engagement. As a GSI, I found myself struggling with how to foster student participation when studying dense, theoretical texts such as Stuart Hall and Chandra Mohanty, who write on discourse and representation, which we apply in the interdisciplinary field of Global Studies. When students were reluctant to talk in small groups, I realized they were struggling to speak with new vocabularies and concepts they were encountering for the first time. The problem was magnified with my English as a Second Language students adapting to the particular meanings of concepts such as race, migration, and development in a US-based context.

In Summer 2024 I participated in a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) seminar offered through the GSI Teaching & Resource Center. My biggest takeaway was that when students are given choice and agency in how they learn, they participate more and develop deeper understandings. The seminar exposed me to creative ways of fostering participation, beyond just talking in groups. Speaking aloud was often a deterrent to those who felt shy about their English-language skills, and others were having difficulty grasping the material. Applying a UDL framework to teaching ESL students confirms what has been emphasized by disability activists: pedagogy centered on accessibility by design, rather than accommodation, enhances engagement among all students. Since the UDL seminar, I now offer options when asking students to reflect on course concepts. For example, I use technology such as PollEverywhere which allows students to reply to a prompt, like and interact with other students’ comments, which I can project onto the screen and use to facilitate discussion. I also enjoy giving the option to handwrite reflections on the questions I pose to students who choose to work in small groups. I ask students who choose these alternate modes of participation to turn in their written reflections after class to gauge progress. I enjoy writing short comments and handing these informal reflections back in subsequent classes, which I have found eases the anxieties of ESL students who worry about expressing themselves due to grammatical mistakes. A class where some students are quiet because they are doing reading exercises and writing reflections is more enjoyable than one where students are checked out because group discussions aren’t useful for them to consolidate knowledge. I always make sure my comments on these freewrites encourage and recognize the value that their perspectives bring to the classroom.

I believe that creating an inclusive classroom is a collaborative process that must be negotiated each term in response to the participants that make up the learning space. In a recent mid-semester evaluation I asked my students to reflect on what was working well for them in section, and received a heartening response, “she created a lot of activity to allow us type in the discussion, it really help me because I don’t really talk so much. Fact that she provided this type of activity is a big plus!!” For me, feedback like this strengthens my commitment to a UDL framework that encourages students’ agency and therefore to see the value of their voices. Since I have begun to offer multiple means of engagement, my students do speak up more in small and large group discussions. By decreasing barriers to participation, students come to understand that analytical skills are not about disembodied perfection, but about engaging in dialogue with different perspectives, gleaned from unique backgrounds and experiences.