Details

Published: 23 July 2025

Hits: 1144

Hempenstall K. (2020). Teaching reading through Direct Instruction: A role for educational psychologists? The Educational and Developmental Psychologist 37:133–139. doi: 10.1017/edp.2020.13

(PDF) Teaching reading through Direct Instruction: A role for educational psychologists?

I had originally been a secondary maths teacher prior to becoming a psychology practitioner. I became interested in numerous students who in my classes struggled with their reading. So, I wanted to develop activities that may improve their situation.

Hence for my focus on the topics below. Apart from my paper which is just below.

I was also interested in how others have addressed similar issues - both these days along with some in earlier years.

So, my piece is below:

Teaching reading through Direct Instruction: A role for educational psychologists?

Abstract

Educational psychologists can play a number of roles within education settings. They are often called upon to assist with the assessment and treatment of disability issues, student behaviour and mental health problems, parent and teacher liaison, and counselling, to name a few. Less frequently pursued is an active role in establishing and evaluating both general classroom and remedial literacy instruction. A lack of success in the literacy domain can have far-reaching effects on students’ educational and social and emotional development. Further, it has been noted in national and international reports that the accumulated evidence for effective literacy instruction has not had the impact on policy that it deserves.

Educational psychologists are well placed to assist schools to develop an evidence-based perspective that can provide a marked improvement in the literacy development of students. One such model with a long research history is Direct Instruction. This article will describe the model, and consider how it might be profitably employed in schools. Closing the Gap in Literacy For quite some time it has been clear that our education system has been unable to close the gap between high and low achievers, despite regular increases in funding (Holden & Zhang, 2018), but the resultant community concern has heightened and broadened in recent times.

Three findings, in particular, have produced significant concern. The Australian Industry Group (2016) reported that 44% of Australians had reading skills below the minimum required to cope with the demands of workplaces and society. Recent scores on Australia’s National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) have shown that the achievement gap has even widened (Goss & Sonnemann, 2016; Holden, 2019; Holden & Zhang, 2018). Further, international assessment through the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that the reading performance of Australia’s adolescents has declined since 2000 (Thomson, De Bortoli, Underwood, & Schmid, 2019).

There has long been an unfortunate disconnect between empirically derived research findings on literacy and the practices typically occurring in our classrooms (Hempenstall, 2006). Education has a history of regularly adopting new ideas, but it has done so without the widescale assessment and scientific research that is necessary to distinguish effective from ineffective reforms.

This absence of a scientific perspective has precluded systematic improvement in the education system, and it has impeded growth in the teaching profession for a long time (Anwaruddin, 2015; Carnine, 1995; Hempenstall, 1996). As other articles in this special issue have made clear, there is a great deal known about the development of reading skill and the means of effectively teaching its constituent elements. This knowledge seems to exist in a parallel universe, having yet to make its way into the teaching profession in a meaningful way.

A number of factors relevant to this situation have been explored. For example, educational policies over many years have lacked an evidence-based culture. Carnine (1991) viewed educational policy makers as lacking any scientific framework and inclined to accept proposals based on good intentions and unsupported opinions. In more recent years, policy makers have begun to exhort the profession to take into account the research findings (e.g., National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy, 2005; New South Wales Parliament Legislative Council, 2020); however, many teacher education faculties have yet to modify their programs to reflect this policy shift. Buckingham (2019) reported several disturbing findings regarding initial teacher education. Just 4% of the 116 literacy units in reviewed education faculties included a specific focus on early reading instruction.

Further, only 6% of those units included all five of the recognised elements of effective early literacy instruction. This absence of emphasis on beginning reading has led to new teachers having little knowledge of how optimally to teach reading (Fielding-Barnsley, 2010; Hammond, 2015; Stephenson, 2018). Studies of both preservice and inservice teachers have noted a lack of knowledge about early literacy, and also personal literacy concerns among a higher than expected number of teachers (Cohen, Mather, Schneider, & White, 2017; Meeks & Kemp, 2017). Those in the latter group are doubly impeded in that their low level of understanding of the structure of language and personal literacy difficulties com bine to preclude effective instruction in the phonological processes central to evidence-based initial reading instruction (Stark, Snow, Eadie, & Goldfeld, 2016).

So, the evidence indicates that the Australian education system is not doing enough to ensure all students have the opportunity to reach their potential. For example, there is a gap in student achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged schools that increases between Year 3 and Year 9 from 1 year 3 months to years 8 months. Across Victorian schools there is an average attainment gap between the top students and low progress students of 7 years (Goss & Sonnemann, 2016). Although literacy research has had little penetration into Australian classrooms, there are exceptions. ‘About 5% of schools are routinely doing better than we would expect given their student population mix’ (Goss, 2018).

Some of these schools are disadvantaged. These schools tend to have several discernible characteristics:

1. School discipline. Based on high expectations, a clear set of consistently applied classroom rules, and a centralised school behaviour policy.

2. Direct and explicit instruction. New content is explicitly taught in sequenced and structured lessons. It includes clear les son objectives, immediate feedback, reviews of content from previous lessons, unambiguous language, frequent checking of student understanding, demonstration of the knowledge or skill to be learnt, and students practising skills with teacher guidance.

3. Experienced and autonomous school leadership. Stable, long term school leadership, and principal autonomy to select staff and control school budgets.

4. Data-informed practice. Using data from teacher-written, NAPLAN and PAT assessments to improve teaching, track student progress, and facilitate intervention for underachieving students.

5. Teacher collaboration and professional learning. Collaboration among teachers and specialist support staff to cater for the often complex needs of disadvantaged students, with a focus on teacher professional learning, involving peer observations, mentoring, and attending practical professional development activities that help refine literacy and numeracy instruction.

6. Comprehensive early reading instruction. Including five necessary elements of reading instruction: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. (Joseph, 2019, p. 2).

These characteristics are uncommon in our schools, and their adoption is unlikely to occur without expert encouragement and support, for reasons outlined earlier. This vacuum provides a potential role for educational and developmental psychologists in the school system. Apart from Characteristic 3, these school qualities represent a rich vein of opportunity for our practitioners to play an important role in school improvement and thereby student attainment. Because of their training, which differs from that provided in education courses generally, psychologists enthusiastically seek out research-based practices, are practised in dealing with data, and collaboration is a strong part of their work style.

The main focus of this article is on Characteristics 2 and 6, which emphasise direct and explicit instruction and early reading, although 4 and 5 also offer a rich and related field for psychologists. There is ample evidence that the explicit approach to reading instruction is under-utilised despite being superior to other forms of instruction for basic skill development, especially for low progress students (Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich, & Tenenbaum, 2010; Archer & Hughes, 2011; Clark, Kirschner, & Sweller, 2012).

Apart from the definition provided in Joseph (2019), a teacher characterised direct and explicit as: ‘Instruction, and I don’t mean facilitation, I mean stand-up-in-front-of-the-class, put-it-on-the-board, do-it-this-way-because-it-works-best, practise until-you’ve-got-it-right instruction.’ Direct Instruction (DI) programs were among the first to incorporate explicit teaching as their delivery system, but additionally they provide carefully structured curriculum content to maximise the impact on student outcomes.

The DI reading programs, such as Reading Mastery, have been acknowledged as exemplars of the National Reading Panel’s five major components of early reading instruction listed by Joseph (Stockard & Engelmann, 2010). The DI model has a relatively long history in reading education, the first program (DISTAR Reading) having been published in 1969, and new programs have been published up to the present day. Initially, the programs were intended for struggling students, but others are designed for whole classes. The most frequently used emphasise reading, spelling, language, writing, and maths. For information about any of these programs, see National Institute for Direct Instruction (2018). The programs share a common teaching style readily observable to any classroom visitor.

The instruction usually takes place in small groups (4–15) with a teacher directing activities with the aid of a script, and students actively involved in responding to a fast-paced lesson during which they receive constant teacher communication, questions, and feedback. Choral (unison) responding during part of a lesson keeps students on track and provides feedback to the teacher if any students are falling behind. Also noticeable is the frequent use of a model-lead-test sequence during instruction. Some may know it as ‘I do, we do, you do’. Programs are designed according to what, not whom, is to be taught. Thus, all children work through the same sequence of tasks directed by a teacher using the same teaching strategies. Individual differences are accommodated through different entry points, reinforcement, amounts of practice, and correction strategies (Gregory, 1983).

Assumptions DI programs extend beyond the principles of explicit instruction and into the curriculum domain (Becker, 1977). It is assumed that all children can learn and be taught; thus, failure to learn is viewed as failure to teach effectively (Engelmann, 1980). Children whose progress is delayed must be taught to learn faster because catchup at a later stage is very arduous. This acceleration is achieved through a focus on features designed to improve the efficiency of instruction.

So, DI is not simply a program of what to teach, but also how to teach each element. Teaching Methodology Curriculum is designed with the goal of ‘faultless instruction’ (Engelmann, 1980, Engelmann & Carnine,1982), that is, sequences or routines for which there is only one logical interpretation. The designer’s brief is to avoid ambiguity in instruction — the focus is on logical-analysis principles. These principles enable the organisation of concepts according to their structure. It is intended to answer the question: what types of student-teacher interactions or methods lead to the most student development while using the fewest resources?

