Frederic Fovet
Summary
Frédéric Fovet is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Thompson Rivers University, in Western Canada. Fovet is an inclusion specialist with a specific interest in emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), critical pedagogy and universal design for learning (UDL). Fovet also has a strong grounding in Disability Studies, and has served as a teacher and principal in schools with a focus on the successful inclusion of students with EBD.
Fovet’s research portfolio includes: change management and the integration of technology as a tool for inclusion in in K-12 schools; the strategic implementation of UDL in the K-12 and post-secondary sectors; professional development design for teachers on the topics of EBD and using UDL with international students; mental health as a strategic issue in education; and using the social model of disability in schools to develop inclusive practices.
Experience
Fovet taught at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) for three years, where he was an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education. He previously served as director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill University, where he was responsible for the campus-wide promotion of UDL. Frederic consults nationally and internationally in the area of UDL and was the founder and program chair of the first two pan-Canadian conferences on UDL, held at McGill (2015) and UPEI (2017). Fovet has served on the editorial board of the journal Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties since 2012 and is occasional editor for the journal Disability & Society.
Credentials
Fovet’s interest in inclusion is rooted in a dual professional perspective. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from King’s College London (1989), and a Master of Laws (1990) and Master of Philosophy in Criminology (1991) from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He practised as a solicitor in the United Kingdom before refocusing his career on differentiation, inclusion and access. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychoeducation from the Université de Montréal (2014), a Master of Education in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties from the University of Birmingham (2008) and a PhD in Education from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (2016). Fovet also holds a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Studies from Université Laval (2014).
Frédéric Fovet is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Thompson Rivers University, in Western Canada. Fovet is an inclusion specialist with a specific interest in emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), critical pedagogy and universal design for learning (UDL). Fovet also has a strong grounding in Disability Studies, and has served as a teacher and principal in schools with a focus on the successful inclusion of students with EBD.
Fovet’s research portfolio includes: change management and the integration of technology as a tool for inclusion in in K-12 schools; the strategic implementation of UDL in the K-12 and post-secondary sectors; professional development design for teachers on the topics of EBD and using UDL with international students; mental health as a strategic issue in education; and using the social model of disability in schools to develop inclusive practices.
Experience
Fovet taught at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) for three years, where he was an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education. He previously served as director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill University, where he was responsible for the campus-wide promotion of UDL. Frederic consults nationally and internationally in the area of UDL and was the founder and program chair of the first two pan-Canadian conferences on UDL, held at McGill (2015) and UPEI (2017). Fovet has served on the editorial board of the journal Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties since 2012 and is occasional editor for the journal Disability & Society.
Credentials
Fovet’s interest in inclusion is rooted in a dual professional perspective. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from King’s College London (1989), and a Master of Laws (1990) and Master of Philosophy in Criminology (1991) from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. He practised as a solicitor in the United Kingdom before refocusing his career on differentiation, inclusion and access. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychoeducation from the Université de Montréal (2014), a Master of Education in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties from the University of Birmingham (2008) and a PhD in Education from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (2016). Fovet also holds a Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Studies from Université Laval (2014).
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Accommodations represent individual occurrences of retrofitting; they do not represent an effort to make teaching and learning more inclusive per se but represent instead a legal protection against discrimination (Edwards et al., 2022; Fossey et al., 2017). They amount to a suite of interventions and services that are offered outside the class, that translate into action legislative protections for students with disabilities that guarantee access to learning (NEADS, 2018). In essence, these accommodations are radically distinct from current efforts to make the whole classroom more inclusive through a deep reflection on learner diversity in teaching and learning. How will both these processes cohabit within the 21st century post-secondary sector, when they are grounded in radically opposite theoretical lenses and values? How do these individual accommodations, of a legal nature, evolve and become meaningfully reshaped in an environment where an increasing amount of UDL and inclusive design is being implemented in the tertiary classroom?
Accommodations represent individual occurrences of retrofitting; they do not represent an effort to make teaching and learning more inclusive per se but represent instead a legal protection against discrimination (Edwards et al., 2022; Fossey et al., 2017). They amount to a suite of interventions and services that are offered outside the class, that translate into action legislative protections for students with disabilities that guarantee access to learning (NEADS, 2018). In essence, these accommodations are radically distinct from current efforts to make the whole classroom more inclusive through a deep reflection on learner diversity in teaching and learning. How will both these processes cohabit within the 21st century post-secondary sector, when they are grounded in radically opposite theoretical lenses and values? How do these individual accommodations, of a legal nature, evolve and become meaningfully reshaped in an environment where an increasing amount of UDL and inclusive design is being implemented in the tertiary classroom?
