Please, not direct instruction again. I say this as someone who started out in a classroom in which it was used.
Of course teachers should not try to create all of their lessons on their own. That’s one reason why Japanese lesson study is such an important lesson for the US. And of course, the curriculum should be sequenced as appropriate. Neither of these facts, however, warrants treating the entirety of the curriculum as appropriate for direct instruction.
Direct instruction has its uses. For example, it can be useful for teaching phonics to kids with dyslexia. However, education is more than teaching little discrete bits that accumulate. You don’t learn to reason mathematically by having procedural bits laid out in strict order. An ideal classroom helps kids learn to reason, to evaluate information, to express ideas. It motivates students to learn, in class and outside of it, and to apply what they learn. And contrary to the statement about Engleman, engagement is essential to much of this.
Teaching is loosely analogous to chess. To your point, someone who tries to make it up entirely on their own will never be a master. On the other hand, a master doesn’t blindly follow the Sicilian Defense.
I suppose it depends on the outcome you seek: Do we expect to turn every one of America's 50+ million K-12 students into chess grandmasters? Or do we want to teach them all to play chess?
I'm not in favor of scripting every lesson every day from one end of the school year to the next (I hope that was sufficiently clear). But we can't ignore the evidence is on Engelmann's side. At some point those who insist that 3.7 million teachers can get better results by creating, curating, and customizing their lessons (at the expense of other uses of teacher time) have some obligation to demonstrate the effectiveness of that approach.
I think the research disagrees with you. So many teachers don't even know how to build on learning and just jump from one lesson to another. New teachers are thrown in with no resources. The kids suffer. There's no reason that should ever happen.
A little while ago, I saw a blog bemoaning the fact that teachers can’t plan like they used to. England old-timers chimed in with a consensus that young ‘uns brought up on scripts can’t plan sequences of lessons as well as they did in the past. While understanding why people thought there was a lost skill, this blog nearly explains why I was uncomfortable with the idea. It’s just too much for a single teacher to coherently plan all their lessons. I think that there can be a debate about where the detailed curriculum planning sits but the answer shouldn’t be the classroom teacher!
Beautifully written and very persuasive, but . . .
I look to efficiency as well as effectiveness, the latter being necessary but not sufficient for the time-strapped teacher to make it through the curriculum. I'm concerned about overteaching, which is highly inefficient. Here's my view from the classroom: Bursting with Knowledge: Are We Overteaching Phonics?
True. But before introducing a scripted program, we need to make sure that the program is efficient because we can't expect teachers to know which parts of the script to follow and which parts to leave out. That's my point. A program might be effective, but is it efficient? As I point out in my piece, there's no reason to teach 'nasalized a'. How does a teacher know this?
But again, you've framed this as a reply to Mr. Pondiscio's post, "...very persuasive, but..." without addressing the problems he raises. Instead, you discuss other matters. There is much to be said about the problems raised by RP's post. A lot depends on whether we are talking about initial classroom teaching or intervention with struggling readers. And I've used Reading Mastery. The word that comes to mind is "brutal." But that's not the last word on that program or on the subject of whether instructional design is appropriately the work of individual teachers.
Robert says: "Three good reasons teachers shouldn’t be stuck creating their own curriculum: they aren’t trained for it, they don’t have time for it, and the task itself—complex and interdependent—demands far more than a single teacher can reasonably deliver."
My point is that whoever is creating this curriculum needs to attend to both efficiency and effectiveness. Right now the system stinks any way you slice it: too many programs suffering from basal bloat leaving teachers to bypass them altogether and choose their own curricular adventure.
As far as I understand it, D.I. programs are engineered to be efficient as well as effective. They are based not only on explicit, highly interactive pedagogy but also on a careful analysis of the content to be learned. Information that is superfluous or not germane to learning the necessary content is not included.
I don't disagree with anything here. But there are two big obstacles. While there's been a lot of progress with K-8 ELA curriculum in the past decade the broader curriculum landscape is pretty bleak right now. Lots of nonsense, lots of fluff. And second, most school leaders can't recognize high-quality curriculum. Most will pick the flashy hollow nonsense.