Engelmann (1980) highlighted four design principles:

(1) Where possible, teach a general case. That is, those skills, which when mastered, can be applied across a range of problems for which specific solutions have not been taught; for example, teaching letter-sound correspondences and phonological skills, such as blending, to enable the decoding of regular words. The generalisations may be taught inductively by examples only, or deductively by providing a rule and a range of examples to define the rule’s boundaries.

(2) Teach the essentials. The essentials are determined by an analysis of the skills necessary to achieve the desired objective. There is an underlying assertion that it is possible to achieve skilled reading by a task analysis and the teaching of subskills within a cumulative framework.

(3) Keep errors to a minimum. Errors are considered counter productive and time-wasting. For struggling learners, a high success rate is beneficial in building and maintaining the motivation often lost through a history of failure.

A low error rate is achieved by the use of the instructional design principles first described in Theory of Instruction (Engelmann & Carnine, 1982), and by ensuring students have the preskills needed to commence any program (via a placement test). Thus, the programs are very detailed and precisely crafted. To reduce variability in teacher presentation all lessons are scripted, and all programs are field-tested and revised prior to publication. Engelmann described the preeminent feature of DI as the orchestration of detail in program design and presentation. This involves ‘picky details of how the tasks are formulated, how the example sets are designed, how the details of lessons are organized and sequenced from lesson to the next so that only about 10–15% of each lesson presents brand new material, and how exercises are designed so they are unambiguous about details of the content’ (Engelmann, 2004, para 4).

Scripted programs are employed because they help control instructional delivery, thereby increasing fidelity of implementation (Plavnick, Marchand-Martella, Martella, Thompson, & Wood, 2015).

(4) Adequate practice. DI programs include the requirement for mastery learning (usually above 90% mastery). Students continue to focus on a given task until the mastery criterion is reached.

The objective of this strategy is the achievement of retention. The practice schedule includes massed practice, shifting to a spaced schedule. The amount of practice on a given skill decreases as the relevant skill becomes incorporated into more complex skills. Advocates of DI argue that this feature of instruction is particularly important for low-achieving students and is too often given scant regard (Engelmann, 1980). While this emphasis on practice may be unfashionable, there is considerable supporting research, and a number of effective schools are increasingly endorsing its importance (Rist, 1992): ‘The strategies that have fallen out of style, such as memorising, reciting and drilling, are what we need to do. They’re simple — but fundamental — things that make complex thinking possible’ (p. 19).

More recent research has reinforced that point (Megherbi, Elbro, Oakhill, Segui, & New, 2018). In line with current research findings, effective early reading programs tend to incorporate these four design principles. There is an emphasis on the essential areas for beginners: letter-sound relationships and phonological blending. Teaching these generalis able components within a cumulative framework enables early success in decoding regular words, even those not before encountered.

Review and practice are addressed systematically. Each of these areas is particularly critical for struggling students, and is paid careful attention in the program design to reduce errors and help promote mastery. Factors in Success In addition to the above overarching principles, there are crucial factors in program implementation. Grouping The teachers’ manuals recommend group sizes between 4 and 15 across the various reading programs. Engelmann, Becker, Carnine, and Gersten (1988) portrayed DI programs as individual programs presented in a group format. For this efficiency element to succeed, the teacher must observe each student’s response to every question.

So, the choral responding must be precise to enable the detection and teacher correction of errors. The extent to which teachers can do this successfully depends upon several factors, such as their hearing acuity, ability and determination to ensure their students achieve truly choral responding, and the group size. The vigilance provided by teachers in attending to student responses is a major defence against any student’s failure in the program. It is an area in which training and monitoring of any teachers inexperienced in the approach should be a priority.

Additionally, smaller group sizes have larger effects on vulnerable students (Suggate, 2016). Time and Intensity of Instruction An element contributing to the impressive gains almost certainly involves the duration and intensity of the intervention. Longer interventions allow for greater content coverage and adequate practice. Program intensity involves a combination of lesson length, lesson density, and lesson frequency. For example, lesson length for the Corrective Reading program is about 40–60minutes. This period allows for a reasonable content coverage in each session and for the integration of new knowledge into existing knowledge structures (Rosenshine, 2002).

As the programs involve a cumulative subskills approach to reading, the introduction of new skills, the practising of recently acquired skills, and the (vitally important) amalgamation of these with the already established core requires careful lesson planning within programs and sufficient time for this amalgamation to occur. Program density involves the extent to which students are actively engaged in learning during the lesson time. Various concepts, such as time-on-task, academic engaged time, and academic learning time have been employed to address the issue of student engagement. As an instructional issue it relates to the manner in which program design evokes high rates of student engagement. Another element of lesson density involves the proportion of correct to incorrect responses. Students who struggle with reading require high rates of success if they are to adopt new strategies, transfer new skills across tasks, and persevere with new strategies.