I assert that the current branding of online teaching in higher education, in a neo-liberal landscape, predisposes many learners to resist an explicit challenge to the banking model and therefore makes it arduous to teach critical pedagogy online. I explore here my attempt at meaning making while I interpret how online design of a course on CP—far from freeing participants to challenge, contest, and rethink traditional pedagogy—seemed to lead them to seek overly traditional relationships, roles, and pedagogical experiences. In the final section of the chapter, I open a wider discussion on some of the challenges that arise from the tension identified within the very concept of critical pedagogy in online spaces: the ambivalent perception of being both freed and hindered in challenging traditional classroom practices.
While recognizing the significant gains that have been achieved in the field of inclusive education, this chapter will suggest the time has come to re-examine how assistive technology is in fact integrated on terrain and to reconsider the effectiveness of this use. Three arguments will be put forward to support this premise: (i) first, it will be suggested that assistive technology can be so specialized, non-user-friendly, and expensive that it stigmatizes students with disabilities and hinders social inclusion (Perelmutter et al., 2017); (ii) second, the chapter will argue that while assistive technology is often available in the classroom, it frequently remains integrated very clumsily and fails to serve pedagogy in an optimal fashion (Hartman et al., 2019); (iii) third, the chapter will argue that the notion of assistive technology is now possibly obsolete since most operation systems include a wide array of accessibility tools in their regular user suite. It is therefore perhaps time to redefine the relationship the educational sector entertains with the accessibility features that are present in everyday technology tools so that they become universally and systematically used in instruction with all learners (De Couvreur & Goossens, 2011).
The second part of the chapter will encourage inclusion practitioners and advocates to use Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a lens to address this changing landscape and tackle the concerns highlighted in the first part of the chapter (Dalton, et al., 2019). It will be suggested that UDL may help educators integrate technology in a more seamless way than previous frameworks, for the purpose of inclusion. First, because it is concerned with inclusive design as the blue print of all teaching and learning, UDL avoids the stigmatization of students with disabilities; (ii) second, UDL allows teachers to integrate technology smoothly for a pedagogical purpose and from a design perspective; it avoids an approach to educational technology that is excessively focused on the tech products themselves; (iii) third, UDL relies on common sense, every day tech features, present on most devices, rather than on expensive assistive technology that is onerous on resources. It will be argued furthermore that frameworks such as UDL lead us to question the very notion of assistive technology, and to redefine how regular technology features present on all devices more broadly widens access in the classroom.
The third part of the chapter will examine how UDL not only forces us to redefine the nature of the sector’s relationship with technology and the use educators make of it in the classroom, but also leads teachers to fundamentally rethink their construction of disability within the classroom. UDL translates, it will be argued, the Social Model of Disability into teaching practices (Fovet, 2014). As a result, it also ensures educators redefine their relationship to technology in the classroom within a Social Model lens.
The Handbook of Research on Applying Universal Design for Learning Across Disciplines: Concepts, Case Studies, and Practical Implementation offers practical examples of UDL having successfully been embedded in courses within various disciplines and classroom formats, as well as across the undergraduate and graduate sectors. The chapters provide case studies and concrete examples of what the UDL reflection on practice might look like in specific faculties and departments. While highlighting UDL in areas such as educational technology, student engagement, assignment design, and inclusive education, this book is ideally intended for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, higher education professors and leaders, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the integration of UDL into strategic academic plans.
Two years ago the first Pan-Canadian Conference on Universal Design for Learning took place at McGill. It was a unanimous success and has set a precedent for regular Canadian academic gatherings to explore the development of UDL and encourage its further promotion. The interest and momentum are growing for UDL across Canada, in both K-12 and post-secondary sectors, and the time has come for UDL practitioners and advocates to come together again to exchange, showcase practices, and examine the potential for future development.
Intention
The intention of the conference is to create an opportunity for practitioners from different sectors, from across the country, to come together, exchange on UDL practices, and to share their vision for the future. The Conference also hopes to encourage an interdisciplinary dialogue and to offer participants a multi-faceted overview of current Canadian initiatives. To this end, the conference will offer, not just K-12 and post-secondary streams, but also a stream for Student Services and Student Affairs professionals, a stream specifically for Instructional Designers, and a stream showcasing the learner voice. The Conference organizers also hope to attract UDL practitioners from overseas in order to allow for an emerging International dialogue on UDL implementation and research. The theme of the conference also seeks to create a bridge between the UDL discourse and the User Experience (UX) literature, and welcomes participants from the community at large.