I worry that if too many school leaders take what you're writing at face value, they end up adopting bad curricula, harassing good teachers who try to modify the curriculum to be better, obsessing over pacing guides and "fidelity," and making everything worse.
Seems to me like this is putting the cart a few steps ahead of the horse, in particular in subjects beyond K-8 ELA. We would need a large shift in the way average school leaders understand curriculum and teaching before any of this would work.
I’m going to second Dylan’s comment (and urge people to check out his substack, too). I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in theory. To Dylan’s point about curriculum in secondary ed, other than those published by textbook companies, there really aren’t quality full-scale curriculums in U.S. history, for example. The ones put out by those companies are so bloated, that individual teachers (or schools or departments) still have to figure out what to keep and what to leave out. They are often dull, or appear exciting because they are colorful and glossy. There is amazing stuff out there– like the DBQ Project and Reading Like a Historian from the Digital Inquiry Group (formerly Stanford History Education Group). I have used materials from both, but even then I’ve found it necessary to tweak them for my students (e.g. most DIG materials are high school level).
It’s not just about adapting materials for one’s students. A teacher also has to adapt them to make the materials “their own.” Over the years, I’ve used tons of materials that I got from other teachers or from published sources. But I have to make it work not just for my students, but for me. In other words, I’m not so sure you can neatly separate the craft/art of what goes on in the classroom when a teacher is actually teaching with the curriculum that is delivered. Furthermore, it suggests that maybe a history or math teacher doesn’t really need to know that much history or math to teach– hey, the materials are all right there! Just focus on the delivery, the coaching of the students, the feedback. You don’t need to know anything because you’re just the deliverer of the goods that "experts" have created. When I look at a lesson or curriculum that someone else has created, I still need to put in planning time to make sure that I get it, that it will work within the constraints of my class period length, or on a Thursday when we also have an assembly, or during the week before spring break.
That being said, you’re right about the profession becoming too hard for mere mortals. The late nights and weekends I spent creating my lessons maybe didn’t involve blood, but sweat and tears, certainly. My dear friend and mentor used to say, it takes an entire career to come up with 180 good lessons. What are our students learning in the meantime?
I think this is a great point about internalizing the lesson materials and may be instructive as to why DI has a reputation for being disliked by teachers.
Thanks for this. Perhaps I'm conflating two different things. I have read that early implementations of DI were highly scripted though there is no indication in this article that providing teachers with a curriculum should prevent them from adapting material for their particular classroom.
I advocate for a teacher “curriculum committee" that works together to determine the curriculum for students, because I agree: DIY Lesson Plans are crazy work, but also, teachers who actually teach the material should be the ones to decide which curriculum they teach.
First of all, DI isn’t really a memorized script. It’s about directly teaching kids how to do something. It can be simple, like the sounds for the letter “a” or complex, like how to carry out an intelligent experiment. DI gets a bad rap because some people think of it as reading a script and stifling creativity. This is just framing it as negatively as possible.
The real problem is that most modern curriculums are NOT designed around DI or explicit instruction. It’s about “student-centered” or “inquiry” or other such nonsense that simply doesn’t work well.
Here's my question. What happens when the curriculum isn't diverse enough or tailored to students' needs? I've worked with many different math curriculums and have never come across one that has the resources for my SPED students, my ML students, my students above grade level, and the ones below it. Or how about if my students need a review, a reteach, extra problems, or more practice? Or a curriculum is written for 45 min periods 5 days a week, but I teach 90 minutes every other day.
I'm not saying I'm the expert (I really don't want to write my own curriculum), but there are times when the resources I've been handed are fully unfeasible to use with the students in front of me and then I'm stuck at a loss and forced to find something that works. In my experience, teachers crave curriculum and structure and go outside of it when the curriculum is not meeting their needs.