Teachers have commented on the high success rates achieved daily through both careful lesson design and student placement at the appropriate program level (Schug, Tarver, & Western, 2001). The author counted 300 responses from a student in a 10-minute word attack segment of a Corrective Reading: Decoding lesson. This represents a very high rate of student engagement; addition ally, the success rate was above 90%. Lesson frequency appears to be important, perhaps because of the need for spaced practice of newly mastered skills.

It has been noted that students, particularly those at risk, readily forget what they have learned when lesson frequency is low (Rosenshine, 1986). If this occurs, additional time is spent in relearning rather than in new learning and incorporation activities. Alternatively, teachers may ignore some student errors in the interests of maintaining lesson pace, thereby condemning some to failure. Frustration and disengagement are the possible negative outcomes of under scheduling. The program guidelines usually recommend five lessons per week, although this may not achieved by all schools. The effect of variable frequency impacts most notably on the stu dents most at risk. They are the students most likely to lose hard won gains through forgetting (National Reading Panel, 2000; Swanson, 2001).

The total contact hours are also relevant — for example, each of the levels of the Corrective Reading program entails about 50 hours of instruction. Priority on Academic Learning A related issue concerns the priority that schools assign to assisting readers with difficulty. At one level, this relates to the number of social issues schools are expected to address within a school day. A consequence can be that even if lessons are scheduled at a rate of five per week, this may rarely be achieved. Some schools may schedule four sessions, but average little above three sessions, a rate that seriously jeopardises the program’s likelihood of success.

In-Vivo Coaching Engelmann et al.’s(1988) experience has been that, without safe guards, less than 30% of the skills practised outside the classroom will be evident subsequently in classrooms. Thus, the provision of in-vivo coaching was found to be especially important for the acquisition of skills. Glang and Gersten (1987) commented on the value for teachers in seeing how their own students responded to the expert instructional techniques presented by the visiting supervisor. Unfortunately, this level of coaching support is rarely available in our educational settings. The issue of coaching is increasingly being raised given the expectation that teachers will be required to adopt evidence-based approaches (Hammond & Moore, 2018). Fidelity High fidelity implementation means that you get a program with an internal design and follow that design. That would include using the materials in a particular sequence, adhering to the amount of time and practice called for by the program, and following the recommendations for grouping or reteaching students. It would mean using all the essential components as they are designed, including differentiated instructional time and program assessments (Diamond, 2004).

DI program effectiveness is predicated on implementation fidelity. In particular, departures from the program, such as omit ting individual turn-taking, or specific tasks may have a significant effect on the average group progress. These ‘creative’ modifications are likely to interfere most with the progress of the most vulnerable students, for it is they who adapt least easily to ambiguous or incomplete instructional sequences. ‘Our analyses revealed that overall fidelity of implementation accounted for 22% of the variance in the gains in basic reading skills and 18% of the passage comprehension gains of middle school students with reading difficulties’ (Benner, Nelson, Stage, & Ralston, 2011,p.85). Progress Monitoring In accumulative curriculum, it is essential that all tasks are mastered if students (especially the vulnerable) are to make progress.

The in-built continuous progress evaluation is valuable in quickly detecting individual or group difficulty at any point. Incorporated in programs are both daily monitoring of errors, and regularly scheduled mastery tests. It is through these program features that problems of low progress can be addressed, and students spared the fate of participating in an ineffectual educational process. This inclusion of continuous observation and testing has been shown in independent research to enhance retention in addition to its role in monitoring progress (Adesope, Trevisan, & Sundararajan, 2017). Evaluation of the Direct Instruction Model Surprisingly little serious attention has been paid to DI from both the education and wider educational research communities, despite its strong history of supportive empirical evidence (McMullen & Madelaine, 2014).

As with explicit instruction in general, DI has been criticised, especially by those of more constructivist persuasion. For an extended discussion, see Hempenstall (2013). Follow Through A major study was federally funded in the United States in the late 1960s, arising because of a concern about the poor educational outcomes for disadvantaged students. Entitled Follow Through (Engelmann et al., 1988; Grossen, 1996), it was aimed at the first three years of school, and was designed to determine which methods of teaching would be most effective for disadvantaged students throughout their primary school career. It was a huge study, involving 75,000 children in 180 communities over the first three years of their school life. It is the largest educational experiment ever undertaken, extending from 1967 to 1995, at a cost of almost a billion dollars. There were nine major competing sponsors covering a broad range of educational philosophies.

