Co-Designing Inclusive Digital Learning Environments

A Design-Based Approach for Varied-Level Anchors for Participation

Abstract

Today, schools face the dual challenge of integrating a great variety of textual and linguistic practices while ensuring inclusive participation for all learners. Digital storytelling has emerged as a promising approach for enabling students with different abilities and backgrounds to explore academic content through their own voices (Wu & Chen, 2020). This paper presents findings from a design-based research project (McKenney & Reeves, 2018) conducted across primary schools in Italy, Germany, and Portugal, which leveraged digital storytelling to promote inclusive practices around narrative thinking (Bruner, 1991; Herman, 2003). The research addresses two critical questions: how to extract transferable design principles from context-specific inclusive practices, and what conditions enable peer support and collaboration in diverse learning settings. From this inquiry emerged the concept of Varied-Level Anchors for Participation (VAPs), a design framework that creates multiple entry points into learning activities, enabling learners with different abilities, languages, and ages to contribute meaningfully. Through interaction analysis of 41 recorded sessions and additional qualitative data analysis, the study identifies specific design features that facilitate inclusive engagement. VAPs help identify design principles and reconceptualize participation not as individual access but as interdependent contribution, where different abilities become essential to collective outcomes. The study advances the field of inclusive education by offering concrete strategies for designing learning environments where differences enhance rather than hinder collaboration, and by illustrating how DBR can bridge theory and practice through participatory innovation.