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Published: 19 September 2017

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What does systematic instruction mean? Dr Kerry Hempenstall, 

Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

My blogs can be viewed on-line or downloaded as a Word file or PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/olxpifutwcgvg8j/AABU8YNr4ZxiXPXzvHrrirR8a?dl=0

New Addition - March 2025

So, at the end of this section is my paper from some years ago. 

Below is the update of studies restricted to the years from 2020 to 2025. Has the system changed?

What does systematic instruction mean (2023)

Breaking lessons and activities into sequential, manageable steps that progress from simple to more complex concepts and skills. (2022)

There are three components to systematic instruction. These three components include measurable learning goals, sequence lessons, and structured learning.

Instruction is explicit when the teacher clearly, overtly, and thoroughly communicates with students how to do something. Systematic implies that there is attention paid to the detail of the teaching process.

The plan for instruction that is systematic is carefully thought out, builds upon prior learning, is strategic building from simple to complex, and is designed before activities and lessons are planned. Instruction is across the five components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension”.

It promotes retention of information: through direct, systematic, and explicit instruction, students learn to master concepts and ideas, building gradually from simple to more complex lessons. This helps them better process and retain information, building a solid foundation for future learning and progress.22 Aug 2023

Systematic instruction is an evidence-based method for teaching individuals with disabilities that spans more than 50 years.

It incorporates the principles of applied behavior analysis and allows for educators to teach a wide range of skills, including everything from academic to functional living skills.

Why is Systematic Instruction important?

Systemic instruction involves breaking a skill down into individual components so that students can learn it more easily. This approach helps students understand what they need to do to complete a task or achieve a goal.

How to implement Systematic Instruction

Data collection also ensures that this method of teaching is effective and results are measurable. To better understand the importance of systematic instruction, let’s break it into steps:

Step 1: Define the instructional objective

It is wise to identify your objective first and then break it down in to a single step or a chain of steps to complete. You should also review students’ prior learning history, preferences, or prerequisites skills that might assist in obtaining the skill.

Step 2: Choose an appropriate teaching/prompting strategy and materials

This will allow students to complete the skills or steps in the chain.  If you know that a student is having difficulty with instruction in a particular lesson, as an educator, you should find a way to teach or prompt them through the process to eventually get to the instructional objective and complete the skill on their own.

Ask yourself: What instructional strategy might support me in prompting or teaching my student to complete this skill? You should also consider how you will fade out teaching prompts over time and support your student so they can become independent learners.

Step 3: Determine the data collection method

This will allow you to evaluate how well your students are doing over instructional trials and whether they are gaining independence over time.  You should make sure that the evaluation method is sensitive enough to pick up on how students are progressing in becoming independent and performing the skills necessary for their success.

Step 4: Implement the instructional strategy and collect data

This step ensures that educators are implementing strategies designed for success and that, even though variations are inevitable, all individuals teaching the skill are implementing them in a similar way.

It is imperative that you also determine an appropriate reinforcement strategy. So many students have a negative experience when it comes to learning. You can make learning fun by reinforcing the benefits of correct skill usage and support students along the way. After that, you should aim to fade prompts and scale back until students become independent.

Step 5: Evaluate your data

You should do this to find out whether the strategy you are using to teach a skill is effective and whether there is an increase in student comprehension or capability.  If there is a positive trend, then continue to implement the same instructional strategy. If the trend is flat or variable (meaning it jumps up and down) you should reevaluate the data to determine if the instructional method will be effective in the long term.

Step 6: Refine the process and make decisions based on data

You should always take the results you are seeing in your data into consideration when determining whether you should adjust your instructional strategies. If the instructional objectives were attained, then determine the next step of your instruction.

If the instructional objective was not obtained, then you must determine what you need to change, any additional materials required and if there is an inconsistency in the implementation of the instructional strategy. Occasionally, you might discover the instructional method you’re using needs to be broken down into a simple steps or that you need to teach a prerequisite skill prior to teaching a learning objective.

Systematic instruction is a great way to show that any student can learn. Educators are also responsible for breaking skills down to help students learn, no matter their challenges. Discovering and utilizing the power of systematic instruction can ensure that educators everywhere are helping students at every grade and level.

How can Systematic Instruction benefit educators?

Systematic instruction is a great way to show that any student can learn. Educators are also responsible for breaking skills down to help students learn, no matter their challenges. Discovering and utilizing the power of systematic instruction can ensure that educators everywhere are helping students at every grade and level.

Ascherman, A. (2017). The Importance of Systematic Instruction. RethinkEd.

https://www.rethinked.com/resources/importance-systematic-instruction/

“In contrast to listening and speaking, which develop naturally, the intricacies of written language must be explicitly taught. Direct, explicit, systematic instruction has been recognized as an important strategy for this purpose. The Florida Center for Reading Research provides definitions of direct, explicit and systematic instruction:

Direct Instruction: The teacher defines and teaches a concept, models the learning process, guides students through its application, and arranges for extended guided practice until mastery is achieved.

Systematic Instruction: A carefully planned sequence for instruction, similar to a builder’s blueprint for a house characterizes systematic instruction. A blueprint is carefully thought out and designed before building materials are gathered and construction begins.
As stated by Adams (2001, p. 74)
The goal of systematic instruction is one of maximizing the likelihood that whenever children are asked to learn something new, they already possess the appropriate prior knowledge and understandings to see its value and to learn it efficiently.
The plan for instruction that is systematic is carefully thought out, builds upon prior learning, is strategic building from simple to complex, and is designed before activities and lessons are planned. Instruction is across the five components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).

Explicit Instruction: Explicit instruction involves direct explanation. Concepts are clearly explained and skills are clearly modeled, without vagueness or ambiguity (Carnine, 2006). The teacher’s language is concise, specific, and related to the objective. Another characteristic of explicit instruction is a visible instructional approach which includes a high level of teacher/student interaction. Explicit instruction means that the actions of the teacher are clear, unambiguous, direct, and visible. This makes it clear what the students are to do and learn. Nothing is left to guess work.”

Elements Comprising the Colorado Literacy Framework. (2023). Office of Elementary Literacy and School Readiness. https://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/clf/eightelements_04-purposefulinstruction

“Direct, systematic, and explicit instruction is an approach that places focus on clear, structured, gradual teaching methods to promote effective learning. Whenever you teach students new skills, new concepts, or new information, this approach is useful, especially for those students in your classroom struggling with learning difficulties like ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other challenges. 

According to the Florida Center for Reading Research, these three concepts can be defined as follows:

Direct instruction – this approach involves the teacher presenting information directly to the students, through clear, concise explanations and examples that help students process what they’re being taught. It’s a way of eliminating confusion and guesswork and guiding students through concepts and applications, going into detail where needed to make sure all students have processed and understood the lesson. 

Systematic instruction – this approach basically involves segmenting, organizing, or separating lessons into sequences to help students better process new information step by step. Lessons should follow a logical, gradual progression, where each new piece of information builds upon the previous one, making things easier to understand by all students. This concept focuses on building knowledge gradually, going from simple ideas to more complex concepts, laying the groundwork for students to build knowledge and mastery. 

Explicit instruction – every new concept or lesson taught in the classroom has to be logical, gradual, and easy to process for all students, regardless of their learning difficulties. Explicit instruction means that the teacher should use concise, specific, and clear language, without any ambiguity or vagueness, leaving out any guesswork or interpretation from the students. This approach also involves a high level of direct interaction between student and teacher, where concepts are broken down into manageable steps, while the teacher provides guidance and further explanations where needed. 

Why is it important?

Incorporating the principles of direct, explicit, and systematic instruction into the curriculum can lay the foundation for students to be able to process and understand information and reach fluency and literacy effectively. These principles are also incredibly useful when it comes to teaching students struggling with learning challenges or disabilities, or who simply require additional support to move on from one lesson to the next. 

Direct, systematic, and explicit instruction can be useful to teachers in various ways. 

• It promotes clarity and understanding: teachers provide clear, focused explanations, examples, and demonstrations, eliminating vagueness and avoiding misunderstandings on behalf of the students. 
• It promotes efficiency: through direct and focused teaching methods, students receive direct, targeted information without any distractions or confusion, making it easy for them to follow lessons and build knowledge gradually. 
• It caters to diverse learners: this type of instruction is not only beneficial to struggling students, but to general education students, as well. Each student has a different learning style, different needs, and moves at a different pace, and these approaches can easily be tailored to fit different learning preferences. 
• It promotes retention of information: through direct, systematic, and explicit instruction, students learn to master concepts and ideas, building gradually from simple to more complex lessons. This helps them better process and retain information, building a solid foundation for future learning and progress. 
• It helps Build confidence: struggling learners often have a hard time being confident in their skills or speaking out in the classroom, because they might not have grasped the information as well as other students or they feel left behind. Through direct, systematic, and explicit instruction, they receive clear guidance and they know exactly what’s expected of them and what comes next, thus eliminating anxiety and uncertainty. This type of instruction also allows them to interact more directly with their teacher, get focused, targeted feedback, and to see progress as they move on to increasingly more complex ideas.”