They included child-directed learning, individualised instruction, language experience, learning styles, self-esteem development, cognitive emphasis, parent-based teaching, DI, and behavioural teaching. The models can be reduced to three distinct themes — those emphasising either basic academic outcomes, cognitive development, or affective development. The targeted basic skills included reading, language, spelling, writing, and maths. The models that emphasised the systematic teaching of basic skills (DI and Behaviour Analysis) performed best. In reading, the DI model, which also has a strong phonic emphasis, had the most impressive results in both academic and affective areas.

Apart from the basic skills models, all others produced more negative than positive outcomes on measures in the basic skill domain. Follow-up studies were performed 3, 6, and 9 years after the DI students had completed Follow Through. They showed strong consistent long-term benefits in reading (Gersten, Keating, & Becker, 1988), effects that were evidenced in higher achievement, fewer grade retentions, and more university acceptances than in com parison groups that had traditional education in the same com munities. For more reading on Follow Through, see National Institute for Direct Instruction (2013). Subsequently, meta-analyses documenting the effectiveness of DI were reported by White (1988), who reported an overall effect size of .84, and by Adams and Engelmann (1996) with effect size of .87. A report from the American Institutes for Research (1999), An Educators’ Guide to School-wide Reform, found that only three programs, DI among them, had adequate evidence of effectiveness in reading instruction. However, the approach has never been accorded the attention that might have been expected.

Recently, a paper published in the Review of Educational Research, ‘The Effectiveness of Direct Instruction Curricula: A Meta-Analysis of a Half Century of Research’ (Stockard, Wood, Coughlin, &Khoury,2018), outlined and analysed the long history of research into the effectiveness of the various DI programs. Quantitative mixed models were used to examine literature published from 1966 through 2016 on the effectiveness of DI. Analyses were based on 328 studies involving 413 study designs and almost 4000 effects. Results are reported for the total set and subareas regarding reading, math, language, spelling, and multiple or other academic subjects; ability measures; affective outcomes; teacher and parent views; and single-subject designs. All of the estimated effects were positive and all were statistically significant except results from meta regressions involving affective outcomes.

Characteristics of the publications, methodology, and sample were not systematically related to effect estimates. Effects showed little decline during maintenance, and effects for academic subjects were greater                                                                     when students had more expo sure to the programs. Estimated effects were educationally significant, moderate to large when using the traditional psychological benchmarks, and similar in magnitude to effect sizes that reflect performance gaps between more and less advantaged students (Stockard et al., 2018,p.1).

These outcomes are impressive given the wide range of study designs, sample sizes, educational domains, and evaluation tools employed across the studies. Although there were variations across programs, effect size for the total sample was.60, with the95% con fidence interval within .54 to .66. John Hattie (2009) reached broadly similar conclusions about the size of effect: One of the common criticisms is that Direct Instruction works with very low-level or specific skills, and with lower ability and the youngest students.

These are not the findings from the meta-analyses. The effects of Direct Instruction are similar for regular (d = 0.99), and special education and lower ability students (d = 0.86), higher for reading(d = 0.89) than form a thematics (d = 0.50), similar for the more low-level word attack (d = 0.64) and also for high-level comprehension (d = 0.54), and similar for elementary and high school students. The messages of these meta-analyses on Direct Instruction underline the power of stating the learning intention and success criteria, and then engaging students in moving towards these. The teacher needs to invite the students to learn, provide much deliberative practice and modelling, and provide appropriate feedback and multiple opportunities to learn.

Students need opportunities for independent practice, and then there need to be opportunities to learn the skill or knowledge implicit in the learning intention in contexts other than those directly taught. (Hattie, 2009, pp. 206–207) Apart from evaluating the DI programs’ effects on student out comes, there have also been performed many evaluations of the diverse instructional features underpinning DI programs, including: preteaching to low progress students, signalling, group size, use of overt steps, sequencing of positive and negative examples, pacing, correction procedures, and massed and spaced practice.

The bibliography of writings on DI reports 44 such papers (National Institute for Direct Instruction, 2017). The database on Theories on Instruction & Learning comprises 48 papers. Why Might Educational and Developmental Psychologists Consider Becoming Involved With These Programs in School Settings? As a group, psychologists are interested in student welfare, and reading attainment plays a huge role in enabling students to make the most of their years of schooling. Additionally, failure of student reading development has been associated with a range of mental health and behaviour issues. Studies have noted an increased risk for both internalising and externalising problems (Boyes, Leitao, Claessen, Badcock, & Nayton, 2016; Katzir, Young-Suk, & Dotan, 2018; Russell, Ryder, Norwich, & Ford, 2015).

My own role as an educational psychologist in schools was initially dominated by referrals of student behavioural issues. After dealing with an endless stream of such referrals in both primary and secondary schools, it became apparent that a very high proportion of these students also had significant reading problems. Obviously, not all behaviour problems area consequence of low progress in reading, but I was surprised at the level of comorbidity. Shifting some of my attention to their academic progress was fulfilling and enabled having a positive influence on a larger number of students in the schools in which I consulted.

