One Size Fits None
I was struck by Simon Lewsen’s article “The Accommodation Problem” (September/October). Are universities enabling students to avoid the essential challenges of learning, or are universities finally adapting to inclusive learning? As a high school teacher, I see this struggle as being the result of students carrying high school accommodations into higher education. A number of high schools in Canada follow Universal Design for Learning principles. But since provinces—Ontario, most recently—started “de-streaming” courses, eliminating the distinction between applied and academic streams, there’s a greater diversity of abilities and learning styles in our overstuffed classrooms. We don’t always have the time, training, or resources to tailor individual accommodations to every single student on every single assessment, so we look for universal strategies, like removing deadlines altogether or creating rubrics that don’t penalize spelling and grammar errors. Given this reality in high schools, it’s no wonder students are arriving at universities expecting extensive accommodations.
