In Defense of Direct Instruction
Aimee Chew
Seattle Pacific University
IN DEFENSE OF DIRECT INSTRUCTION
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Over two hundred and twenty years ago, Noah Webster, one of the fathers of education in
America, stated what may very well be obvious to educators today; “it is far better for youth to
have no education than to have a bad one, for it is more difficult to eradicate habits than to
impress new ideas” (Fraser, 2001, p. 32). Since Webster’s time, numerous tomes have been
written in defense of different teaching strategies and curriculums, whole educational movements
have come into popularity and then waned as our nation has evolved, and educational leaders
have theorized about what a “good” education should look like. After centuries of the one room
school house routine the likes of which are depicted on episodes of “Little House on the Prairie,”
transformational movements like progressivism came to the forefront as educators worked to
improve education in America and create a more holistic, child-centered classroom for
America’s students. Then the Cold War and Sputnik appeared on the scene, along with the fear
that American students were no longer in the lead globally in areas like math and science.
Perhaps our classrooms had grown too child-centered in the early twentieth century and had
failed to focus on important content rather than feelings and personality differences. Current
educational research points to the fact that a more “traditional” teaching approach like Direct
Instruction, when combined with other teaching strategies, is one of the most effective
educational practices available to teachers today, and can lead to much higher instances of
student well-being and academic achievement than other types of instruction. While many other
more avant garde strategies have taken a front seat in recent decades as teaching methodology
and curriculum design have been studied more extensively, Direct Instruction continues to be a
proven means for achieving student success across all subjects and disciplines, although the
research for this particular paper focuses on its uses in the field of English.
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The term Direct Instruction has been used to refer to a specific teaching strategy also
formerly called interactive teaching, explicit teaching, or instructivist teaching; depending on
which education volume one is reading at the time (Dell ‘Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 72). This
method of teaching has been developing for decades as teaching styles and theory have
advanced, but as a specific practice was popularized in the 1960’s by Madeline Hunter. Direct
Instruction involves integrating effective teaching practices with very specific content, classroom
management and careful monitoring of student progress throughout each lesson until mastery of
the subject is obtained. While Direct Instruction is a more teacher-centered approach to
education than some other models, it does not include rote memorization or recitation as some
critics tend to believe. According to Stein et al, “the primary goal of Direct Instruction is to
increase not only the amount of student learning but also the quality of that learning by
systematically developing important background knowledge and explicitly applying it and
linking it to new knowledge” (Stein, Carnine, & Dixon, 1998, p. 228). In many of the Direct
Instruction models, scripted lessons are used in order to help teachers communicate clearly and
effectively while allowing them greater opportunity to monitor student progress during the
lesson. In a Direct Instruction lesson, the teacher starts by introducing the big idea of the lesson.
The next step is scaffolding the material, or helping students to build a bridge between the new
information being taught and the background material they already know. These steps are
followed by giving the students opportunity to integrate new skills and concepts learned through
practice, with lots of guided feedback. Generally, Direct Instruction would not be used all day
by any one teacher, or everyday with every lesson taught. It is a teaching model that is best used
for introducing new material that needs to be mastered at a quick pace before other skills can be
acquired, and which requires more teacher –led instruction for best results.
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There has been much criticism and controversy over what Direct Instruction is and when
to use it as a teaching method. While more constructivist or inquiry learning involves students
discovering concepts on their own, Direct Instruction tends to be less student-centered than many
educators see as beneficial to student well-being (Kozioff et al, 2000, p. 55). Because it tends to
be less student-led, the fear is that in Direct Instruction, students are not able to pursue their own
interests and are just learning facts and concepts that are disconnected from the rest of their
learning. Other educators feel that this model of instruction can be stifling to a teacher’s
creativity (Dell ‘Olio & Donk, 2007, p. 95). This is especially true when a teaching script is
used, which can be the case in certain Direct Instruction lessons in the primary grades involving
student recitation in order to master a specific skill. The feeling among some critics of this
practice is that a teacher would not have the flexibility of reacting to individual student needs or
perceptions in any given lesson while using a script. Another strong criticism of Direct
Instruction is that this model is only beneficial for teaching lower order skills and knowledge,
and appropriate only for disadvantaged or underachieving students who have not fared well in
other types of classrooms.
In defense of Direct Instruction and its positive results in classrooms of all types, much
research has been amassed. It has been tested with all sorts of populations and has proven highly
effective with all of them (Kozioff et al, 2000, p. 57). In numerous long-term studies, including
Project Follow Through, one of the largest education evaluations ever conducted by the U. S.
Department of Education through the Stanford Research Institute, in contrast to comparison
groups taught with other methods, former Direct Instruction students had higher rates of
graduating high school on time, lower rates of dropping out, and higher rates of applying and
being accepted to college (Kozioff et al, 2000, p. 59). In a more recent example, schools in
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Maryland, Texas, and Florida whose teachers adopted Direct Instruction as a means to improve
student achievement saw gains in student learning; in fact, the students whose scores improved
the most were those who had been in the program the longest (Viadero, 2002, p. 15). It seems
that in most of the schools where Direct Instruction is implemented, either in response to
educational failures or just as a change of course, gains in student achievement over time have
been well documented.
