Direct Instruction

This article presents an overview of Direct Instruction, a teacher-directed curriculum specifically designed to address the learning needs of underprivileged students who are at-risk of failing. This system of teaching was developed by Siegfried Engelmann in the 1960s and emerged as a viable form of instructing those identified students who could benefit from the highly intensive, sequential instructions. Direct Instruction has certain characteristics: an academic focus; a teacher-directed curriculum; clarity to goals; review of past learning; presentation of new material in small steps; the monitoring of student progress through questioning; provision for feedback with corrections; provision for independent exercise; and the revision of the lesson's goals based on review. Elements of Direct Instruction are also incorporated within software that is used to enhance the learning of at-risk students.

Keywords At-risk students; Automaticity; Direct instruction; Learning objectives; Mastery; Phonics; Sequential learning; Teacher-directed learning

Teaching Methods > Direct Instruction

Overview

Direct Instruction is a system of teaching that was developed by Siegfried Engelmann in the 1960s, as a way to address the learning needs of underprivileged at-risk students. Studies have shown that the programs work best in Kindergarten and Grade 1; however, the programs also have been proven to work effectively in Pre-K through 6th grades, in secondary programs, in adult special education, and for remedial students.

This teacher-directed program begins with a highly developed classroom script that breaks down complex skills into specific sequential components. Students are taught each component. The teacher models the desired behavior, provides practice and feedback at each step, and tests students to determine mastery. If 100 percent mastery is not achieved, then the teacher takes steps to re-teach skills until all students have acquired mastery. The highly directive program focuses on topics such as: reading, mathematics, language, science, social science, fact learning (or cultural literacy), and handwriting. The program requires ongoing intensive technical support for teachers.

Described as a highly structured, intensive teaching program, Direct Instruction is geared to address the needs of underprivileged children as a way to accelerate learning for at-risk students. The oldest version of Direct Instruction was called DISTAR and originated in the Carl Bereiter-Siegfried Engelmann Preschool at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in the 1960s. Engelmann, an education specialist and professor at the university, asserted that if a student failed, the reason behind this failure was the instructional sequencing rather than the fault of the student. He further stated that just because a teacher covered certain material didn't mean that the student learned the material. Hence, he developed a program that had certain characteristics: an academic focus; a teacher-directed curriculum; clarity to goals; review of past learning; presentation of new material in small steps; the monitoring of student progress through questioning; provision for feedback with corrections; provision for independent exercise; and, the revision of the lesson's goals based on review.

Direct Instruction gained recognition when the federal government's Follow Through Project in 1967 confirmed the effectiveness of Direct Instruction. The goal of the Follow Through Project, a $500 million dollar endeavor, was to raise performance in low-income districts. Agencies across the United States were invited to implement their programs in order to discover programs that would meet the 50 percent rise in performance that the project anticipated. Of the over twenty programs that were involved, only Direct Instruction came close to the mark of 50 percent. The Follow Through Project was cancelled in 1995 due to budget cuts. However, Engelmann's work continued and was expanded into several instructional packages that focused on reading, math and language, and included the addition of general comprehension and analytic skills to the early mastery of skills agenda that was promoted in the earliest DISTAR model.

A hallmark of Direct Instruction is its fully scripted program of instruction. Lessons are heavily researched and designed to teach concepts, with each sequential lesson built on previously mastered skills and understandings. Classroom scripts are written, tested, rewritten, retested, and piloted until developers are assured that 90 percent of students can acquire the specified knowledge the first time around.

Teachers need orientation and adequate professional development to be successful in implementing Direct Instruction. The program requires teachers to ask up to 300 questions in at least six small group sessions each day. Teachers perform reading checks every five to ten lessons until the class has reached 100 percent mastery. Even the novice teacher can follow the procedures of Direct Instruction and foster success. In-class coaches are commonly offered for support when the commercially produced Direct Instruction program is first introduced to a school system. Coaches monitor each individual teacher and offer support when problems evolve. In-class coaches can be employers of the contractors who promote the program or teachers who have been trained in Direct Instruction.

Direct Instruction has evolved further to include best practices in literacy development. The program is used in small groups, as a way of developing communities of learners where students meet group and community goals. Teachers give brief placement tests to ensure that each student begins where he or she belongs; the organized short lessons are implemented sequentially.

Although once linked to instruction in many content areas, the more recent approaches to Direct Instruction have been coupled with systematic and explicit phonics instruction. Following its initial introduction, there has been a renewed interest in Engelmann's original program, due to the Department of Education's "Reading First" initiative, with its focus on more defined reading instruction across schools. Within the "15 Elements of Effective Adolescent Literacy Programs" presented by the Alliance for Excellent Education (2004) is described the need for direct, explicit comprehension instruction "in the strategies and processes that proficient readers use" (p. 4). The "Reading Next" program, an expansion of the "Reading First" program, emphasizes this point in the instruction of older children.

In May 2006, the National Council on Teacher Quality published its findings of the state of reading instruction. It asserted that "the current reading failure rate of 20 to 30 percent could be reduced to the range of 2 to 10 percent" if elementary teachers incorporated certain research based practices in their classrooms (p. 1). These practices include characteristics of Direct Instruction: explicit instruction in letter sounds, syllables and words; teaching phonics in a sequence; practicing skills to a point of automaticity; and, frequent assessment and instructional adjustments to determine student progress. Direct Instruction has evidenced itself to be a program that has the ability to increase the literacy skills in at-risk students. One area of significant underperformance by the at-risk student was that of writing skills. Study participants' metacognitive skills positively transferred to their writing performance. Accordingly, at-risk students need an extended hands-on practice with writing strategies throughout a writing process. Direct Instruction in mastery of phonics is also more effective than other teaching approaches in helping students become skilled, independent readers. Physical education programs have also incorporated Direct Instruction in their curriculum, as a way to implement and assess basic skills. Demonstration is a major part of the modeling in physical education programs.

Teachers in science programs also support the implementation of Direct Instruction in their curriculum. David Klahr, professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, has reviewed a spectrum of teaching methods in science instruction and has asserted that Direct Instruction has its place in the science classroom. Direct Instruction becomes an effective model when teaching a process. Specifically, the design of experiments is an activity that is easily retained when Direct Instruction is used to promote this skill. The Direct Instruction curriculum itself is a highly tuned curriculum supported by such organizations as the National Institute for Direct Instruction and the Association for Direct Instruction.

While the Direct Instruction program has a highly specific curriculum and strategies for implementation, the term direct instruction has evolved to include any teacher-directed approach to instruction that involves the components of explicit step-by step instruction and student mastery at each step. Teachers have developed their own scripts, preparing lesson plans that include fast-paced directed instruction, with regular checks for understanding and feedback. Recently, educational technology has included hybrid direct instruction opportunities for students, motivating students to work on their own to improve their skills. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, direct instruction was viewed by some as a possible tool for teachers to use as they faced the difficulties of remote and hybrid learning environments.

Application

Development of Curriculum

Developers of Direct Instruction curriculum follow a specific protocol before a program is implemented in classrooms across the country. Developers review all state and national standards and then analyze current curricula. They develop a program and pilot it with anywhere from twelve to thirty students. As students work through this material, teachers review the process and change areas that are not appropriate for implementation. There can be up to four or so revisions to any particular program before a curriculum is determined to be appropriate for distribution.

Typical Application

Kozloff outlines a typical application of Direct Instruction. First, teachers frame the task that the students will learn. The teacher models information verbally or through demonstration. The teacher may repeat the model to ensure that all students have observed the model. Teachers lead the students to repeat information and then perform a routine together, repeating the routine until all students have expressed understanding. Students then perform the task independently and are tested to see if they have acquired the material. The teacher then verifies what the students have learned, and praises their efforts. Skills are taught until student responses have reached automaticity and students are able to generalize their learning into new and untaught situations.

Higher Order Thinking

Teachers of Direct Instruction explicitly and systematically teach students higher order thinking skills. They assume that students do not know how to make inductive and deductive generalizations on their own, so they teach each part directly, step-by-step. Teachers introduce do-objectives, informing students what they will be able to do when they are done with the tasks. Specifically, teachers facilitate the performing of certain logical operations such as induction and deduction. To promote inductive thinking, the teacher models the review of specific elements and students note them by comparing and contrasting elements across examples. Students then induce generalizations of concepts from their review of examples. To promote deductive thinking, students review general concepts and examine new examples.

Use of Achievement Groups

Prior to skill development, students are tested and assigned to achievement groups. Training provided usually revolves around small modules where teacher directs the instructional process depending on the skills acquired, providing a set of procedures that fit with instructional targets and arrange the environment accordingly. The main goal of this strategy is to reach with students the mastery level before learning a new skill. Students who progress more quickly in certain areas are periodically assigned to faster groups. They may return to their original group when they have acquired certain skills.

Assessments

Testing is a frequent part of Direct Instruction. Teachers assure mastery throughout the learning process, determining who is moving ahead or falling behind. Students are moved from one achievement group to the other, to assure that all students are progressing. Direct Instruction requires 100 percent mastery before the teacher goes on to the next subset of skills or activities.

Improving Reading Instruction

Direct instruction is used to teach basic skills in reading. Teachers explain a reading skill, step-by-step, and supervise practice. Instruction begins with phonemic awareness activities that includes the direct teaching of a set of letter-sound relationships in a clearly defined sequence, and then moves to include complex phonics and decoding lessons, and progresses to a focus on comprehension and analysis of content. Study skills are also covered in reading instruction, including use of reference materials, graphs, tables and maps.

Scientific research informs us that Direct Instruction has a greater contribution to growth in reading than instruction that provides non-sequential or no phonics instruction. Other benefits of using Direct Instruction in teaching reading include the improvement of word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension and fluency.

