Achieving the Transformational Vision for Universal Design for Learning: Guest Associate Editor Introduction

The potential of universal design for learning (UDL) has captured the imagination of policy makers, educators, administrators, teacher educators, as well as educational researchers. Over the past 20 years, there has been increasing interest in how the vision of UDL could be translated into practice. And yet, there is little agreement about whether or not UDL is a design intervention and therefore the responsibility of publishers and instructional designers as they create curricula and instructional materials, or whether UDL is a pedagogical practice that is the responsibility of classroom teachers, instructors, and college professors as they develop lesson plans, learning activities, and formative or summative assessments (Edyburn, 2010). Such confusion certainly undermines the scaling of UDL and limits the benefits for students with disabilities who need expanded supports to access the curriculum, engage in meaningful learning activities, and demonstrate improved learning outcomes (Capp, 2017; Davies et al., 2013; Loreman et al., 2014).

I am pleased to introduce this guest column that profiles the work of Drs. Matthew Marino and Eleazar Vasquez as they describe the relationship between executive functioning and learner variability in inclusive classrooms. They highlight the significance of executive functioning as a foundational meta-cognitive skill necessary for success across the curriculum, as well as lifelong functioning, and why deficits in this area must be explicitly addresses for students with disabilities.

As long-time researchers, practitioners, and leaders in the area of UDL, Marino and Vasquez address the perennial problem of whether UDL is a design intervention or a pedagogical practice by arguing that it is both. They provide a practical guidance on using an executive functioning coaching and mentoring model within a UDL framework to address learning variance. They illustrate the value of barrier analysis, an engineering problem-solving tactic that has significant application for UDL instructional designers, for designing multiple pathways through a topic within the curriculum. Their attention to accessibility and usability is an instructional design characteristic that is underrepresented in the UDL literature. Yet, they thoughtfully address the teacher’s role in implementing the UDL designed materials and the array of real-time interactive decisions that must be made in response to learners’ performance as they move through a unit of instruction. Perhaps most importantly, they draw attention to the need to close the loop concerning any instructional innovation. That is, using assessment data to determine what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Consistent with a clear theme in the literature that consistently calls attention to the urgent need to measure claims about the efficacy and outcomes of UDL (Smith et al., 2019), Marino and Vasquez conclude with a call for more research on executive functioning and the ways that UDL might be applied to a evidence-based variable that often times mitigates academic and lifelong success within students with disabilities. Such an agenda will be helpful in removing barriers to equal access to the general curriculum that are often left unaddressed in inclusive classrooms. In the meantime, this work illustrates how the application of engineering problem-solving technologies to instructional design can help diverse learners experience equal access, inclusion, and more (Roscoe et al., 2019). Practitioners will find this article valuable for achieving the goals of UDL to address the needs of not only the primary beneficiaries that motivate their initial action but also a variety of secondary beneficiaries. That is, students who need executive functioning supports but are not known to the teacher in advance of their struggles or failure. Measuring the outcomes of UDL in terms of both primary and secondary beneficiaries is indeed an important step forward in capturing the potential of UDL for diverse learners.