Research or policy – which lever pushes practice faster? A universal design for learning historical footnote: A response to Guy Boysen

Background

During my career I have represented myself both as UDL insider and outsider. Allow me to explain the circumstances, as a form of disclosure, so that readers can draw their own conclusions about my participant-observer role.

Whereas the exact date UDL was created/discovered/launched is a bit murky, it’s genesis can be found in the late 1990s. At the time, a critical issue for the field of special education and the U.S. Office of Special Education (OSEP) was the focus on expanding inclusion and access to the general education curriculum. At this point in my career I was active in the field of special education technology, directing a federally funded personnel preparation program grant, and serving as Editor of Teaching Exceptional Children and Special Education Technology Practice. As a result, I was a frequent collaborator with David Rose and CAST colleagues because the foundational roots of CAST’s work were in the area of assistive technology. At the July 12–14, 2000 OSEP Project Director’s meeting, I was the moderator and a panelist on the first UDL presentation (Edyburn, 2000b). As co-editor of the Handbook on Special Education Technology Research and Practice (Edyburn et al., 2005), I oversaw the invitation to contribute, and the eventual publication, of a chapter on the relationship between assistive technology and UDL by David Rose and colleagues (Rose et al., 2005). In 2009, I co-edited a book of reprints (Edyburn and Gardner, 2009) from the Journal of Special Education Technology that was designed to provide the field with access to a compilation of seven original journal articles written by CAST from 2000–2003 where they described the vision and application of UDL (most of the articles were written prior to the publication of their first UDL book).

While I was never employed by CAST, my UDL insider status changed to outsider status after I published an article marking the adolescent transition of UDL: Would you recognize universal design for learning if you saw it? Ten propositions for new directions for the second decade of UDL (Edyburn, 2010). It was in this article that I raised initial questions about how UDL research was potentially being misused as a change lever for federal policy. In 2011, I was a founding supporter of the Universal Design for Learning – Implementation and Research Network (UDL-IRN), an independent organization designed to facilitate URL research and translation into practice (In 2019, the UDL-IRN merged with CAST). I participated on a UDL-IRN team that sought to operationalize how researchers and journal editors should report claims of UDL interventions (Rao et al., 2018, 2020). For the 10^th anniversary of my UDL critique, I revisited my initial analysis and provide some additional perspectives on how I saw UDL metamorphosing in the years ahead (Edyburn, 2019, 2020, 2021). Finally, I served as publisher of the book, Critical Issues in Universal Design for Learning (Lowery, 2021).

Historical footnote

Boysen's (2024) article raises a critical question about how the evidence base for UDL was initially identified and the lack of foundational evidence to support the claim UDL was grounded in neuroscience. His analysis reveals several flaws in the UDL research record. I believe this criticism is valid. And, I can strengthen the argument by describing how I contributed to the problem. Reflecting on the critique about questionable uses of research evidence to support UDL, I realized I had a historical data set that addressed one aspect of the mystery he posed. Allow me to explain and share the artifacts so that additional analysis may be conducted.

As a Professor and Journal Editor I often spend a considerable amount of time correcting reference citations in manuscripts. I observed that authors frequently were not citing the latest journal publications. This observation led to an insight: What if I compiled the relevant special education technology research and practice literature? However, rather than conducting a traditional literature review on a single topic, my research question was: What did we learn last year? I created a new literature review methodology that I called the One-Year Review, and began publishing a series of annual journal articles based on all the new research and practice discoveries being published within a calendar year (Edyburn, 2000a). Over the years this work evolved into literature maps and a variety of conference presentations (Edyburn, 2023).

I routinely present at conferences about utilizing the latest research. I encourage participants in my presentations to stay in touch if they have questions about special education technology research. Since I maintain a significant database of citations and journal articles, I am happy to help people find research relevant for their work. Early in my career I created an email folder where I save both the query and my response. Eureka! Boysen’s research prompted me to see if I could locate the historical artifacts that could help fill the gap about when and how the research based for UDL was established.

UDL research foundations

Our story begins following a presentation I made at the Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA) conference in January 2008 about the special education technology literature. One of the participants in the session, a CAST employee, took me up on my offer to assist in answering questions about the research base. Figure 1 illustrates the initial email inquiry on February 20, 2008. My email response to this person is shown in Figure 2 and the initial UDL bibliography (the email attachment) is presented in Appendix A. Figure 3 illustrates the acknowledgment of receipt.OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Initial inquiry: Research on UDL.

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Figure 2.

My response to the initial inquiry.

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Figure 3.

Acknowledgment of receipt.

A few months later I received a second request that was more specific about CAST’s efforts to gather research in support of the newly developed UDL guidelines (see Figure 4). My initial response (see Figure 5) was a question about the timeframe they were working under. Figure 6 illustrates the guidance I was given concerning the timeline for me to gather the literature resources.OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Request for research on the UDL guidelines.

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Figure 5.

Request for clarification about the timeline.

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Figure 6.

Information about the timeline.

To respond to the query, I reviewed each of the UDL Guidelines and conducted searches within my personal library of databases I had compiled through my annual review of the special education technology research and practice literature. The findings were augmented by my knowledge of research as a journal editor and my awareness of relevant resources through my teacher preparation work. It is important to remember that UDL, as a construct, had only been around since the late 1990s, so I was not aware of any research directly trying to measure UDL interventions. Much of the existing UDL literature in the early to mid-2000s was authored by CAST employees and was essentially arguing for the need for UDL as an educational paradigm shift. For this reason, I do not recall conducting comprehensive online database searches at the time. [And, Google Scholar had only launched in 2004 and had yet to become the core research tool it is today.] To my way of thinking, the task was to try and assemble evidence that the principles of UDL that could be connected to research evidence, thereby justifying the value of the design principle. This level of evidence, level 7 – expert opinion, is often considered to be the lowest level of evidence-based practice (Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt, 2023).

I completed the task in mid-August 2008. Figure 7 illustrates the transmittal email with a notation about some concerns I had about the quality of some citations. Appendix B provides the results of the email attachment concerning my 10-page summary of the research evidence support the UDL Checkpoints.OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Transmittal of my UDL evidence review.

Figure 8 illustrates the email of appreciation I received concerning the bibliography I prepared. A few weeks later I received another expression of gratitude (see Figure 9).OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 8.

Email of appreciation.

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Figure 9.

An expression of gratitude.

The critique provided by Boysen (2024) prompted me to reflect my role in helping to establish the UDL research base. I have chosen to share the artifacts presented in this article to offer a historical footnote concerning one path that was taken to use research in a manner that would subsequently influence U.S. educational policy.

UDL research and policy

The analysis and critique by Boysen (2024) raises important questions about how research evidence has been used to support UDL policy. I have raised similar concerns:

Notice how the definition of UD evolved from a concept or philosophy in 1998 to a scientifically validated framework in 2008. Of concern is the fact that to date, there has been little research on UDL… Without an adequate base of primary research, an analysis of research evidence that establishes UDL as a scientifically validated intervention is not possible (Edyburn, in press). Evidently, the work CAST compiled to support various components of UDL design principles (https://www.cast.org/publications/UDLguidelines/index.html) was mischaracterized by lobbyists and written into federal law. The claim that UDL has been scientifically validated through research cannot be substantiated at this time (Edyburn, 2010: p. 34). [emphasis added]

The artifacts presented in this article provide evidence concerning my 2008 participation in shaping the UDL evidence base. The historical record reveals that CAST was working on compiling a UDL evidence base at least as early as February 2008 (see Figure 1) with a deadline of mid-August for completing the work (see Figure 6). The bibliography I created for CAST for was delivered on August 13, 2008 (see Figure 7). The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-315) was enacted on August 14, 2008. It was not until I wrote my UDL critique that I became aware that my research was potentially used to justify the language in the 2008 Higher Education Act that UDL was a scientifically validated framework—a claim I could not knowingly support in 2010 and still struggle with today.

The Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/), created by the Internet Archive, affords users the opportunity to enter a URL and explore archived copies of a website. As a result, interested UDL researchers could conduct time series of analyses of the CAST website (https://www.cast.org) to study the ways in which UDL has evolved over time. Of particular relevance to the issues raised by Boysen and the historical artifacts presented in this article:

1. The following web page was created by CAST to disseminate the UDL research evidence: https://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/research

Using this historical CAST UDL research page, interested UDL researchers could conduct a content analysis to analyze the role Appendix B bibliography played in establishing the UDL evidence base. [My cursory review indicates a majority of the items I originally identified were included on the initial CAST bibliography.] Based on the timeline summarized above, it is clear that the research bibliography had some behind-the-scenes impact on U.S. educational policy when the 2008 Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act deemed UDL to be a “scientifically-validated framework” at a point where it was difficult to find any research specifically measuring UDL interventions. I look forward to reading any new discoveries and insights this UDL historical footnote may yield.

Returning to Boysen’s concerns about the lack of research evidence concerning neuroscience, the evidence presented in Appendix B supports his conclusions. I can say unequivocally, neuroscience was not a construct I used when gathering evidence for the UDL guidelines. Furthermore, this finding is consistent with the fact that neuroscience was not a core construct in the original UDL works (Edyburn and Gardner, 2009; Orkwis and McLane, 1998; Rose and Meyer, 2000). Neuroscience appears to have been added to the construct of UDL with the publication of CAST’s first UDL book (Rose and Meyer, 2002) that I surmise was a result of collaborators at Harvard and the popularization of brain science by David Sousa (1998). Howery (2021) has argued that the language in which CAST has used to describe UDL has changed across five distinct time periods. Howery echos the concerns raised by Boysen that neuroscience and equity are recent updates to the UDL construct that were not found in the original discourse. Her analysis raises critical questions about the integrity of the core concept of UDL.

In conclusion, I am hopeful that future UDL research will address the complexity of UDL. For example, how do various instructional designs impact student learning outcomes? When implementing universal usability, who benefits? Will research show that individuals without known disabilities (secondary beneficiaries) use UD features more frequently than those with known disabilities (primary beneficiaries)?

There is also on-going need to understand UDL through educational policy research. For example: Where is the tipping point (i.e., instructional designers, classroom teachers) that adds the most benefit for the least cost? Can the value of UDL be understood in the same way that the cost of pollution is calculated (e.g., lack of cost to polluters = no consequence for publishers that generate inaccessible content vs the costs borne by school districts to “clean up” the pollution of publishers who created inaccessible educational materials that now require individual accessibility accommodations)?

As UDL approaches its 25^th anniversary, there is much to be learned.