Even granting DI's successful track record, why is it seemingly so unpopular with teachers? Is this because of the scripting? I could imagine that teachers might rebel against even a proven system if they feel they have little agency over the input. People want to feel like they can be creative in their professions. For a related example, see how doctors overrule AI assistants to create worse diagnoses.
It seems as though early-career teachers in particular would benefit from having a strong curriculum in place (though it isn't exactly easy to agree on one). Where does the proper balance lie between consistency and teacher agency?
This is exactly what l needed when l was trying to teach ESL. There were so many gaps in different learning. Also, I would see students very engaged in other classrooms, but when it came to the exams, they weren't doing better. I knew what this research is saying instinctively, but couldn't really get it across to those in charge who thought l should just make my own materials all the time. I hope this catches on.
Where can school districts and teachers find complete packages of lesson plans for direct instruction? It sounds like each lesson builds on the one before it. Does a school or district have to implement a package of curricula wholesale? What are the main drivers preventing their implementation? Is it costs? Hubris? Simply being unaware that packages exist? How can parents and voters in school board elections press for more direct instruction, or implementation of these lesson plans? What is the language parents should be using to articulate the need for this?
Please, not direct instruction again. I say this as someone who started out in a classroom in which it was used.
Of course teachers should not try to create all of their lessons on their own. That’s one reason why Japanese lesson study is such an important lesson for the US. And of course, the curriculum should be sequenced as appropriate. Neither of these facts, however, warrants treating the entirety of the curriculum as appropriate for direct instruction.
Direct instruction has its uses. For example, it can be useful for teaching phonics to kids with dyslexia. However, education is more than teaching little discrete bits that accumulate. You don’t learn to reason mathematically by having procedural bits laid out in strict order. An ideal classroom helps kids learn to reason, to evaluate information, to express ideas. It motivates students to learn, in class and outside of it, and to apply what they learn. And contrary to the statement about Engleman, engagement is essential to much of this.
Teaching is loosely analogous to chess. To your point, someone who tries to make it up entirely on their own will never be a master. On the other hand, a master doesn’t blindly follow the Sicilian Defense.
I suppose it depends on the outcome you seek: Do we expect to turn every one of America's 50+ million K-12 students into chess grandmasters? Or do we want to teach them all to play chess?
I'm not in favor of scripting every lesson every day from one end of the school year to the next (I hope that was sufficiently clear). But we can't ignore the evidence is on Engelmann's side. At some point those who insist that 3.7 million teachers can get better results by creating, curating, and customizing their lessons (at the expense of other uses of teacher time) have some obligation to demonstrate the effectiveness of that approach.
Good point. Things like teachers pay teachers shouldn't exist. The fact that they do is proof that teachers can't do it themselves.
I think the research disagrees with you. So many teachers don't even know how to build on learning and just jump from one lesson to another. New teachers are thrown in with no resources. The kids suffer. There's no reason that should ever happen.
A little while ago, I saw a blog bemoaning the fact that teachers can’t plan like they used to. England old-timers chimed in with a consensus that young ‘uns brought up on scripts can’t plan sequences of lessons as well as they did in the past. While understanding why people thought there was a lost skill, this blog nearly explains why I was uncomfortable with the idea. It’s just too much for a single teacher to coherently plan all their lessons. I think that there can be a debate about where the detailed curriculum planning sits but the answer shouldn’t be the classroom teacher!
Beautifully written and very persuasive, but . . .
I look to efficiency as well as effectiveness, the latter being necessary but not sufficient for the time-strapped teacher to make it through the curriculum. I'm concerned about overteaching, which is highly inefficient. Here's my view from the classroom: Bursting with Knowledge: Are We Overteaching Phonics?
https://highfiveliteracy.com/2024/11/18/bursting-with-knowledge-are-we-overteaching-phonics/
Thanks so much for such good stuff to think about!
Over-teaching is a different problem from instructional design.
True. But before introducing a scripted program, we need to make sure that the program is efficient because we can't expect teachers to know which parts of the script to follow and which parts to leave out. That's my point. A program might be effective, but is it efficient? As I point out in my piece, there's no reason to teach 'nasalized a'. How does a teacher know this?
