On inclusive design and neurodiversity

Reframing inclusion through design

About this post: This blog is a slightly different one from the others. It comes from a thread that ran through the PhD but never quite found a proper home in the final thesis.

In this post, I will connect my research with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in a way that suggests that inclusive design does not need to be added on afterwards, but can emerge through the structure of the learning environment itself.

As I’ve been revisiting the work in the run up to the viva, I’ve noticed that questions around inclusion, and in particular neurodiversity, keep resurfacing across quite different parts of the project. They show up in small design decisions, within the tensions that emerge. They are most visible in the ways different participants approached the same task.

At the time, I didn’t fully follow that thread. Partly because it sat slightly to one side of the main argument, and partly because the way I gathered data meant it was difficult to make strong claims about it.

This post is an attempt to think that through a bit more openly, in a way that helps me consider future partnerships and how I communicate what my research has to say regarding a view of inclusion that has a particular focus on social and cultural ways of participating. To give a sense of what this looks like in practice, I link to other blog posts, such as the use of social maker types to help learners build their own identities in the creative space, the way there were different pathways into the making process, and the high degree of freedom in the overall way of approaching ongoing activity in the making space.

Inclusion and neurodiversity as a design question

A theme that I want to highlight particularly here is the benefits of designing environments that accommodate diverse learners, particularly those identifying as neurodiverse. For now, I’m going to develop this post by drawing on a few paragraphs from the conclusion of my thesis.

The focus on inclusivity inherent in the SDBE process, aligning with the growing emphasis on inclusion in computing education ¹, prompted reflection on the issue of designing for neurodiversity. As this specific thread emerged later in the research process, it is explored here as an implication for practice and as an area for future research. The outputs of this research, particularly frameworks such as REEPPP and RARB, mirror key tenets of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework [^meyer_universal_2014] in the way they embody concrete exploration, shared objects of activity, personal connection, and varied means of expression and representation ².

The overall findings illustrate how inclusive design can be enacted through flexible scaffolds that invite multiple forms of participation. In practice, facilitators can use these frameworks to create settings where learners import their own repertoires, collaborate, and express agency in personally meaningful ways. The outputs of this research offer practitioners tools and strategies to counter barriers related to cultural dimensions of exclusion (see Section 1.2.5) in practical rather than aspirational terms. Regarding inclusion and neurodiversity, particularly in formal settings, the findings suggest a shift away from assessing and accommodating individual learners’ needs in isolation. Instead, considerations of difference can be embedded within the diversity of pathways available to all learners through the overall learning design ².

Policy implications in this domain are clearer than in previous sections. Equity should operate as a guiding design principle rather than as an accommodation for perceived deficit. Adopting a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) orientation can help schools, universities, and community organisations move beyond compensatory models towards genuinely flexible environments that support a spectrum of learner differences.

What is Universal Design for Learning?

Let’s break this down in a more accessible way.

In the thesis, I am drawing a parallel between the design practices developed in this project and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to designing learning environments that aims to work for as many people as possible from the outset, instead of adapting for individuals afterwards³.

It is often summarised through three core principles:

• Engagement – how learners are motivated and involved
• Representation – how ideas are presented
• Action and expression – how learners respond and demonstrate understanding

Rather than prescribing a single way of learning, UDL encourages multiple pathways through the same environment. What this post explores is how those pathways are taken up in practice, and how they depend on the repertoires that learners bring into the activity.

From accommodation to participation

A key shift in this way of thinking is moving from accommodation to participation.

In traditional models, learners are often assessed against a norm, and support is added when they do not fit that norm. In contrast, UDL assumes difference from the start and designs environments where variation is expected and supported⁴.

In my project, this was not something I set out to do explicitly. However, looking back, many of the design decisions created conditions where different forms of participation were already possible.

What struck me, looking back at the project, was how closely these ideas aligned with the design decisions that had guided the evolution of the learning design that emerged in my research project.

UDL in practice within game making

The learning environment developed in this project supported multiple pathways, different ways of participating, and a high degree of flexibility in how learners approached tasks. The table below outlines some of these connections to concepts that I outline in other blog posts or parts of my thesis.

