Strategy Research Paper on Note taking

Learning Strategy Research Paper: Direct Instruction

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Liberty University

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Abstract

Direct Instruction is a highly effective, though controversial, educational strategy involving a predetermined skills sequence that incorporates previous skills and information into each successive lesson and involves active student participation, positive reinforcements, choral responses, and scripted lessons. While Direct Instruction has been proven to be quite effective in a number of studies there does seem to be widespread resistance to this educational method. This resistance seems to be mostly due to the conflict between the aspects of Direct Instruction and the inquiry-led philosophy that is such a large part of the current educational landscape. In order to increase the use of Direct Instruction educators need to be provided with information regarding the efficacy of Direct Instruction and opportunities to experiment with this learning strategy.

Introduction

Direct instruction is one of the most studied teaching strategies in the field of education. It is also one of the most controversial. Further, despite the fact that this strategy has been so widely studied, there seems to be some confusion regarding what direct instruction actually is. The lack of understanding regarding the nature of direct instruction and the current philosophical environment of education seriously hampers the implementation of direct instruction into the instructional environment. Before looking at the advantages and disadvantages of this learning strategy this paper will first provide a basic definition of what direct instruction is.

What Is Direct Instruction?

There are three terms that are often used interchangeably to refer to direct instruction: uppercase “D” upper case “I” Direct Instruction, lowercase “d” lowercase “i” direct instruction, and explicit instruction. However, there does seem to be some differences between the three terms. Explicit instruction refers to a philosophical approach that is characterized as being “unambiguous, structured, systematic, and scaffolded” (Hughes, Morris, Therrien, & Benson, 2017). In short, explicit instruction is a philosophy of delivering academic content rather than a specific strategy a teacher would use in the classroom. In this line of thinking, direct instruction fits into the broader category of explicit instruction. However, while the two different versions of direct instruction share similar characteristics, there does seem to be a slight distinction between the two in the educational research literature. Direct Instruction (DI) is generally considered to refer to a specific scripted program that a teacher follows to deliver educational content whereas direct instruction (di) lacks the scripted instruction and prepackaged curriculum (Hughes, Morris, Therrien, & Benson, 2017; McMullen & Madelane, 2014: Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016). The scripted program of Direct Instruction (DI) was created through the work of Siegfried Engelmann in the late 1960’s as a means to eliminate the idea that a student’s failure to learn was the fault of the student (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). Engelmann believed that a lack of student learning should be seen as a consequence of inadequate teaching and not due to some moral or intellectual inadequacy on the part of the student (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). Engelmann theorized that using task analysis to break more complex educational content into smaller steps that would build upon each other would create an educational environment that would benefit any student (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). Based on the research of Engelmann and his colleagues, researchers and educators began to develop several scripted programs for classroom use such as Reading Mastery, Spelling Mastery, and Corrective Reading (McMullen & Madelane, 2014).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Direct Instruction

Advantages

There are many advantages to Direct Instructional strategies. One of the most important advantages for classroom management is the reduction in off-task behavior that occurs during Direct Instruction as opposed to less-structured student work times (Hempenstall, 2015). By its very nature, Direct Instruction involves a high-degree of student participation due to its use of positive reinforcement, unison student responses, and heavy reliance on active student participation (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). Active student participation and engagement is one of the methods that are recommended to decrease student misbehavior and keep students on-task during instructional time (Burden, 2013).

Another very important advantage of Direct Instruction programs is the high success rate that has been seen in classrooms where this strategy has been employed. In a review of 300 studies on Direct Instruction that included over 40,000 students Hattie calculated an effect size of .59, placing Direct Instruction programs in the high range when it comes to a programs effect on student learning (Hughes, Morris, Therrien, & Benson, 2017).

A third advantage of Direct Instruction is that it has been so thouroughly researched since it was first developed in the 1960’s. Further, it has been proven to be an extremely effective means of educating students, especially students from low socio-economic backgrounds and students with disabilities (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). For example, Project Follow Through, which gathered data on approximately 70,000 students and was one of the largest educational surveys ever conducted, found that the Direct Instructional model consistently produced the best results in terms of student learning (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). There are very few other educational strategies and methods, if any, that have gone through the rigourous scrutiny that Direct Instruction has undergone.

