Direct-Instruction Strategies

When I joined the Ontario Ministry of Education for four years in 2000, I was engaged in a new wave of curriculum development. Many hours were spent listening to combative stakeholders with vested interests in “content standards.” One of the most vocal groups saw curriculum policy as a way to prescribe the way things were taught and to prevent wayward teacher activity. They insisted on “bringing back” traditional teaching methods such as worksheets, the chalk-and-talk, and stand-and-deliver lecturing, and told curriculum writers to concentrate on direct instruction. Ideology seemed to trump pedagogy.

Several key (and ultimately useful) questions arose. First, how could such a narrow focus improve learning when good teaching was expansive and diverse? Secondly, how could apparent emphasis on teaching rather than learning meet the differentiated needs and styles of all students. Lastly, what was “direct instruction” anyway: how did it work and why did some consider it “superior?”

My thought then and now is that we elevate direct instruction because of the teacher who delivered it. I recall with pleasure and gratitude my arty Grade 8 teacher’s flash cards on the habits of Ontario birds, my meticulous Grade 12 teacher’s book talks on dystopian novels, or my cultured Grade 13 teacher’s lecture on Hamlet’s procrastinations. However, if I think about these models of learning, I can see lots of arts-based work, inquiry, and high level writing and thinking going on. Good direct instruction, like any teaching or learning strategy, is inclusive of other strategies. The art and science of teaching transcends ideology as we daily strive to find what works: the right approach at the right time for the right reason. 

So from the perspective of simply gathering more arrows in the quiver, I have now added direct instruction strategies to my evolving glossary on Page 1. Just remember when you are planning that next Socratic dialogue to balance direct instruction with other types of strategies as you proceed. Is that direct enough?