di: How does one differentiate between ignorance and arrogance?

[Don Crawford]

Below are the comments of a teacher who posted his opinions about scripted
Direct Instruction.  My comments follow.  If you know how to share it with
the original author, be my guest.

Predictably, things aren’t that simple. Direct Instruction sometimes comes
with capital letters. The capital-lettered variety rests on scripted,
precisely paced lessons plotted by experts and expensively supplied by
publishers. These daily scripts specify “the exact wording and the examples
the teacher is to present.” They’re enjoying a resurgence owing to the
academic decline spawned by student-directed learning.

DI boosters insist that when a student doesn’t learn, “it doesn’t mean
something is wrong with the student…It means something is wrong with the
instruction.” Mandating instruction down to the last syllable supposedly
guaranties student learning and success, provided the teacher is faithful
to the script.

Excuse me while I watch a roomful of actual students prove how wrong and
silly that is.

Its inherent flaws aside, the problem with capital letter DI is the bad
name it gives the kind of direct instruction teachers like me have
delivered since before chalk was an innovation. Contrary to charges leveled
by new paradigm fans, lower case direct instruction doesn’t preclude
questions, opinions, student creativity, or independent thought. It also
doesn’t preclude teacher creativity in preparing and conducting classroom
activities. Unlike the scripted DI lessons publishers peddle, it permits a
teacher to adapt to his class’s character and readiness for learning.

This teacher is claiming that his instruction is better than the scripted
Direct Instruction "peddled by publishers."  Interestingly, there are
scripted curriculum peddled by publishers that was not written by Zig
Englemann and is not what we consider the real "Direct Instruction."  So
the first thing to note is that the curriculum that is less effective than
this teacher might not be our Direct Instruction.

Point two.  The question of whether this particular teacher may be able to,
arguably, teach a given topic better than a "scripted Direct Instruction
lesson" is (a) an empirical question and (b) even if true does not extend
to all topics without testing and (c) does not extend to other teachers.
It's possible to claim your instruction is better than a specific Direct
Instruction lesson.  But you should be willing to prove it in an actual
test of a specific topic, including a pre-agreed upon academic test of the
efficacy of the instruction and a random assignment of students to
conditions.  If you look for such experiments reported in the literature
you won't find them.

Point three.  There are better ways of teaching or explaining things than
what teachers typically come up with extemporaneously.  There are better
and worse sequences of instruction and there are more and less effective
ways of structuring lessons to provide sufficient practice and ensure the
best sequence of instruction and gradual dismantling of any scaffolding
students need to begin with. More planning of direct instruction can make
it more effective which is why scripted and published instruction is likely
to be better than improv teaching.  Again, this is not a question about
which we need to rely on opinion.  We could check it through
experimentation.

Point four.  While this is an interesting question to some of us, this is a
squabble among people who should be allies, among the few who still think
students should be directly taught anything.  This author is absolutely
right in stating that K-12 education is off the rails.  They aren't even
interested in testing to see what's the best way to teach things to
students.  That would be too authoritarian to define for children what they
should learn.  Instead we need to sit on the sidelines and encourage them
to explore their curiosities and impulses and hope for the best.

Don Crawford
(503) 298-8656
14435 SE Donatello Loop
Happy Valley, OR 97086

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 12:19 PM, Bryan Wickman <bwickman at nifdi.org> wrote:

> https://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/Poor-Elijah-
> s-Almanack-Educator-s-digest-12749449.php
>
>
>
> Anyone care to post any comments to this opinion piece?
>
>
>
> Bryan Wickman,
>
> Outreach Coordinator
> 541.485.1973 <(541)%20485-1973>
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> Have you seen our new series of video in-services? The current library
> includes Correcting Discrimination Errors, Critical Phrasing, and
> Implementing Thermometer Charts. For more information, go to
> https://www.nifdi.org/store/category/19-training-materials.
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