Da Vinci Collaborative. (2023). What is direct, explicit, and systematic instruction, and why is it important?

https://davincicollaborative.com/what-is-direct-explicit-and-systematic-instruction-and-why-is-it-important/

This next segment is the original, broader document and includes earlier periods.

We frequently read in research papers, and increasingly in education policies, that a systematic approach to instruction usually produces superior learning outcomes when compared to unsystematic approaches (Clark, Kirschner, & Sweller, 2012). This seems particularly to be the case when introducing new skills and knowledge to students and for those who tend towards slow progress in their academic learning.

Systematic is sometimes paired with the term explicit. So, how do they differ? Their meanings often overlap, but explicit is usually understood to mean that the teacher takes centre stage and the student learning is controlled by the teacher’s curriculum and teaching behaviour. Implicit is usually reserved for instruction that is student-directed. So, implicit usually refers to a discovery, constructivist, or minimal guidance model. In this implicit model, the teacher plays a lesser, guiding role, sometimes referred to as the guide-on-the-side, while the students take greater responsibility for their own learning from the outset.

So, there’s systematic vs unsystematic curriculum or (better put) a continuum from high to low level of system incorporated within any curriculum. For example, some phonics programs may be highly systematic, and others less so. Of course, being systematic doesn’t guarantee student outcome, but when the curriculum is closely aligned with the consensus of what’s important and when it should be introduced, then such programs have a better empirical track record than those programs lacking in system.

It should be noted that in the USA, explicit has another meaning as it applies to reading instruction. It is often used as a synonym for the term synthetic phonics - the latter is more commonly employed in Great Britain and Australia to refer to a specific model of reading instruction that emphasises the structure of the language - teaching letter-sound relationships and blending as the key entry skills for beginning readers. In this paper, the intended meaning is that conveyed in the previous paragraph.

Apart from curriculum content, there’s also a continuum of degree of system in how the curriculum is delivered. For a given curriculum, teachers may assiduously implement it as written, or they may adapt it according to their own predilections. This is usually called a departure from program fidelity, and is abhorred by those program designers who incorporate a strongly systematic bent. However, some programs are loosely coupled in that they presume teachers will be expert in presenting their curriculum. “They’re teachers, they’re professionals, they would know how to teach my stuff.” Of course, teacher variation is a major problem for our education systems, and we’ve seen research in Australia and elsewhere that few teachers have been trained in explicit instruction generally, or in basic classroom management. Thus, many teachers have too little understanding of what’s important in reading instruction. 

Attempting to reduce these sources of variation, some designers provide a script for whole curriculum, for example Direct instruction, Open Court, and Success For All.

Is it possible to be systematic without being explicit? In some respect, perhaps, in that a teacher might specify a comprehensive curriculum that covers the topic adequately and in a logical sequence; however, the responsibility for managing that curriculum is passed to the student. So, the curriculum could be systematic though the instruction would not be – except for those students adept at designing their own instructional sequences.

Is it possible to be explicit without being systematic? Yes, certainly. Consider a teacher-directed classroom in which the teacher provides the majority of the curriculum, but teaches off the top of his head. There is no particular pre-planning based upon what works, rather the mood of the day drives what he attempts to teach. So, what is taught is taught with clarity, but the jumbled up nature of the curriculum sequence makes it difficult for students to comprehend how a given topic relates to other associated topics in, say, a skill sequence.

In terms or reading instruction, the discrepancy between systematic and unsystematic approaches was most sharply delineated in the debate over the supporters of the whole language approach to reading compared with those who asserted that an early focus on the alphabetic principle was a necessary component of effective beginning reading approaches. A necessary element in the whole language approach was that students should be provided solely with attractive and meaningful story books to enable them to develop their reading prowess. As we shall see, the central tenet of whole language that meaning is paramount, and books must not be skill-based precluded systematic instruction.

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