Adams, R. (2023, December 7) Ofsted inspection contributed to headteacher’s suicide, coroner rules. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/dec/07/ofsted-inspection-contributed-to-headteacher-suicide-ruth-perry-coroner-rules
Government of the United Kingdom [GoUK] (2024) Ofsted responds to the Education Select Committee report. Corporate Information. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-responds-to-the-education-select-committee-report
Mulberry Bush School (2024) The Archive. MB3. https://mulberrybush.org.uk/mb3/archives/
This interactive session engages participant in examining this tension. It will lead the participants through a range of reflective activities seeking to have them contextualize this dichotomy within their own landscape. It will draw on two research projects which were completed in Western Canada in 2024 examining the (i) sustainability of UDL promotion, and (ii) faculty perceptions around UDL and inclusive design growth in the Academy.
The session will first review and analyze the existing tension between inclusion initiatives and efforts to grow SEL in K-12 schools. The second part of the presentation will examine in more detail qualitative data gathered in Canada, among K-12 teachers, that explores these individuals’ perceptions around the place of SEL within best practices for inclusion. The third section of the session will focus on solutions that may help erode or eliminate this tension and will seek to offer participants hands-on strategies that might be useful in their own national contexts.
The push for extensive online teaching and learning had begun well before the COVID pandemic and the online pivot, but the last three years have dramatically intensified the reflection around what Education 4.0 might look like in the post-secondary. Consensus appears to privilege hybrid and blended learning as the format which is most likely to optimally meet the needs of learners in coming decades. Lessons from the three years of pandemic disruption have been rich and nuanced in this respect. Within this phenomenal momentum of pedagogical creativity and innovation, however, the situation in relation to accessibility and full inclusion of all diverse learners has been ambivalent, and the experiences of diverse students have been contradictory. This session showcases the qualitative analysis of phenomenological data collected among accessibility and inclusion specialists within higher education – faculty and support staff - regarding the challenges and opportunities encountered during these transformative three years. The theoretical paradigm within which this data is showcased and analyzed is interpretivist, but the work also acknowledges preoccupations of critical theory/ critical pedagogy. The discussion that emerges from these findings will focus on the ways these pandemic lessons on inclusive teaching and learning can now serve as an exceptional window to proactively frame smart pedagogies of the future that leave out no stakeholders. The final section of the session examines ways to integrate these pandemic lessons to generate sustainable best practices for accessibility and inclusion in transformative blended learning spaces, that succeed in going beyond ad hoc interventions and retrofitting.
The term ‘two solitudes’ is often used in Canada to describe the cultural isolation and suspicion French and English communities develop in relation to each other. This concept will be used in this live interactive session to encourage participants to reflect on the differing views, visions and lived experiences of faculty and accessibility service personnel in relation to the adoption and implementation of UDL in the post-secondary sector. It will create an opportunity for a multidisciplinary reflection around the optimal ways to bridge the conflicting visions and experiences these two groups of key stakeholders have in relation to UDL adoption in the post-secondary classroom. This facilitated collective brainstorming session will support participants as they seek to (i) understand the cause of these conflicting subjective realities in relation to inclusion in the classroom, (ii) reflect on practices that may bridge these conflicting views, (iii) formulate calls for action which may be useful to campuses to nurture multistakeholder involvement as they promote UDL implementation.
While change has been impressive and it is now fair to assert that higher education is much more focused than ever on inclusion, this discourse remains very narrowly focused on impairment and disability. This is problematic in many ways and threatens the further development of inclusive policies and of effective universal design practices. (i) First this narrow conceptualization of students with disabilities is problematic as it fails to acknowledge intersectionality and the way these students’ lived experience often also involves marginalization on the basis of nationality, race, sexual orientation, and gender. (ii) It becomes rapidly clear when instructors adopt a barriers analysis in the redesign of their courses or assessment with the use of inclusive design lenses such as UDL, that the barriers experienced by students with disabilities are also commonly encountered by other diverse learners. Efforts to convince instructors of the pressing need for inclusive design therefore lose momentum by ignoring many of the learners this reflection is pertinent for. (iii) Lastly in terms of strategic change and of the embedding of inclusive design in the mission statements and sustainable plans of campuses, there is strength in numbers and the lack of interdisciplinary discourse on inclusion and accessibility weakens efforts for growth of this agenda.
This fully interactive session will lead participants to thoroughly explore the interdisciplinary networks and dialogues that are necessary on their campuses to trigger change and to widen the discourse on accessibility to include all key stakeholders. It is action focused and aims to offer the participants the opportunity to develop an immediate plan as to the ways they can become change agent in this process of interdisciplinary work around accessibility. The session is based on qualitative research carried out in Canada with faculty and support personnel that seeks to explore the hurdles and opportunities that currently exist within the process of creating interdisciplinary efforts towards accessibility across post-secondary institutions.