I believe that's what the article says. That it's left to I instructional engineers to create the materials.
But again, you've framed this as a reply to Mr. Pondiscio's post, "...very persuasive, but..." without addressing the problems he raises. Instead, you discuss other matters. There is much to be said about the problems raised by RP's post. A lot depends on whether we are talking about initial classroom teaching or intervention with struggling readers. And I've used Reading Mastery. The word that comes to mind is "brutal." But that's not the last word on that program or on the subject of whether instructional design is appropriately the work of individual teachers.
Robert says: "Three good reasons teachers shouldn’t be stuck creating their own curriculum: they aren’t trained for it, they don’t have time for it, and the task itself—complex and interdependent—demands far more than a single teacher can reasonably deliver."
My point is that whoever is creating this curriculum needs to attend to both efficiency and effectiveness. Right now the system stinks any way you slice it: too many programs suffering from basal bloat leaving teachers to bypass them altogether and choose their own curricular adventure.
As far as I understand it, D.I. programs are engineered to be efficient as well as effective. They are based not only on explicit, highly interactive pedagogy but also on a careful analysis of the content to be learned. Information that is superfluous or not germane to learning the necessary content is not included.
Thanks for responding. I see your point: the problem of over-teaching could have a direct connection to the problems Robert discusses.
How old is this article? Please listen the sold a story podcast.
I've definitely listened! All episodes. So valuable. That doesn't mean there aren't programs out there that overteach phonics. I've seen them.
I don't disagree with anything here. But there are two big obstacles. While there's been a lot of progress with K-8 ELA curriculum in the past decade the broader curriculum landscape is pretty bleak right now. Lots of nonsense, lots of fluff. And second, most school leaders can't recognize high-quality curriculum. Most will pick the flashy hollow nonsense.
I worry that if too many school leaders take what you're writing at face value, they end up adopting bad curricula, harassing good teachers who try to modify the curriculum to be better, obsessing over pacing guides and "fidelity," and making everything worse.
Seems to me like this is putting the cart a few steps ahead of the horse, in particular in subjects beyond K-8 ELA. We would need a large shift in the way average school leaders understand curriculum and teaching before any of this would work.
I’m going to second Dylan’s comment (and urge people to check out his substack, too). I don’t disagree with anything you wrote in theory. To Dylan’s point about curriculum in secondary ed, other than those published by textbook companies, there really aren’t quality full-scale curriculums in U.S. history, for example. The ones put out by those companies are so bloated, that individual teachers (or schools or departments) still have to figure out what to keep and what to leave out. They are often dull, or appear exciting because they are colorful and glossy. There is amazing stuff out there– like the DBQ Project and Reading Like a Historian from the Digital Inquiry Group (formerly Stanford History Education Group). I have used materials from both, but even then I’ve found it necessary to tweak them for my students (e.g. most DIG materials are high school level).
It’s not just about adapting materials for one’s students. A teacher also has to adapt them to make the materials “their own.” Over the years, I’ve used tons of materials that I got from other teachers or from published sources. But I have to make it work not just for my students, but for me. In other words, I’m not so sure you can neatly separate the craft/art of what goes on in the classroom when a teacher is actually teaching with the curriculum that is delivered. Furthermore, it suggests that maybe a history or math teacher doesn’t really need to know that much history or math to teach– hey, the materials are all right there! Just focus on the delivery, the coaching of the students, the feedback. You don’t need to know anything because you’re just the deliverer of the goods that "experts" have created. When I look at a lesson or curriculum that someone else has created, I still need to put in planning time to make sure that I get it, that it will work within the constraints of my class period length, or on a Thursday when we also have an assembly, or during the week before spring break.
That being said, you’re right about the profession becoming too hard for mere mortals. The late nights and weekends I spent creating my lessons maybe didn’t involve blood, but sweat and tears, certainly. My dear friend and mentor used to say, it takes an entire career to come up with 180 good lessons. What are our students learning in the meantime?
