Writing centers; HBCUs; and first-year classrooms: Facilitating active writing pedagogies through universal design

This group presentation and workshop responds to the conference call’s acknowledgement of the potential tensions between active learning and access (UDL) in the teaching of writing, and the need for these lines of pedagogical thought and practice to come together. Each of these terms (writing; active learning; and access) is at risk of becoming over simplified in its reification, maybe especially when it is paired with other terms under investigation. Writing can be seen as a decontextualized “skill” rather than a situated social action; active learning can also be seen as decontextualized, a good in its own right, and be premised on a homogenized, certainly nondisabled student; and access can be seen as an institutional achievement (“We held/attended the UDL workshop”) rather than an ongoing challenge to opening up all aspects of our classrooms and practice. We are particularly interested in contexts where active writing pedagogy is already occasioned, but where students can be exposed to unpredictable barriers. For example, a student with learning disabilities might be negatively impacted by active learning strategies that require the immediate assessing and mobilizing of information through writing in a group situation; a student from a low-socioeconomic background might feel exposed when required to share previous knowledge with peer tutors in the writing centre. Both of these examples need universal design strategies for the active learning approach to succeed.