Fostering Culturally Sustaining Practice and Universal Design for Learning: Digital Lesson Annotation and Critical Book Clubs in Literacy Teacher Education

Abstract

Supporting novice educators in developing culturally sustaining and universally designed literacy practices, which are also socially situated and contextual, can seem challenging in online learning environments without access to classrooms. This study sought to understand how novice educators developed literacy teaching practices infused with culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) and universal design for learning (UDL) in an online learning environment. The authors used the P+E Framework to support the conceptualization of social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence in an online graduate elementary literacy methods course. While all three forms of presence were necessary in the course, social presence and teacher presence needed to be frontloaded and intentionally cultivated to support the type of cognitive engagement necessary for UDL and CSP informed literacy instruction. Additionally, elements of UDL modeled through course design served as a secondary layer of learning that participants were able to notice and name without explicit teacher presence. Implications for teacher education are discussed, including how high-touch online literacy methods courses should model the bending of curriculum toward learners.