ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a contextual background to policy developments coordinated through the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that have resulted in shared approaches to curriculum and qualifications development and recognition. These initiatives have had a significant impact on the format of curriculum design, most noticeably through the formation of competency-based frameworks that have been adopted to guide teacher education and other professional HEI programs. The chapter identifies how such a framework can be enhanced when combined with the core principles of UDL, so that there is a strengthened capacity for resulting hybrid frameworks to meet the learning requirements of all students. In proposing such synergies between frameworks, we argue that students and their unique socio-cultural identities, and their active role in their autonomous formation as professionals and teachers, should be ideational touchstones for educators when considering the nature of how such competency frameworks might be developed, adapted and applied. Specific reference to Spanish teacher training acts as a contextual guide through which these ideas are explored.