Even when I’m doing this kind of work, I take efforts to help students understand that there is a larger context and that the skill or knowledge has purpose beyond the thing itself.

Would you agree?

I also have to admit that most of my work now is with juniors and seniors in advanced classes, either in English or creative writing. Most of these students have a firm grip on the “basic skills and knowledge” (with occasional exceptions). What I’m continually revising in my teaching practice now is how to help these students and extend their work. It seems to me that as students move beyond this level, instruction that’s going to be useful must be increasingly individualized and provide increasing freedom for student choice while still giving specific, helpful guidance as the issues/teaching needs arise.

I hope that clarifies rather than muddies our discussion.

So I suppose I have nothing to say other than: well said.

Thanks.

Direct Instruction was developed to teach reading and basic mathematics, which are specific skills. (I’m not sure what discrete means in this area, what would a continous skill be? Or are you not using discrete in the mathematical sense?)

Direct Instruction is a complete curriculum. It addresses children’s differing developmental needs by placing children in lessons according to their level of existing ability. For example, some new entrants to school may know their ABCs. Other new kids may not know what the word “touch” means and therefore would be incapable of following a lesson requiring them to touch a letter and pronounce it. Therefore Direct Instruction includes children being placed based on their starting level of ability. Frequent testing is included, with children being shifted around through lessons based on their progress.

Direct Instruction also varies its approaches based on the subject matter. For example, when colour concepts are taught the lessons call on the teacher to present examples of objects that are identical except for their colours. When teaching weights, objects of one ounce are used. Lessons are presented both verbally and in written form and through games.

Direct Instruction includes flexibility to meet different students’ requirements in its setup from the start. It doesn’t expect every new teacher to have to learn how to incorporate the sort of flexibility you talk about from scratch.

Direct Instruction was found to teach higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills more effectively than curricula designed to teach these directly. The apparent cause of this is that teaching basic skills thoroughly means that a kid’s brain is freed up to concentrate on solving the problem as a whole, rather than having to think about each little step. See http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/becker.htm for my reference as to the better results of Direct Instruction.

I think Coyote teaching and expanding kids’ minds is a lovely idea. I just don’t find it very relevant to teaching reading and basic maths. The point of language is to be able to communicate things between people. The point of reading is to be able to communicate things between people when both people aren’t actually there at once. Since we have no idea what someone may want to communicate, we have a set of cultural standards that assign relatively-fixed meanings to certain forms of communication. So for example, I can send a message to my husband communicating concepts that range from “Can you pick up my mother from the airport on Friday night” to “May I compare thee to a summer’s day, thou art more beautiful and more temperate” to a critique of the current goverment’s policies on property ownership on the moon to “The pharmacist called and said he made a terrible mistake and gave you the wrong medicine and you are to stop taking it at once.” This would be impossible if we had no agreed on standards for communication. Kids should indeed learn critical thinking and problem-solving skills, but decoding existing written material depends on somewhat arbitrary rules that are mutually agreed and should be learnt thoroughly. A kid may then critically examine them, may come up with weird and wonderful calligraphies, may become a coder for NSA, may write essays arguing for the end of writing now we have podcasts, but at least they’ll have the skills to read other’s information and bright ideas if they want to use them.

Mathematics, again, is extremely useful as a foundation for critical thinking. This is because it, in itself, is objective. If a politician’s promises don’t add up, then they don’t add up. But kids have to be able to do basic arithmetic before they can check if a politician’s promises add up or not.

Plus, of course, Direct Instruction only takes about 1/2 the school day, leaving the remainder free for expanding kids’ minds and teaching them to challenge authority or whatever else you think the objective is.

The link is there, it just doesn’t show up unless you hover over it (sorry about that).

I don’t mean to sound like I’m against direct instruction or Direct Instruction, it’s just that I don’t believe in any “magic bullets” … in other words, I don’t think there’s any one correct approach. Students need a variety of teaching approaches, dependant on their level of development, the subject matter, and the particular skills / knowledge / understanding the students are trying to master.

Some people seem not to be comfortable with this level of flexibility. I attribute that to a fear of accomodating instruction to fit specific situations (not just generally, but on a day-by-day, student-by-student basis). Some people hear this as an invitation to be sloppy with instruction, unreflective and unplanned. That’s just a failure to understand this concept. At any rate, it is tough to do well, and I’m nowhere near mastery, but I think it’s an important approach.

My understanding of DI is that it is very effective for teaching specific, discrete skills and knowledge. I think that’s great. However, that’s not the approach I would take if my goal was to encourage creativity, problem-solving, critical analysis, or the ability to ask skillful questions. (See this recent article in EdWeek for a related perspective, or my post on “Coyote Teaching” for one take on disruptive educational approaches.)

Also, please understand that I’m not trying to say creativity, etc. is more important than basic skills and knowledge. My particular teaching context involves upper-level high school students, most in advanced classes, many pursuing the school’s four-year arts program. For those students, there are still times when DI is a helpful method … but many times when it is not.

My point is only that appropriate variety is key.

I agree that slopiness is bad in any context, and I am in no way equating varied or disruptive approaches to instruction with slopiness.

Finally, I think this post expresses my concerns with the teacher/doctor analogy.

Your comments remind me to get back to a series of posts I’ve been kicking around in my head that would articulate more specifically what, why, and how I teach.

Am I still missing something here in what you’re saying?

The evidence is that direct instruction as a general term doesn’t say much about effectiveness. Direct Instruction, the form, has a lot of field-testing beind it, as the developer found out all the ways not to teach something. For example, one of the vital points is to not give any instruction that is ambigious, as from experience at least some kids will interpret an ambigious instruction the wrong way. A sloppy version of direct instruction won’t have been tested for such details.

As far as I can tell teachers are engaged in something like medical care for someone in an intensive ward, or designing an aeroplane. Sloppiness will increase the error rate (luckily kids are smarter than the metal and plastics and whatnot that go into aeroplanes, so some kids will learn despite sloppiness).

I would say that schools use a sloppy method of DI in too many cases, but that’s based only on my own experience.

And I do think part of the problem is with some teachers. Part of the problem is with bureaucracy and administration. Part of it is with the parents. Part of it is societal … etc.

My constant point is that there are many factors contributing to the problems in education, and my constant frustration is with public talk and legislative action that keeps oversimplifying the problem and refusing to consider any complex, nuanced approaches toward a solution.

I don’t have all the answers, but I’m looking for people who are willing to do some serious, thoughtful, balanced searching.

Why don’t schools use it?

(Incidentally, you talk like the problem is with teachers, when most of the problem actually appears to be with the schools’ bureaucracy.

Also, this observation you made is I think very true (and unfortunate).

“…traditional view of teaching as something only women do, and therefore a profession that only supplements another salary (since all women are, ya’know, supposed to be married)”