Educational policies are beginning to reflect a better understanding of what is possible in school settings to enhance the outcomes for more students. However, schools are being asked for more than they have been trained to deliver. For example, Joseph (2019) noted the use of data as important in school improvement. It is becoming mandatory in policies in decision making, in progress monitoring and program evaluation, yet it is foreign to most teachers as their training has not emphasised its role. Psychologists speak data, and can assist schools in dealing with these new responsibilities. Evidence-Based Practice in School at Last? In the report of the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (2014), evidence-based appears 31 times, and one recommendation was that: ‘The theory, methods and practices taught to pre-service teachers need to be clearly based on evidence linked to impact on student learning outcomes’ (p. 18).

How are current teachers to know how to make sense of educational research findings, to separate the wheat from the chaff? Psychologists, because of their training, can assist in this task. The DI model has some administrative features that make it an attractive option: lessons fit readily into a school timetable; their completeness relieves schools from developing their own curricula; and the clearly defined skill objectives and associated mastery tests make reporting to parents a simple task. Additionally, many teachers express a lack of confidence in individually addressing the problems of the at-risk reader, expressing a sense that they have been insufficiently trained to deal with them.

Who better than psychologists to oppose the numerous pseudo-scientific education programs that abound, and also to counteract those teacher consultants who continue to provide seminars and training in moribund literacy strategies. In the reading domain, this involves attention to the empirical literature that addresses the five main components of effective instruction, including individual program evaluations. As practitioners, we need to be able to discern between dross and gold, and to effectively communicate relevant findings to teachers and administrators. Our education system ultimately will require teachers to become researchers, understand the evidence, become collaborators, and collect data to enhance their effectiveness. What a great opportunity this represents for educational and develop mental psychologists! None. Financial support. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Conflicts of interest. None. Ethical standards. Not relevant to this study

References

Adams, G., & Engelmann, S. (1996). Research on Direct Instruction: 25 years beyond DISTAR. Seattle, WA: Educational Achievement Systems.

Adesope, O.O., Trevisan, D.A.& Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87, 659–701.

Alfieri, L., Brooks, P.J., Aldrich, N.J., & Tenenbaum, H.R. (2010). Does discovery-based instruction enhance learning? Journal of Educational Psychology, 103,1–18. American Institutes for Research. (1999). An educators’ guide to schoolwide reform. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED460429

Anwaruddin, S.M. (2015). Teachers’ engagement with educational research: Toward a conceptual framework for locally-based interpretive communities. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23, 1–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/ epaa.v23.1776

Archer, A.L., & Hughes, C.A. (2011).Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Australian Industry Group. (2016). Tackling foundation skills in the work force. http://cdn.aigroup.com.au/Reports/2016/AIG9675_EMAIL.pdf

Becker, W.C. (1977). Teaching reading and language to the disadvantaged. What we have learned from field research. Harvard Educational Review, 47, 518–543.

Benner, G.J., Nelson, J.R., Stage, S.A., & Ralston, N.C. (2011). The influence of fidelity of implementation on the reading outcomes of middle school students experiencing reading difficulties. Remedial and Special Education, 32, 79–88.

Boyes, M.E., Leitao, S., Claessen, M., Badcock, N.A., & Nayton, M. (2016). Why are reading difficulties associated with mental health problems? Dyslexia, 22, 263–266. Buckingham, J. (2019). Graduate teachers are short changed on evidence-based reading instruction. Nomanis, 8,12–13.

Carnine, D.(1991).Curricular interventions for teaching higher order thinking to all students: Introduction to the special series. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 261–269.

Carnine, D. (1995).Trustworthiness, useability, and accessibility of educational research. Journal of Behavioral Education, 5, 251–258.

Clark, R.E., Kirschner, P.A., & Sweller, J. (2012, March 23). Putting students on the path to learning: The case for fully guided instruction. American Educator. http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Clark.pdf

Cohen, R., Mather, N., Schneider, D., & White, J. (2017). A comparison of schools: Teacher knowledge of explicit code-based reading instruction. Reading and Writing, 30, 653–690.

Diamond, L. (2004). High fidelity — It’s all about instructional materials. An interview with Linda Diamond of CORE. https://www.corelearn.com/files/ HighFidelity.pdf

Engelmann, S. (1980). Toward the design of faultless instruction: The theoretical basis of concept analysis. Educational Technology, 20,28–36.

Engelmann, S. (2004). Prologue to the Dalmatian and its spots: Why research-based recommendations fail Logic 101. http://www.zigsite.com/ DalmatianPro.htm

Engelmann, S., & Carnine, D. (1982). Theory of instruction. New York: Irvington.

