I’m reading two fairly new books. The first is The Beautiful Tree, A Personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves, as the cover says. I haven’t finished the book, but, while education isn’t that important, poor people seem to provide it for themselves better than their government. “A fool can put on this coat better than a wise man can put it on for him.” Find it here.
Tooley, J. (2009). The Beautiful Tree. Washington, DC, Cato Institute.
The other is, Doctoring the Mind. The book is another in the series attacking psychiatry for its reliance on drugging as a treatment method. As someone has said, “Psychiatry and the makers of psychopharmacological drugs are conjoined twins joined at the wallet”. This is the Amazon.com link.
Bental, R.P. (2009). Doctoring the Mind. Washington Square, New York, New York University Press.
from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of
Hope: How the Social Sciences Look Busy
Without Accomplishing Anything: Wherein the
Iron Law of Contingencies is used to Explain
the Consistent, and Embarrassing, Failure of
the Social Sciences.
The DIW (Does it work) Criteria Applied to Direct Instruction
“First, and this really makes it unique in commercial learning systems, it is field tested. “…if teachers or children have trouble with material presented, the program is at fault. Revisions are made to correct the problems.” Direct Instruction is based on the assumption that if there are consistent errors in student responding–the errors come from inadequate curriculum material or inadequate student preparation–both of these lead to changes in the teaching programs. Non-learning is attributed to poor teaching. Contrast this with the ordinary school situation when non-learning is ascribed to faulty students and textbooks are never tested in any systematic way.
Direct Instruction, briefly described above, was part the most successful part of the Follow Through experiment. The creators of Direct Instruction are guided by research and the abiding belief that student errors are the result of bad teaching, not incapable students. Direct Instruction has revised its original programs several times since their beginning and added others such as spelling and writing.
1. Speed of change. Large-scale implementation of Direct Instruction in a school produces large changes within a year’s worth of instruction. With individual clients, I have produced two to three grades improvement in reading scores in less than 30 hours of instruction. All of these students were victims of Whole Language instruction and had learned guessing techniques. They had also been labelled as dyslexic, learning disabled, and as having an attention deficit disorder and myriad other, “sophisticated” characterizations that experts foist upon students.
2. Duration of change. Several years of Direct Instruction during the beginning school years have produced long-term changes in academic behavior such as higher rates of high school graduation and higher rates of college attendance.
3. Amount of change. Direct Instruction typically produces large increases in academic performance. Some classes are several years ahead of the average in their school district after two or three years in Direct Instruction.
4. Able to overcome individual differences. One of the chants from the Book of Wrong is that students have different “learning styles”. All students learn when taught from the same good curriculum using the same effective methods. The only difference is the rate of learning. In the absence of good teaching, student attributes are important. In the presence of good teaching, all students learn.
5. Transferability to other situations. Academic behavior is the most transferable of all learned things. Two plus two equal four wherever it occurs. Teaching academic basics well ensures transfer will occur.
6. Orderliness and reproducibility of data from individuals. If the programs are followed, they will work for everyone even for students with severe cognitive deficiencies who take much longer to learn.
7. The behavior has not been changed by a variety of other techniques. Students who have not learned to read using Whole Language can the taught to read using Direct Instruction. The reverse has not been demonstrated.
8. Works with clients who are “resistant”, “unmotivated” and etc. Success is the greatest reinforcer. With fast pacing, frequent success, quick progress, and lots of verbal reinforcement, the vast majority of students need no more incentive.
9. Spends much more time on production than explanation. Most academic fads are based on vast arrays of philosophical meanderings. Direct Instruction is based on research and results.
10. Does not appeal to a currently popular political movement for support. Direct Instruction takes an opposite position to all of the assumptions from The Book of Wrong.
11. Can produce high rates of behavior. There is enough practice with Direct Instruction, especially with Precision Teaching added in, to produce fluent rates of academic behavior even in young students.
12. Can be used in large groups for efficiency. Direct Instruction programs are designed to teach a whole class or a significant part of it. Although Direct Instruction programs can be used as remedial programs when academic fads have failed, they are most successful when used as the sole instructional method from the beginning of a student’s career. Even when used remedially, these programs can be used with large groups of students.
13. Produces change in the ultimate criterion. Does it accomplish what it advertises or does it produce “statistically significant” but small changes in weakly related pencil and paper measures? If we are teaching a student mathematics, we want the student to be able to do mathematics, not appreciate, understand or value it. We want him to be able to do it. Many of the “tests” for academic subjects are centered on understanding and appreciation rather than accomplishment and much academic research, whether on education or not, waxes poetic over differences which are statistically significant even when very small.
14. Is transportable. Direct Instruction programs are specifically written to take the guesswork out of implementation. In other language, Direct Instruction is “scalable”, able to be implemented by almost anyone with proper training. To be scalable and sustainable, of course, would require the correct incentive structure, something never possible in the public education.
“A teacher’s diligence is likely to be proportioned to the motive which he has for exerting it.” Adam Smith.
Academically, the DIW Criteria can be summarized: Does it produce significant changes quickly and efficiently for all students. Are the academic skills taught useful in themselves and useful in future academic pursuits? Is the program effective for everyone? The answer for all of these question is yes when Direct Instruction is used.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