I think this is a great point about internalizing the lesson materials and may be instructive as to why DI has a reputation for being disliked by teachers.
I don't have a problem with DI; I don't think DI means that something has to be scripted and the same for each teacher.
Thanks for this. Perhaps I'm conflating two different things. I have read that early implementations of DI were highly scripted though there is no indication in this article that providing teachers with a curriculum should prevent them from adapting material for their particular classroom.
That is certainly what I was taught in ed school. But I'm less certain about the empirical proof of its efficacy. What can you point me toward?
From the perspective of adapting learning to meet the needs of special needs students this rigid instructional model is not practical.
You might be interested in listening to this: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Hllz2pBMbKj8kGRLVxk5a?si=W3bPAMoWTvSyJW9hS3Ewyg
But at least SPED teachers would have something to modify instead of starting from scratch. What's wrong with that?
I advocate for a teacher “curriculum committee" that works together to determine the curriculum for students, because I agree: DIY Lesson Plans are crazy work, but also, teachers who actually teach the material should be the ones to decide which curriculum they teach.
Why do we read ?
Also I have noticed kids who are getting this DI stuff in reading are sounding out words in text not reading narrative and story in books
So fluency is stuttered and meaning is corrupted and interrupted
Don’t be ridiculous teaching is a human endeavour with humanistic relationships ar it’s very core
Teachers need to be informed deeply knowledgeable about what it is they are teaching and understanding of each students learning stage
Each class has its own dynamic and profile
It dictates their questioning prompting and teaching
What is said by the teacher is paramount in a classroom
Cannot be engineered or dictated or run by a robot !
First of all, DI isn’t really a memorized script. It’s about directly teaching kids how to do something. It can be simple, like the sounds for the letter “a” or complex, like how to carry out an intelligent experiment. DI gets a bad rap because some people think of it as reading a script and stifling creativity. This is just framing it as negatively as possible.
The real problem is that most modern curriculums are NOT designed around DI or explicit instruction. It’s about “student-centered” or “inquiry” or other such nonsense that simply doesn’t work well.
Here's my question. What happens when the curriculum isn't diverse enough or tailored to students' needs? I've worked with many different math curriculums and have never come across one that has the resources for my SPED students, my ML students, my students above grade level, and the ones below it. Or how about if my students need a review, a reteach, extra problems, or more practice? Or a curriculum is written for 45 min periods 5 days a week, but I teach 90 minutes every other day.
I'm not saying I'm the expert (I really don't want to write my own curriculum), but there are times when the resources I've been handed are fully unfeasible to use with the students in front of me and then I'm stuck at a loss and forced to find something that works. In my experience, teachers crave curriculum and structure and go outside of it when the curriculum is not meeting their needs.
Even granting DI's successful track record, why is it seemingly so unpopular with teachers? Is this because of the scripting? I could imagine that teachers might rebel against even a proven system if they feel they have little agency over the input. People want to feel like they can be creative in their professions. For a related example, see how doctors overrule AI assistants to create worse diagnoses.
It seems as though early-career teachers in particular would benefit from having a strong curriculum in place (though it isn't exactly easy to agree on one). Where does the proper balance lie between consistency and teacher agency?
This is exactly what l needed when l was trying to teach ESL. There were so many gaps in different learning. Also, I would see students very engaged in other classrooms, but when it came to the exams, they weren't doing better. I knew what this research is saying instinctively, but couldn't really get it across to those in charge who thought l should just make my own materials all the time. I hope this catches on.
Where can school districts and teachers find complete packages of lesson plans for direct instruction? It sounds like each lesson builds on the one before it. Does a school or district have to implement a package of curricula wholesale? What are the main drivers preventing their implementation? Is it costs? Hubris? Simply being unaware that packages exist? How can parents and voters in school board elections press for more direct instruction, or implementation of these lesson plans? What is the language parents should be using to articulate the need for this?
See Dylan's and my comment above--I urge parents and voters in school board elections to be careful before urging schools to adopt complete packages.
I remember DISTAR! Siegfried Engelmann? Yikes!