I would've liked some more conjecturing why Direct Instruction isn’t more popular. If Engelmann was bad at evangelizing, that would explain why other schools didn't adopt it, but what happened to the schools that were using Direct Instruction during Project Follow Through afterwards? Did they all abandon it for some reason? And if so, why?
I have read some anecdotes and my best guess is that it's a lot of things:
Schools are resistant to the idea that a curriculum focused on basic skills can deliver quality results results, or think the results don't reflect their true goals.
Schools just don't care that much about results.
DI became perceived as a remedial program or a program for at-risk students rather than something that could be effective across general ed.
Schools struggled to implement the programs the way they were designed or in some cases deliberately didn't use them the way they were designed (i.e. it was common for schools to not follow DI guidelines for grouping).
Families felt like the programs were rote and shallow, and wanted something more ambitious.
Teachers and leaders didn't like the scripted nature of the programs.
I don't know what the dominant reasons were but my guess it's some combinations of those things. There's also a cycle of curriculum adoptions in many schools and pressure to do "something new." It's hard for any school to stick with the same curriculum permanently, schools will inevitably wonder if they can improve on their current results with a change.
Hi, this was really helpful. I know you're a math guy, but any chance you have some more reading/writing examples of breaking down the components like the math example?
The example/non-example sequence can be really helpful for elements of writing. Think teaching students about complete sentences. The goal is to contrast an example and a non-example while changing as little as possible. This is not a complete sentence: Because he was scared of the dog. This is a sentence: He ran because he was scared of the dog. (Then you would want to include more examples.) This could fit well preceding some TWR activities.
There's a lot of morphology in the DI reading programs. In the word problem example I used, the goal is to break the concept down into pieces but make sure those pieces still generalize well. Morphology serves a similar role: break words down into pieces and practice using those pieces to recognize new words. The multiple strand design is really helpful here because it allows morphology practice to be embedded in everything else while making sure students are exposed to morphemes repeatedly over time. Engelmann really anticipated a lot of the spacing/interleaving effect with that structure.
Another is being really deliberate about when to introduce exceptions to rules. When teaching the VCe rule for word pronunciations, you would introduce examples and non-examples (note and not) but avoid exceptions (done) until later. My impression is that's a reasonably common strategy but it's easy to forget and confuse students by introducing exceptions too early.
One more general strategy is "overtization." The altered orthography is an example of overtization: making overt some of the hidden rules of language (in this case whether one or two letters make a sound). "Covertization" is also important: if we make something overt, we need to fade away that support over time. This shows up in lots of different places. For example, when teaching paragraph writing, you might begin by overtizing the structure: topic sentence in blue, supporting details in green, conclusion in red, maybe sentence frames that cue the function of each sentence. But then as soon as possible the goal is to covertize and fade those supports away.
A lot of this is reasonably common in literacy curriculum (or at least that's my impression) but one thing Engelmann does is systematize these rules so you start to see them everywhere.
I'd really recommend Kurt Engelmann's book Direct Instruction: A Practitioner's Handbook for more, it focuses a lot on Reading Mastery. I don't have a great memory for all the examples in that book at the moment.
I would've liked some more conjecturing why Direct Instruction isn’t more popular. If Engelmann was bad at evangelizing, that would explain why other schools didn't adopt it, but what happened to the schools that were using Direct Instruction during Project Follow Through afterwards? Did they all abandon it for some reason? And if so, why?
I have read some anecdotes and my best guess is that it's a lot of things:
Schools are resistant to the idea that a curriculum focused on basic skills can deliver quality results results, or think the results don't reflect their true goals.
Schools just don't care that much about results.
DI became perceived as a remedial program or a program for at-risk students rather than something that could be effective across general ed.
Schools struggled to implement the programs the way they were designed or in some cases deliberately didn't use them the way they were designed (i.e. it was common for schools to not follow DI guidelines for grouping).
Families felt like the programs were rote and shallow, and wanted something more ambitious.
Teachers and leaders didn't like the scripted nature of the programs.
I don't know what the dominant reasons were but my guess it's some combinations of those things. There's also a cycle of curriculum adoptions in many schools and pressure to do "something new." It's hard for any school to stick with the same curriculum permanently, schools will inevitably wonder if they can improve on their current results with a change.
Hi, this was really helpful. I know you're a math guy, but any chance you have some more reading/writing examples of breaking down the components like the math example?
Here are a few I know of.
The example/non-example sequence can be really helpful for elements of writing. Think teaching students about complete sentences. The goal is to contrast an example and a non-example while changing as little as possible. This is not a complete sentence: Because he was scared of the dog. This is a sentence: He ran because he was scared of the dog. (Then you would want to include more examples.) This could fit well preceding some TWR activities.
There's a lot of morphology in the DI reading programs. In the word problem example I used, the goal is to break the concept down into pieces but make sure those pieces still generalize well. Morphology serves a similar role: break words down into pieces and practice using those pieces to recognize new words. The multiple strand design is really helpful here because it allows morphology practice to be embedded in everything else while making sure students are exposed to morphemes repeatedly over time. Engelmann really anticipated a lot of the spacing/interleaving effect with that structure.
Another is being really deliberate about when to introduce exceptions to rules. When teaching the VCe rule for word pronunciations, you would introduce examples and non-examples (note and not) but avoid exceptions (done) until later. My impression is that's a reasonably common strategy but it's easy to forget and confuse students by introducing exceptions too early.
One more general strategy is "overtization." The altered orthography is an example of overtization: making overt some of the hidden rules of language (in this case whether one or two letters make a sound). "Covertization" is also important: if we make something overt, we need to fade away that support over time. This shows up in lots of different places. For example, when teaching paragraph writing, you might begin by overtizing the structure: topic sentence in blue, supporting details in green, conclusion in red, maybe sentence frames that cue the function of each sentence. But then as soon as possible the goal is to covertize and fade those supports away.
A lot of this is reasonably common in literacy curriculum (or at least that's my impression) but one thing Engelmann does is systematize these rules so you start to see them everywhere.
I'd really recommend Kurt Engelmann's book Direct Instruction: A Practitioner's Handbook for more, it focuses a lot on Reading Mastery. I don't have a great memory for all the examples in that book at the moment.
Thank you! Really helpful. I’ll check out the book.
Dylan, this is a fantastic reflection. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks!