Papers and Presentations on Direct Instruction
Teachers' Perceptions of Direct Instruction. Teachers
expressed numerous, strong, and overwhelmingly positive attitudes about
Direct Instruction--for them and for their students.
Closing the Achievement Gap With District Adoption of DI.
Theory of Instruction.
The main propositions in the DI theory of instruction--from which
design and communication principles are derived. The DI
theory of instruction is the only one that is actually a theory--an
interconnected set of testable law-like proposition--rather than the
usual mass of tedious twaddle and puffed up piffle that passes for
"pedagogy" in education.
Direct Instruction and the Teaching of Early Reading. Wisconsin Policy Institute.
One-school Pilot Implementation as a
Catalyst For District-wide Adoption of Direct Instruction. This
paper describes the work that my buddy, Frances, and I did in a local
school district. Beginning with one school (three classrooms),
all but one or two elementary schools were using DI (Reading Mastery) within about one year. Since then, most of these elementary schools still use Readiing Mastery. Many are also using Language for Learning in kindergarten, and Corrective Reading for grades 3 and up. In addition, most of the middle and high schools are also using Corrective Reading.
[I can't give exact numbers because things change as principals come
and go.] Scores (percentage of kids passing state tests) also
increased as schools implemented DI. Often 15% more the first
year; then 5-10% more next year; gradually tapering off to 88-92%
or so. These changes occurred despite "backdoor" efforts
of whole language university colleagues and some Reading Recovery
advocates to squelch the reading reform.
With fingers (and eyes) crossed, I can state that DI is part of the
culture of the county. Many new principals, both in the county
described in this paper and in other counties, implement DI reading and
language programs as a matter of course. This may be because they
were my students and I have a winning personality.
Simply put, the time was right.
State accountability legislation forced principals and district
administrators to do something that worked. Frances and I offered
DI. Frances (a former teacher in the county) was respected and
liked by the principals and teachers. And DI worked--quickly and obviously.