Improving Reading Comprehension

For those teachers involved in literature-based learning, Direct Instruction is appropriate for enhancing the reading comprehension of students. As discussed by John Savage, Direct Instruction is particularly effective with students whose intellectual abilities are below those of others of the same chronological age. Direct Instruction appears to be most appropriate for teaching specific comprehension strategies such as: showing causal relationships in texts; using graphic and semantic organizers; using questioning to guide and monitor student learning; teaching students to ask questions about their reading; recognizing story structure; and for summarization. Steps to providing clear direct instruction include: direct explanation, modeling, guided practice and application.

Vocabulary Instruction

The Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement states that Direct Instruction is an effective way to teach vocabulary, particularly when the words represent complex concepts that are not readily used in day-to-day experiences. This method of teaching vocabulary - providing students with specific word instruction and teaching word-learning strategies - leads to improved reading comprehension.

There are specific Direct Instruction strategies that aid in deepening students' knowledge of word meanings. Teaching to specific words before reading helps students learn new words, as well as comprehend the text. Using new words in different contexts improves word learning. Teachers should also provide extended exposure to new words. Direct Instruction in the learning of new words and understanding word meanings include the use of dictionaries and other reference material, and promote the study of word parts and use of context clues while reading rich texts. Instruction should include words that are important to understanding a concept, words that are used over and over again, and difficult words that are particularly challenging for students to understand.

Computer - Mediated Instruction & Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction curriculum is applied to the use of drill-and-practice and tutorial software to enhance the learning of various student populations. Drill-and-practice software aids at-risk students in need of individual instruction and practice. The software can be less threatening to this student population and can remedy specific weaknesses in reading and in understanding of materials in high-stakes testing situations. The software is self-paced and usually develops practice in math, vocabulary and spelling, specifically addressing lower level skills. Students work on example items one at a time, and receive immediate and detailed feedback.

Tutorial software also incorporates Direct Instruction curriculum within its instructional sequence. Students can learn a topic without any help from a teacher or from other materials. The software includes an instructional sequence of explanation, practice, and feedback. Often, this form of computer-mediated instruction is used for review of materials or when students desire self-paced learning.

Viewpoints

Criticisms of Direct Instruction

There are many criticisms that surround Direct Instruction. Leontovich describes Direct Instruction as being a racist program that emphasizes rote learning and assumes that minority children cannot assimilate higher order thinking skills. Other critics of Direct Instruction criticize it for being too rigid and concentrating too heavily on basic skills. Direct Instruction also has a history of problematic implementation, as some administrators have thought that the teacher guides would give teachers all the support they needed to implement programs. This can result in dissatisfied teachers and lower-than-expected achievement levels.

Countering Criticisms Through Use of Perceived Best Practices

In contrast to the criticisms that have arisen from Direct Instruction programs, Kozloff and Bessellieu state that, in actuality, Direct Instruction incorporates many of the best practices that are common in modern classrooms. For instance, Direct Instruction promotes the discourse of social activity and learning, such as paying attention, waiting turns, addressing audience, and learning how to learn. This convergence of important factors includes the right kind of comprehensible input, a supportive context, large amounts of time and conducive psychological characteristics (e.g., patience, tolerance of ambiguity, and integrative motivation). The program also includes a wide variety of literary genres that are developmentally appropriate and interesting to students. Direct Instruction also enhances higher order thinking, as it is taught explicitly. There is minimum rote learning promoted.

Practice is also incorporated in Direct Instruction, as students repeat readings so that they can review different objectives with each reading. This type of practice is necessary in promoting fluency, internalizing knowledge, and enhancing independence.

Effective Methods in Teaching

As more and more school systems are holding their teachers accountable for student learning, controversy arises as to what is the most effective method for presenting knowledge. Three methods that are often used in the classroom are inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, and Direct Instruction. Inquiry helps students learn by engaging them in a range of different types of investigations, from descriptive to experimental. Discovery learning actively engages students in the discovery of their own procedures, promoting productivity and creativity. Direct Instruction promotes the coordination of information and skills into teacher-directed instruction. There is evidence that students can benefit from many different teaching methods. David Klair (2006) states that whatever teaching methodology is most popular at the time, an effective teacher uses the more productive strategy for any given situation.

Terms & Concepts

Automaticity: Skills are taught until students have fully internalized them and reproduction of the skill is automatic. Students can then generalize their learning in new, untaught situations. Skills cognitively move from short to long-term memory. In reading instruction, automaticity refers to automatic word recognition.

Classroom Scripts: Classroom scripts are the step-by-step instructions for the implementation of skills in the Direct Instruction classroom.

Discovery Learning: Students are actively engaged in the discovery of their own procedures, promoting productivity and creativity.

Do -Objectives: Teachers inform students of the objectives they will be able to perform when their learning is complete.

Inquiry-Based Learning: Students learn by engaging in a range of different types of investigations, from descriptive to experiential.

Mastery: Mastery is the acquisition of a skill or knowledge.

Phonemic Awareness: Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of a spoken language work together to make words.

Phonics Instruction: Phonics instruction is the teaching of the relationship between letters of a written language and the individual sounds of a spoken language.

Sequential Learning: Sequential learning is the understanding of new information in linear steps where each step follows logically from the previous ones.

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