An Introduction to this UDL BookBuilder Book
Skrtic’s “The Special Education Paradox” is a highly theoretical article, and many A-117 students have experienced difficulty comprehending it in the past. In order to support student learning, the A-117 teaching team has transformed this article into a digital reading environment using CAST ’s UDL BookBuilder , a free tool that allows users to create interactive books with embedded Universal Design for Learning (UDL) supports.
We have not transformed the entire Skrtic article. Instead, we have decided to highlight the most challenging and most important section: “The Discourse on School Organization and Adaptability” (begins on page 219 of the original article). To guide your comprehension and to activate your background knowledge, we have included a summary of the content leading up to this section as well as a summary of the content concluding the article. In order to differentiate from Skrtic's actual text, the summaries appear in blue text.
Due to the extensive number of endnotes, we decided not to included them in this BookBuilder version. If you would like to follow up on them, please be sure to reference the original text. Also, we wanted to remind you that should you choose to cite Skrtic's article in any of your A-117 assignments, please be sure to cite the original text and not this BookBuilder version.
The creation of this BookBuilder is twofold. First, we hope that this supported reading environment will assist you in better understanding Skrtic’s highly complex argument. Second, this BookBuilder book models pedagogical concepts about implementing inclusive education and UDL and shows that this work can be done using tools that are freely available and easy to use. This entire resource was created using a tool that you can bring to your classroom in your future work!
Happy reading!
A-117 Teaching Team
