A workbook on a student's desk in an elementary school classroom, in Vancouver, on April 13, 2023.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
There are few things as scrutinized in our society as our education system.
As one style of teaching falls out of favour, another one emerges upon the foundation of opinion that says it is the best path forward. Eventually, however, what was old becomes new again – gaining fresh currency as the system that superseded it loses value.
One genre of teaching currently getting attention in Washington State is called Direct Instruction (DI). It’s not new, and has shifted in and out of favour over the decades. What doesn’t seem to change with it, however, are the results it produces.
Wahitis Elementary School is in Othello, Wa., about 290 kilometres east of Seattle. It serves a rural population with many families living on the edge of the poverty line. According to a recent story by The Seattle Times, when DI was first introduced at the school in 2014, 26 per cent of Wahitis’s fifth graders were passing the state standard for reading assessment and 38 per cent had passed the math assessment. By 2023, almost 60 per cent of fifth graders passed the reading assessment and 48 per cent passed the math assessment.
DI is not revolutionary. Class lessons are highly structured and carefully planned. Learning happens in small increments and is extremely repetitive. It is often criticized for being no different than rote memorization, the classroom standard for generations. It was rendered obsolete by many jurisdictions in North America on the grounds that it was boring and stifled creativity.
Direct instruction involves tailoring lesson plans to meet the standards set out in a particular state’s annual standardized tests. Teacher unions, in particular, have been vocal critics of this “teach-to-the-test” approach. The problem is, it often works. It also seems to be the best approach for schools with a high number of minorities, where English isn’t the first language at home.
An example of what direct instruction looks like in action: a teacher explains a math concept to the class. When she asks how many understand it, those who didn’t hold up two fingers. Those who did, hold up four. Now she knows who to go back to assist before moving on to the next concept.
While not exactly groundbreaking stuff, it’s the sort of back-to-basics approach that has been abandoned by many, if not most, North American schooling systems. Interestingly, it has not been jettisoned by countries with some of the highest academic achievement rates in the world.
South Korea, Singapore and Japan all put heavy emphasis on test scores. Rote memorization is a foundational piece of the education systems in those countries. It will be noted by others that while those countries have high academic achievement rates, they are also known for having exceedingly tough education systems, with a high percentage of mental health issues among students. This largely is connected to the pressure students feel to achieve the test scores needed to gain entry into college.
DI has been rigorously examined. In the late 1960s, more than 200,000 children in the U.S. attending schools that represented 22 different models of instruction were studied and evaluated by a group of academics on behalf of the U.S. government. In 1977, nine years after the project began, the results were published. Students who received DI demonstrated significantly higher academic achievement than students taught by any of the other models of teaching. DI students also demonstrated higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence, according to a September, 2023, article in Impact Magazine.
Despite the many successes of DI, it will always face an uphill fight. The argument that it turns kids off learning and limits creativity and critical thinking persists. At the same time, however, there are also concerns that much of the new-age thinking in education circles – abandonment of marks, for instance – has gone too far and is not in the best interests of the student (although teachers in jurisdictions where letter grades have been ditched love it).
Sweden is one country that recently concluded it had moved too far left on the experimental teaching spectrum, to the detriment of the student. It’s gone back to basics for elementary school students, putting more emphasis on printed books, quiet reading time and handwriting practice, and less time on tablets and independent online research. The Swedish government made the move in light of test scores that showed a decline in basic reading and writing skills.
The Ontario government under Doug Ford has also signalled a “back-to-basics” intent, putting an emphasis on reading, writing and math skills.
There would seem to be room, somewhere, for a hybrid approach that emphasizes the basics, but also makes room for student creativity. Education doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition.