What Is UDL — And What Does It Have to Do With K–12 Staff Training?
By Kalin Schoephoerster | KShep Creative
What does a framework designed for student learning have to do with the training your district delivers to adults?
More than most K-12 leaders realize. Universal Design for Learning is one of the most widely referenced frameworks in K-12 education, but almost all of that conversation happens in the context of student instruction. You'll hear it cited in curriculum guides, IEP discussions, and classroom design conversations. You'll hear it cited far less often when someone is planning the training your staff will sit through next month.
That's the gap this post is meant to close. The same principles that make student learning more accessible and effective apply directly to adult professional development. And applying them doesn't require a complete overhaul of how you build training. It requires a shift in how you think about who's in the room and what they need.
What UDL actually is — and what it isn't
Universal Design for Learning is a research-based framework developed by CAST for designing learning experiences that work for a wide range of people from the start, rather than building one version and adding accommodations later. It's organized around three core principles.
Multiple means of representation means offering information in more than one format so learners can access it in the way that works best for them. Text, audio, visuals, captions, plain language summaries: representation is about removing barriers to understanding before they become a problem.
Multiple means of action and expression means giving learners more than one way to engage with content and demonstrate understanding. Not everyone processes by listening, and not everyone shows what they know through a written quiz. Action and expression is about making room for different ways of participating and responding.
Multiple means of engagement means connecting content to what learners care about, reducing unnecessary cognitive load, and giving people some agency in how they engage. Engagement is about why someone would invest attention in the first place and what keeps them there.
One important clarification: UDL does not mean designing every possible accommodation into every piece of training. It means making thoughtful, flexible choices upfront so that fewer accommodations are needed after the fact. The goal is a design that works for more people by default, not a more complicated design.
Why UDL matters for staff training — not just student learning
Most of what's written about UDL focuses on classroom instruction. That makes sense — it's where the framework originated. But the underlying insight applies equally to adult learners: people come to any learning experience with different backgrounds, different strengths, and different needs. Designing as if everyone learns the same way leaves people behind.
Think about the range of staff who might be in a single district-wide professional development session. A para with twenty years of experience in the district and no formal educational background. A first-year teacher fresh out of a licensure program. A specialist who joined mid-year and missed the fall onboarding. A front office staff member who rarely attends PD but is required to be there today. An administrator who already knows this content and is sitting in the back answering emails.
A training designed for one type of learner will work well for some of those people and poorly for others. The person who absorbs information by listening, or who is comfortable navigating a new digital platform, or who already has strong background knowledge will be fine. Everyone else may not be. UDL gives you a framework for closing that gap without creating separate trainings for every role or experience level.
This matters especially in K–12, where professional development time is scarce, staff are juggling competing demands, and training often has to reach a genuinely diverse group of adults in a single session or module.
What UDL looks like in K–12 professional development
Here's what each principle looks like when you move it out of the student curriculum context and into the staff training room.
Multiple means of representation in practice
A policy rollout that consists of a slide deck read aloud is designed for one type of learner. The same content, paired with a one-page job aid that staff can reference later, a short captioned video walkthrough, and a plain-language summary of the three things everyone needs to remember — that's representation in practice.
In eLearning, representation means not relying on audio alone, captioning every video, structuring documents so they're readable without formatting cues, and writing in plain language that doesn't assume prior knowledge. It means someone who wasn't at the last meeting, or who needs to revisit the content three weeks later, can still access it fully.
Multiple means of action and expression in practice
End-of-training quizzes are the default, but they're not the only way to check understanding. For many adult learners, they're not the most useful either. Action and expression means giving staff more than one way to engage with and demonstrate what they've learned.
In a live session, that might look like a scenario to work through with a partner, a reflection prompt at the end of a module, or a "what would you do next?" question anchored in a real situation from their role. In an eLearning module, it might mean decision-point interactions, a downloadable template to apply the content, or a short checklist to use on the job.
The goal isn't more activities for the sake of variety. It's making sure the way you're asking people to engage actually fits what they need to do with the content.
Multiple means of engagement in practice
Engagement is the hardest principle to design for because it's the most personal. What motivates a veteran teacher may not motivate a new para. What feels relevant to a special education coordinator may feel abstract to a clerical staff member.
In practice, engagement means being explicit about why this training matters and how it connects to what people actually do every day. Not in a corporate "here's why this is important" way, but in a specific, grounded way. It means giving people some choice in how they participate where possible. It means keeping cognitive load low by not packing twelve objectives into a forty-minute session. And it means acknowledging the reality that this is one of twelve things on most people's plates today.
Small design choices add up: a clear agenda, a stated time commitment, a connection to a real problem staff encounter. That's engagement, and it's worth designing for deliberately.
UDL and accessibility: how they work together
UDL and digital accessibility aren't the same thing, but they point in the same direction. UDL is the design philosophy: build flexibly from the start so more people can access and engage with the content. Accessibility standards like WCAG 2.2 are the technical implementation, with specific, testable criteria for making digital content usable by people with disabilities.
In practice, a training designed with UDL principles is already moving toward accessibility. Captioned videos serve both a staff member who is Deaf and one who is watching in a loud environment. Clear document structure serves both a screen reader user and someone who skims before they read. Plain language serves both someone for whom English is a second language and someone who is just tired at 4pm on a Tuesday.
The overlap is significant. A CPACC-certified instructional designer brings both lenses to the same project, so accessibility isn't a separate checklist you return to after the training is built. It's built in from the start.
For more on how UDL and accessibility connect in learning design, see Accessible Learning: Why It Matters, How UDL Helps, and What WCAG Means in Plain Language →
A quick UDL self-check for your next training
Before you finalize a staff training, whether live, virtual, or on-demand, run through these questions:
Representation: Is there more than one way to access this content? Is there a written reference, a visual, or a job aid someone could return to later?
Action and expression: Is there more than one way to engage with or respond to the material, not just a quiz at the end?
Engagement: Have we made the connection to staff's actual daily work explicit? Does the training respect their time and attention?
Accessibility: Are videos captioned? Are documents structured with real headings? Is the language clear without assumed background knowledge?
Flexibility: Would this work for someone who missed the last training, joined mid-year, or has a very different role than the person you designed it for?
If most of those answers are yes, you're building training that works for the room, not just part of it.
Ready to build training that works for everyone?
If your district is designing professional development and wants to build in the kind of flexibility that actually serves your whole staff, that's exactly the work I do.
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Or explore K–12 eLearning and staff training services → to see what a UDL-informed approach looks like in practice.
For more on how accessibility and inclusive design connect in a K–12 context, see What K–12 Districts Need to Know About the New Federal Digital Accessibility Rules →