Disadvantages

One of the main disadvantages to Direct Instruction is the fact that it is so unpopular in the educational community at large. This lack of popularity is probably one of the most difficult aspects to overcome. One reason for this lack of popularity could be the fact that much educational philosophy is based on inquiry based (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). The aspects of Direct Instruction that make it so successful are at odds with the inquiry-led philosphy that is in vogue at this time. Another possible reason for negative teacher attitudes towards Direct Instruction could be the belief that these programs taking teaching out of the hands of the teacher (McMullen & Madelane, 2014). Due to the fact that these programs are scripted and come with prepared materials teachers feel as if they are not being allowed to teach.

A second disadvantage of scripted Direct Instruction programs would be the cost to the school. Pre-made curriculum are expensive and are generally designed for school-wide implementation. The school would need to purchase the teacher’s guide, student textbooks, and workbooks for students to use every year. This would have to be done for every classroom at every grade level. While most of these materials would be one-time purchases, student workbooks tend to be rather expensive and need to be repurchased every year.

Finally, even though Direct Instruction has broad scientific support, there are some studies that suggest the educational gains made through a purely Direct Instructional method are comparable to a hybrid-mix of discovery learning and direct instruction referred to as “Invention” (Chase & Klahr, 2017). While the study conducted by Chase & Klahr are by no means definitive they do suggest that Direct Instruction is by no means the ultimate learning strategy and student success with this method could be influenced by course content and educational learning goals.

Direct Instruction Programs

FLASHCARD SYSTEM (di)

The direct instruction flashcard system is not a scripted program so it falls in the lowercase direct instruction category. However, this system is very systematic, structured, scaffolded and is unambiguous regarding the desired outcome. In this system the math facts for a particular operation (i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) are sorted into sets based on the baseline data that was collected. Each set comprises of facts that a student knows well along with facts with which a student is less familiar. For each set a teacher or paraprofessional presents a flashcard to the student. If the student provides the correct answer the card is moved to the back of the stack. If the student provides an incorrect answer or does not answer within 2-3 seconds, the educator leads the student through a model, error, and test error correction process (Bjordahl, Talboy, Neyman, Mclaughlin, & Hoenike, 2014). After the student goes through a deck three times with no errors it is considered mastered and the student moves on to another set of cards.

Advantages

One of the advantages of this direct instruction approach is the simplicity with which it can be implemented. After the initial baseline data is collected, it is easy for any educator to step in and deliver the instruction and practice. Even educators not familiar with the student, room, or this particular learning strategy- such as a substitute teacher, can quickly and easily provide instruction to students through this method. A student’s parents could also easily provide practice and instruction at home if needed.

A second advantage of this strategy is the fact that students receive quick and immediate feedback. A student will know within seconds whether or not their answer was correct. Further, math facts that were answered incorrectly receive extra instruction and practice to ensure that the student’s misunderstanding is quickly corrected and prevents a student from learning incorrect information.

Disadvantages

A major disadvantage of this approach is that this strategy does take time to implement. For example, Bjordahl and colleagues provided daily, hour-long sessions for each set of flashcards (Bjordahl, Talboy, Neyman, Mclaughlin, & Hoenike, 2014). It took anywhere between 4-6 sessions for the student in their study to complete one set. The sessions for maintenance took 14 sessions and the researchers were not able to begin the maintenance session for set 4 (Bjordahl, Talboy, Neyman, Mclaughlin, & Hoenike, 2014). Further, student absences and school activities often interrupted the implementation of this strategy.

READING MASTERY (DI)

The Reading Mastery program is a scripted program based off of the work of Engelmann and colleagues that focuses on “phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, decoding, and beginning comprehension skills” (Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016). This program is a pre-packaged program that includes teacher books with scripted lessons, tips for effectively teaching with this Direct Instruction strategy, and student workbooks (Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016).

Advantages

One major advantage of this program is the academic gains that students consistently make when this reading program is employed. In the study conducted by Kamps and colleagues, students in the Reading Mastery group showed greater gains than students in the group in which reading instruction was conducted in the usual manner (Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016).

A second advantage of this program is its effectiveness when used with students who have disabilities. For example, in the study sited above, students with autism made significant gains in word recognition, letter sound correspondence, and greatly improved their reading scores on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016).

Disadvantages

One disadvantage of this program was the lack of difference between the Reading Mastery group and the comparison group on the Woodcock Word Attack and Passage Comprehension tests. Both groups made comparable gains on these tests regardless of the type of teaching method implemented (Kamps, Heitzman-Powell, Rosenberg, Mason, Schwartz, & Romine, 2016). Therefore, this program would need additional resources to make gains in these areas.