Much of the reflection that has occurred around the use and integration of technology and virtual tools in teaching and learning, however, has ignored learner diversity, accessibility, and inclusion. The time constraints, exceptional circumstances of the pivot, the urgency of the measures, and the understanding arrangements were temporary have contributed to a certain laissez faire in terms of accessibility. The legal notion of undue hardship has explicitly been used by many schools and school districts to circumvent legislation on inclusion and human rights provisions which normally guarantee accessibility to learning.
This session will first examine the various concerns regarding inclusion and accessibility which have arisen during the pandemic in relation to digital learning. The presentation will then analyze the inherent risks that are present in relation to social justice and inclusion, as educational organizations transition back to face-to-face instruction and seek to retain the digital flavour that has blossomed over the last two years. The third section of this paper is a call for action which delineates the safeguards that must be in place as digital transformation of teaching and learning gains momentum in the post-pandemic landscape.
And yet a malaise around the very format of instruction and assessment keeps growing. Most instructors are amply aware that many practices that are currently being perpetuated were designed when the learner population was historically oddly homogenous. There is tension in this contemporary and fast changing context and many classroom practitioners are thirsty for user-friendly, time efficient tools that might guide them effectively through this pedagogical metamorphosis without endangering standards, core teaching objectives, and external benchmarks – and without pushing them to exhaustion. Assessment is an area of this collective pedagogical reflection where fear of change is most tangible.
This fully interactive closing Keynote will encourage participants to explore, in workshop style, the use of Universal Design for Learning as a simple and sustainable framework to begin the journey of breaking free of teacher centric design in assessment. The first section of the session will encourage the participants to examine the need for change in this landscape and the pressing thirst for hands on tools for pedagogical transformation (the ‘why?’). Attention will be paid to the way the COVID pandemic and online pivot have made this urgency more tangible. The second part of the session will showcase the extent to which UDL offers a very specific appeal in this context, as a process to begin the journey towards inclusive design in assessment (the ‘how?’). The third part of the session will take a macro view of the process of pedagogical change in higher education, and stress the need to acknowledge a number of important institutional, strategic and organizational variables in order to create winning conditions for UDL adoption in the area of assessment (the “and now?”).
In 2020, however, the COVID pandemic forced campus closures and an overnight shift to online instruction and assessment across the world. Many have argued that this pivot has helped increase awareness of accessibility and has developed inclusive design as a mindset among instructors. Equally numerous are researchers and practitioners who feel that the pandemic has weakened institutions’ commitment to inclusion, made accessible learning more difficult to achieve, and generally hindered the development of UDL in Higher Education.
This interactive session will lead the audience in assessing to what extent each of these assertions might be true, and how campuses can draw important lessons from these experiences, in relation to UDL implementation.
The presentation draws from multiple interactive workshops which have been offered to UDL advocates and faculty throughout the pandemic. It presents the analysis of phenomenological data gathered throughout these professional development sessions.
Call for chapters is ongoing. Please contact me for details
Editor: Dr. Frederic Fovet, Associate Professor, School of Education and Technology, Royal Roads University, Canada.
Topics covered by the book
Higher education has entered a phase of transformation over the last decade globally, in which institutions have been compelled to progressively shift their focus from research to teaching. Over this period, the student population in post-secondary has also become increasingly diverse. Faculty are hence increasingly being encouraged to develop pedagogical practices that are student-centered, transformative and inclusive. This objective requires a rapid shift of mindset from instructors, but they are also being constantly reminded of the need to simultaneously function and thrive within a business model ethos, and a neoliberal value system. There is a tangible ambivalence in the messaging faculty receive, and instructors are required to be creative, savvy and versatile in order to navigate this contradiction successfully. The volume seeks to examine the tension which exists between student-centered transformative pedagogies and neo-liberal pressures within higher education, as well as the opportunities being developed in this landscape.
Topics include innovative and transformative student-centered practices in higher education pedagogy which may inherently clash with neoliberal imperatives and objectives:
Inclusion;
Universal Design for Learning;
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion;
Accessible Learning;
Critical Pedagogy;
Active Learning;
Constructivist practices;
Social Constructivist practices;
Experiential Learning;
Open Education;
Decolonizing Higher Education;
Indigenizing Higher Education;
Social Capital Development;
Global Citizenship Education.
Important dates:
Chapter abstract submission: June 01, 2021
Full chapter submission: August 15, 2021
Book publication: October-November, 2021