di: Most comprehensive Meta-analysis ever done on Direct Instruction

[Jim Cowardin]

Thanks! I can’t seem to download the full report.

Jim

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 5:09 PM jsilb24034 <jsilb24034 at aol.com> wrote:

>
>
> A meta-analysis done by Jean Stockard, Tim Wood, Cristy Coughlin and
> Caitlin Rasplica Khoury. was recently published. Quantitative mixed
> models were used to examine literature published from 1966 through 2016 on
> the effectiveness of Direct Instruction. Analyses were based on 328 studies
> involving 413 study designs and almost 4,000 effects.
>
>
> Here is a link for the meta-analysis.  Questions on the study can be
> directed to the authors
>
> Here is the link:
> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0034654317751919.
>
>
> Below is  an excerpt from the paper. Be sure to read the last paragraph.
>
> Implications for Policy and Practice
> The findings of this meta-analysis reinforce the conclusions of earlier
> meta- analyses and reviews of the literature regarding DI. Yet, despite the
> very large body of research supporting its effectiveness, DI has not been
> widely embraced or implemented. In part this avoidance of DI may be fueled
> by the current popularity of constructivism and misconceptions of the
> theory that underlies DI. As explained in the first part of this article,
> DI shares with constructivism the important basic understanding that
> students interpret and make sense of information with which they are
> presented. The difference lies in the nature of the information given to
> students, with DI theorists stressing the importance of very carefully
> choosing and structuring examples so they are as clear and unambiguous as
> possible. Without such clarity students will waste valuable time and, even
> worse, potentially reach faulty conclusions that harm future progress and
> learning.
> Many current curriculum recommendations, such as those included within the
> Common Core, promote student-led and inquiry-based approaches with substan-
> tial ambiguity in instructional practices. The strong pattern of results
> presented in this article, appearing across all subject matters, student
> populations, settings, and age levels, should, at the least, imply a need
> for serious examination and reconsid- eration of these recommendations (see
> also Engelmann, 2014a; Morgan, Farkas, & Maczuga, 2015; Zhang, 2016). It is
> clear that students make sense of and inter- pret the information that they
> are given—but their learning is enhanced only when the information
> presented is explicit, logically organized, and clearly sequenced. To do
> anything less shirks the responsibility of effective instruction.
> Another reason that DI may not be widely used involves a belief that
> teachers will not like it or that it stifles teachers’ ability to bring
> their own personalities to their teaching. Yet, as described in earlier
> sections, proper implementation of DI does not disguise or erase a
> teacher’s unique style. In fact, the carefully tested presentations in the
> programs free teachers from worries about the wording of their examples or
> the order in which they present ideas and allow them to focus more fully on
> their students’ responses and ensure their understanding. Recall that
> effect sizes associated with teachers’ perceptions of the program reached
> as high as 1.04 in our analyses. Fears that teachers will not enjoy the
> programs or not be pleased with their results do not appear to be supported
> by the evidence.
> Lipsey et al. (2012) have suggested that effect sizes based on performance
> gaps among demographic groups could be a useful benchmark in evaluating the
> poten- tial impact of an intervention. Using data from the National
> Assessment of Education Progress, they calculated performance gaps in
> reading and math and found that the difference between more and less
> privileged groups corresponds to effect sizes ranging from 0.45 to 1.04
> (Lipsey et al., 2012; p. 30; see also Bloom, Hill, Black, & Lipsey, 2008).
> These values are quite similar to the effects found in our analysis. In
> other words, the effects reported in this analysis, and calculated
> from 50 years of data on DI, indicate that exposure to DI could
> substantially reduce current achievement disparities between
> sociodemographic groups. Moreover, as noted above, at least for the
> academic subjects, greater exposure would be expected to result in even
> larger effects. There is little indication that the effects would be
> expected to decline markedly after intervention ceased; the positive
> effects are long-term.
> Certainly our nation’s children deserve both effective and efficient
> instruction. As one of the anonymous reviewers of our article put it,
> “Researchers and practi- tioners cannot afford to ignore the effectiveness
> research on DI.”
>
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