SPELLING MASTERY (DI)

The Spelling Mastery program is a six-level program that was first published by Engelmann and his colleagues in 1980 and is a “generative spelling strategy” which emphasizes “morphographic word analysis, …suffixes and roots along with the rules by which they are combined into words” (Hempenstall, 2015). This program was born out of an earlier program called Morphographic Spelling, which was first developed by Dixon, a colleague of Engelmann.

Advantages

An important advantage for this program is the fact that it provides students with immediate corrective feedback which research has shown to be critical in developing strong spelling skills in students. This goes against the belief that is widely held that correcting student spelling errors when they are young will damage their self-confidence (Hempenstall, 2015).

Another important advantage of this program is the fact that it helps students to understand that the English language is not some random assortment of letters but an organized language that is governed by rules (Hempenstall, 2015). And, while there are many exceptions to these rules, even the exceptions tend to be governed by rules of their own (Hempenstall, 2015).

Disadvantages

One disadvantage of this program is the possibility of teaching students that “all words are spelled regularly, and can be written by following this simple set of rules” (Hempenstall, 2015). As was stated before, there are many rules that are exceptions to the general rules of the English language; although, even these exceptions are generally governed by rules of their own. According to Hempenstall, Spelling Mastery especially fails when it comes to spelling multisyllabic words (Hempenstall, 2015).

Another disadvantage of the Spelling Mastery program is the demand it places on a student’s memory. There are some words that it is easiest simply to memorize due to their irregularities when it comes to following the general spelling rules (Hempenstall, 2015). However, Hempenstall recommends grouping similarly irregular words together so that students will see the patterns that exist between these words (Hempenstall, 2015).

Conclusion

While there are advantages to an inquiry based learning experience it seems that an explicit instructional model may have more advantages when it comes to student learning. Further, it is possible that the critical thinking skills that educators want students to develop are impossible without the prerequisite knowledge background that would allow a student to consider an issue critically (Hempenstall, 2015). For example, how could a student truly evaluate the soundness of a science experiment without previous knowledge regarding the scientific method, variable manipulation, and the area of science being studied? Having this knowledge stored in one’s head makes a critical analysis of the design of a given experiment possible.

There are a few things that need to be done in order to increase student learning through the use of Direct Instruction. First, educational professionals need to be educated regarding the strengths of explicit instruction generally, and Direct Instruction in particular and provided with the knowledge that the implementation of Direct Instruction does not necessitate the giving up of teaching expertise. This process should involve opportunities for teachers to participate in a hands-on experience with Direct Instruction through venues such as workshops or school improvement meetings. Second, institutions of higher learning need to take a second look at explicit and Direct Instruction and provide future educators with a more well-rounded view of the different educational tools that are available to them when they become teachers with their own classrooms. Third, educational researchers should begin looking for ways to provide educators a means of phasing in explicit instruction into their lesson plans. This may cause educators to feel less overwhelmed by using scripted materials and provide them with a sense that they are not sacrificing their ability to teach through the implementation of Direct Instruction.

The use of Direct Instruction is something that needs to be encouraged. Its demonstrated efficacy and the rigorous education that it provides is something that our students need. Further, the basic skills and knowledge that Direct Instruction allows students to attain will allow them to take part in the inquiry-led lesson plans that have become so popular in the field of education. That alone should cause educators to want to implement a Direct Instruction program.

References Bjordahl, M., Talboy, R., Neyman, J., Mclaughlin, T. F., & Hoenike, R. (2014). Effect of a direct instruction flascards system for increasing the performance of basic division facts for a middle school student with ADD/OHI. Journal on Educational Psychology , 8 (2), 7-14. Burden, P. (2013). Classroom management: Creating a successful K-12 learning community (5th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey, United States of America: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Chase, C. C., & Klahr, D. (2017). Invention versus Direct Instruction: For some content, it's a tie. Journal of Science Education and Technology , 26, 582-596. Hempenstall, K. (2015). Spelling Mastery and Spelling through Morphographs: Direct Instruction programs for beginning and low-progress spellers. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties , 20 (1), 55-81. Hughes, C. A., Morris, J. R., Therrien, W. J., & Benson, S. K. (2017). Explicit instruction: Historical and contemporary contexts. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice , 32 (3), 140-148. Kamps, D., Heitzman-Powell, L., Rosenberg, N., Mason, R., Schwartz, I., & Romine, R. S. (2016). Effects of Reading Mastery as a small group intervention for young children with ASD. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities , 28, 703-722. McMullen, F., & Madelane, A. (2014). Why is there so much resistance to Direct Instruction? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties , 19 (2), 137-151.