UDL principle	What it means (simply)	What this looked like in practice	Source / link
Engagement	Getting started through interest	Learners chose their own game ideas rather than following a fixed brief, often bringing in themes from their own lives	Choice and messy learning
Engagement	Staying involved over time	Side missions and optional challenges allowed learners to continue when stuck or bored with the main task	Design responses – side missions
Engagement	Social ways of engaging	Informal collaboration and “jamming”, where learners built on each other’s ideas rather than working alone	Jamming
Representation	Linking abstract ideas to concrete output	The matrix-based level design, where lines of code directly mapped to visible game layouts	Level design vignette
Representation	Visual and direct sketching approaches	Sketching on paper to plan levels, translating into code, or working directly into pixel art using Piskel	Visual prototyping
Representation	Representing patterns within the code environment	Gameplay design patterns presented as selectable options alongside code examples, helping learners connect ideas to implementation	GDPs as mediational tools
Action and expression	Building by modifying existing work	Learners started from a working game and added or changed features rather than starting from scratch	Emergence of GDPs
Action and expression	Expressing ideas through talk and collaboration	Learners explained their thinking, negotiated ideas, and described what their game was doing	Interaction and culture
Action and expression	Testing and sharing work through play	Learners played each other’s games, gave feedback, and refined designs through playtesting	Playtesting and design response

Repertoires and accessible learning design

The table above shows how the learning environment aligned with UDL principles in practice. However, it does not fully explain why these forms of participation were possible, or how learners were able to take up different pathways in meaningful ways.

To understand this, it is helpful to look beyond UDL itself and consider the concept of repertoires. Drawing on Rogoff’s work on learning across three planes of activity, this perspective emphasises how individuals bring practices, experiences, and ways of participating from different parts of their lives into a shared activity⁵. I explore this in more detail in Chapter 3, through the use of social design-based experiments, where learning environments are intentionally designed to support equity and transformation by recognising and building on these diverse repertoires. Rather than treating difference as something to be accommodated, it becomes a starting point for design. This is discussed further in Designing for equity and transformation.

One way of enacting the principles of UDL, from this perspective, is by widening what counts as learning within the activity. For example, a learner might draw on knowledge of a favourite game, combine it with peer discussion, and adapt a code pattern to produce a new feature within their own creation. When the goals of the activity are not narrowly defined, learners are able to draw on a broader range of practices, which in turn opens up more diverse pathways for participation.

Within my own work, this led to an emphasis on blending practices from different domains. Participants brought cultural, social, and creative practices from home and everyday life, which then intersected with the technical practices required for game making. This process of blending is captured in what I describe as relational agency by repertoire blending (RARB), where learners develop agency through combining and adapting different repertoires within shared activity, for example moving between personal interests, peer collaboration, and code-based problem solving. See this post for a fuller discussion.

From the perspective of neurodiversity, the diversity within repertoires, and the ability for learners to blend their own ways of working within the learning setting, is particularly important. Rather than assuming a single “normal” way of engaging with learning, this approach allows for variation in attention, motivation, communication, and ways of working. Some participants preferred structured, step-by-step approaches, while others engaged through experimentation, improvisation, or social interaction. Designing for the movement and blending of repertoires meant that these differences did not need to be corrected or accommodated separately, but could be supported within the activity itself.

For inclusion more broadly, it is the movement and combination of repertoires within the activity that becomes key. Designing for this movement is one way of making learning environments more accessible, flexible, and meaningful.

In terms of future work / research

The increased focus on UDL may provide a useful direction for continuing this work, particularly through partnerships. At the same time, enthusiasm for project-based learning as a movement (at least in the UK) seems to have declined, either because it has fallen out of fashion or, more practically, due to workload pressures that favour knowledge-based curricula. In contrast, inclusion and UDL have become more prominent, perhaps driven by the growing number of young people with neurodiversity-related traits who are struggling within, or leaving, formal education.

One avenue for future research is to explore how REEPPP-style pattern frameworks might support inclusive design within formal computing curricula. More broadly, there is scope to examine how agency and repertoires develop over longer trajectories, particularly as learners move between informal and formal contexts.

This could involve collaboration with educators in other disciplines to refine and test the RARB model, as well as longitudinal studies that trace how scaffolds such as GDPs and side missions support participation and identity development over time. There is also potential to explore how REEPPP aligns with UDL principles across different settings, especially for learners with ADHD, autism, or dyslexia.

There are also ongoing debates around how neurodiversity is understood within education. While some approaches focus on identifying and supporting individual differences, others argue for redesigning environments so that variation is expected from the outset. The approach outlined here aligns more closely with the latter, but this raises further questions about how such designs function in more constrained settings, and where they may fall short. Exploring these tensions is an important direction for future research.

Inclusive design does not need to be implemented as a separate layer of differentiation, but can emerge through the structure of the activity itself. By organising learning around shared objects, flexible pathways, and participant-led development, it becomes possible to design environments where variation is not treated as a problem to be solved through additional activities, but as a resource for all to engage with.

At its core, this points to a shift in how inclusion is understood. Rather than designing for fixed learner types, it becomes about designing for movement, allowing different ways of thinking, making, and participating to emerge and connect within the same activity.

If you are working in this space and are interested in exploring these ideas further in practice, I am always open to collaboration through the JAMM Labs project.

Footnotes