My own educational pedagogy tends to lean more to the instructivist side. I agree with
Kozioff et al who affirmed that “to educate means to lead forth—to bring a person into a culture
of ideas (e.g., bodies of knowledge), moral principles, and skills (e.g., reading) so the person
may competently participate in and contribute to the culture—and at the same time develop his
or her potentials” (Kozioff et al, 2000, p. 56). As a Christian I believe that there is an absolute
Truth to be known in the person of Jesus Christ, and as an educator I believe that there is “surely
a reality that exists independently of what we may think of it” and that “our human species has
worked for thousands of years to better understand reality, and has organized knowledge into
systems called ‘mathematics,’ ‘science, etc’” (Kozioff et al, 2000, p. 56). In other words, I
believe there is a body of knowledge that students need to learn in order to be well-educated and
able to participate fully in society. That body of knowledge may fluctuate and change as
knowledge expands and develops, but it is not necessarily up to the whim of the student as to
what he or she should learn. I don’t necessarily fully agree with John Dewey, who claimed that
“the child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all
education” (Dewey, 1897). The reason we send our children to school is in order to see them go
beyond themselves and learn concepts and skills and passions that are different from their own
instincts and powers.
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I use Direct Instruction much of the time in my classroom to introduce material that my
students need to learn really well before moving on and building on the initial material. Last
spring I had the privilege of teaching the Journalism class at my school, which produces the
monthly school newspaper. Before my students could start writing articles that would be
published and read by over five hundred people, including parents, faculty and administrators, I
needed to make sure they were familiar with each type of article: features, editorials, reviews,
news, sports, etc. The students took copious, guided notes on each type of article and noted in
class the similarities and differences between them by reading examples from the Seattle Times.
We also covered some basic principles of journalism those first few days of class so my students
had a solid foundation in the differences between journalism and other types of writing. Once
we had covered this basic material in a Direct Instruction lesson, I reviewed the material with
them in the form of verbal questions. Then it was their turn to practice writing each type of
article on a subject they were interested in, which helped them link what they had learned to
what they already knew. Most of the class after those first few days involved cooperative
learning as the “staff” worked together to produce issue after issue of the paper. I don’t know
how well it would have worked to use another type of teaching strategy to cover those first few
important days of material that every student in the class needed to master.
Another area in which I tend to use Direct Instruction in my own field of English is
reading comprehension. My first teaching job was on the island of Kauai in Hawaii teaching
Language Arts to seventh graders. “Old Yeller” was part of the assigned curriculum for that
year, and before I started teaching the book I wanted to assess the comprehension level of my
students to make sure there would be a level playing field as we started reading. We read the
first page or two of the book, and I realized after about five minutes of attempting a discussion
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on the story that the comprehension level was very low. Even concepts like “setting” and
“character” were eliciting blank stares, so I had to go back a few steps and teach some basic
reading comprehension skills before I could go on. I did this using Direct Instruction,
demonstrating how to read a passage and look for clues, defining terms like place, setting,
denouement, etc. Then I had them practice on another passage so they could demonstrate their
level of comprehension before we moved on. I found I had to repeat this process a few times
before my students had mastered the skill of reading comprehension. By the end of the unit, they
were all enthralled with the story of ‘Old Yeller’ and completed numerous projects displaying
their favorite parts of the book.
Research has shown that when Direct Instruction is used to teach specific types of
learning like reading comprehension, greater student achievement is the result (Duffellmeyer and
Baum, 1987 p. 54). According to their observations of classroom practice in many areas of
instruction but especially in the area of reading comprehension, Duffellmeyer et al have found
that “the direct instruction paradigm of demonstration, guided practice, and independent practice
suggests that teachers must become more involved in teaching students how to learn” (1987, p.
54) . Another study has suggested that Direct Instruction on learning strategies (like reading
comprehension skills) “results in greater gains than do methods based on discovery approaches”
(Lenz, 2006, p. 263).
In 1983 A Nation at Risk was published; this was a highly controversial criticism of
education in America. In this critique of our nation’s schools the authors claimed, with regard to
the idea of a core body of knowledge, that “A high level of shared education is essential to a free,
democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides
itself on pluralism and individual freedom” (Fraser, 2001, p. 344). Direct Instruction is one of
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the many useful tools available to teachers today to impart this essential “shared knowledge” to
students in a way that makes them confident masters of the subject being taught and lifelong
learners in whichever field they eventually choose.
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References
Dell'Olio, Jeanine M., and Donk, Tony. (2007). Models of Teaching: Connecting Student
Learning With Standards. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Dewey, John. (1897). "My Pedagogic Creed", from The School Journal.
Duffelmeyer, Frederick A., and Baum, Dale D. (1987). Reading Comprehension: Instruction
vs. Practice. Intervention in School and Clinic, Vol, 23, 53-59. Hammil Institute on
Disabilities.
Fraser, James W. (2001). The School in the United States: A Documentary History. New York
and London: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.
Kozioff, Martin A., LaNunziata, Louis, Cowardin, James, Bessellieu, Frances B. (2000). Direct
Instruction: Its Contributions to High School Achievement. The High School Journal,
Vol. 84, No. 2, 54-71. University of North Carolina Press.
Lenz, B. Keith. (2006). Creating School-Wide Conditions for High-Quality Learning Strategy
Classroom Instruction. Intervention in School and Clinic, Vol. 41, 261. Hammill
Institute on Disabilities.
Stein, Marcy, Carnine, Douglas, Dixon, Robert. (1998). Direct Instruction: Integrating
Curriculum Design and Effective Teaching Practice. Intervention in School and Clinic,
Vol. 33, No. 4, 227-234. Hammill Institute on Disabilities.
Viadero, Debra. (2002). Studies Cite Learning Gains in Direct Instruction Schools. Education
Week, 21,15.