Engelmann, S., Becker, W.C., Carnine, D., & Gersten, R. (1988). The Direct Instruction Follow Through model: Design and outcomes. Education and Treatment of Children, 11, 303–317.

Fielding-Barnsley, R. (2010). Australian pre-service teachers’ knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics in the process of learning to read. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 15,99–110.

Gersten, R.M., Keating, T., & Becker, W. (1988). The continued impact of the Direct Instruction Model: Longitudinal studies of Follow Through students. Education and Treatment of Children, 11, 318–327.

Glang, A., & Gersten, R. (1987, Winter). Coaching teachers. Direct Instruction News,1,4,5,7.

Goss, P. (2018, May 15). Five things we wouldn’t know without NAPLAN. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/five-things-we-wouldnt-know without-naplan-94286

Goss, P., & Sonnemann, J. (2016). Widening gaps: What NAPLAN tells us about student progress. Grattan Institute. https://grattan.edu.au/report/widening-gaps/ Gregory, R.P. (1983). Direct Instruction, disadvantaged and handicapped children: A review of the literature and some practical implications. Parts 1 & 2. Remedial Education, 18, 108–114, 130–136.

Grossen, B. (Ed.). (1996). What was that Project Follow Through? Effective School Practices, 15, 1–85.

Hammond, L. (2015). Early childhood educators’ perceived and actual meta linguistic knowledge, beliefs and enacted practice about teaching early reading. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 3, 853–864.

Hammond, L., & Moore,. M. (2018). Teachers taking up explicit instruction: The impact of a professional development and directive instructional coaching model. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43, 110–133.

Hattie J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Hempenstall, K. (1996). The gulf between educational research and policy: The example of Direct Instruction and whole language. Behaviour Change, 13, 33–46.

Hempenstall, K. (2006). What does evidence-based practice in education mean? Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities, 11, 83–92.

Hempenstall, K. (2013). Why does Direct Instruction evoke such rancour? https://www.nifdi.org/resources/hempenstall-blog/389-why-does-direct instruction-evoke-such-rancour.html

Holden, R. (2019, December 6). Vital signs: Australia’s slipping student scores will lead to greater income inequality. The Conversation. https:// theconversation.com/vital-signs-australias-slipping-student-scores-will lead-to-greater-income-inequality-128301

Holden, R., & Zhang, J. (2018). The economic impact of improving regional, rural & remote education in Australia: Closing the human capital gap. http://research.economics.unsw.edu.au/richardholden/assets/gonski-report final.pdf

Joseph, B. (2019). Overcoming the odds: A study of Australia’s top-performing disadvantaged schools. Centre for Independent Studies, RR39. https://www. cis.org.au/publications/research-reports/overcoming-the-odds-a-study-of australias-top-performing-disadvantaged-schools/

Katzir, T., Young-Suk, G.K., & Dotan, S. (2018). Reading self-concept and reading anxiety in second grade children: The roles of word reading, emergent literacy skills, working memory and gender. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–13

McMullen, F., & Madelaine, A. (2014). Why is there so much resistance to Direct Instruction? Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 19, 137–151.

Meeks, L., & Kemp, C.R. (2017). How well prepared are Australian preservice teachers to teach early reading skills? Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42,1–17.

Megherbi, H., Elbro, C., Oakhill, J.V., Segui, J., & New, B. (2018). The emergence of automaticity in reading: Effects of orthographic depth and word decoding ability on an adjusted Stroop measure. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 652–663.

National Inquiry into the Teaching ofLiteracy. (2005). Teaching reading — A review of the evidence-based research literature on approaches to the teaching of literacy, particularly those that are effective in assisting students with reading difficulties. Canberra, Australia: Department of Education, Science and Training.

National Institute for Direct Instruction. (2013). Direct Instruction and Project Follow-Through: A bibliography. https://www.nifdi.org/docman/ research/bibliographies-abstracts-of-literature/1347-direct-instruction-project follow-through-a-bibliography-march-24-2013/file.html

National Institute for Direct Instruction. (2017). DI component analysis. In Writings on Direct Instruction: A bibliography (p. 180). https://www.nifdi. org/docman/research/bibliography/205-di-bibliography-reference-list/file

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. RMIT University Library, on 07 Nov 2020 at 00:04:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms . https://doi.org/10.1017/edp.2020.13

The Educational and Developmental Psychologist 139 National Institute for Direct Instruction. (2018). Information about the individual DI programs. https://www.nifdi.org/programs/about-the-programs

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. National Institute of Child Health and Development.

New South Wales Parliament Legislative Council. (2020). Report 40. Measurement and outcome-based funding in New South Wales schools informed by the data: Evidence-based education in NSW. https://www. parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/inquiries/2539/PC3%20-%20Final%20Report %20-%20Measurement%20and%20outcome%20based%20funding%20in %20NSW%20schools%20-%2018%20February%202020.pdf

Plavnick, J., Marchand-Martella, N., Martella, R., Thompson, J., & Wood, A.L. (2015). A review of explicit and systematic scripted instructional programs for students with autism spectrum disorder. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2,55–66.

Rist, M.C. (1992). Learning by heart. The Executive Educator,November,12–19.

Rosenshine, B.V. (1986). Synthesis of research on explicit teaching. Educational Leadership, 43,60–69.

Rosenshine, B.V. (2002). Helping students from low-income homes read at grade level. Journal for Students Placed at Risk, 7, 273–283.

Russell, G., Ryder, D., Norwich, B., & Ford, T. (2015). Behavioural difficulties that co-occur with specific word reading difficulties: A UK population-based cohort study. Dyslexia, 21, 123–141.

Schug, M., Tarver, S., & Western, R. (2001). Direct instruction and the teaching of early reading. Wisconsin Policy Research Institute Report, 14,1–29.

Stark, H.L., Snow, P.C., Eadie P.A., & Goldfeld, S.R. (2016). Language and reading instruction in early years classrooms: The knowledge and self-rated ability of Australian teachers. Annals of Dyslexia, 66,28–54.

Stephenson, J. (2018). A systematic review of the research on the knowledge and skills of Australian preservice teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 43, 121–137.

Stockard, J., & Engelmann, K. (2010). The development of early academic success: The impact of Direct Instruction’s reading mastery. Journal of Behavior Assessment and Intervention in Children, 1,2–24.

Stockard, J., Wood, T.W., Coughlin, C.,& Khoury, C.R. (2018). The effectiveness of Direct Instruction curricula: A meta-analysis of a half century of research. Review of Educational Research, 88, 479–507.

Suggate, S.P. (2016). A meta-analysis of the long-term effects of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and reading comprehension interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 49,77–96.

Swanson, H.L. (2001). Research on interventions for adolescents with learning disabilities: A meta-analysis of outcomes related to higher-order processing. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 331–348.

Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group. (2014). Action now: Classroom ready teachers. https://www.aitsl.edu.au/tools-resources/resource/action-now-classroom-ready-teachers

Thomson,S., DeBortoli,L.,Underwood, C.,& Schmid,M. (2019). PISA2018 in Brief: I. Student performance. https://research.acer.edu.au/ozpisa/34

White, W.A.T. (1988). A meta-analysis of the effects of direct instruction in special education. Education & Treatment of Children, 11, 364–374.

End of my paper

The section below is from researchers - some recent year papers and some earlier.

Instructional psychology and teaching reading: Ending the reading wars (2020)

Abstract

“This article explores the ‘reading wars’ from the perspective of instructional psychology, which focuses on the environmental and instructional factors that facilitate students’ progress in learning to read. It draws on research (computational analysis and classroom-based experimental studies) to inform a novel intervention that teaches reading through systematic synthetic phonics and real books, rather than the more traditional phonically decodable reading schemes. The article discusses: (1) the criteria that inform curriculum design, (2) the instructional principles that underpin effective teaching, (3) teaching methodology, (4) an instructional analysis that explains why students are perceived to have difficulties in learning to read, and (5) the implications of instructional psychology for educational psychologists.”

Solity, J. E. (2020). Instructional psychology and teaching reading: Ending the reading wars. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 37(2), 123-132.

__________________________________________

Direct Instruction (2023).

“Direct Instruction (DI) is a research-based approach to instructional design and implementation. The implementation of DI relies on five key principles. Following a description of DI as a teaching approach, vignettes and examples are provided to further elaborate on the implementation of a DI program. DI’s application across a wide range of subjects makes it incredibly useful within the general education field.”

Matsuda, K. (2023). Direct Instruction. In: Quigley, J., Cassano, M.J., Ackerlund Brandt, J.A. (eds). Incorporating Applied Behavior Analysis into the General Education Classroom. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35825-8_10

_____________________________________________

Educational Psychology Is Evolving to Accommodate Technology, Multiple Disciplines, and Twenty-First-Century Skills (2022)

“Literacy continues to be a priority area of research in educational psychology. National and international surveys of reading skills consistently reveal that significant proportions of adolescents and adults lack proficiency in reading literacy (OECD 2013, 2019a). For example, in the United States, over 30% of fourth- and eighth-grade students fall below the basic level in reading literacy on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP 2019). Psychological research continues to investigate the emergence and precursors of reading acquisition, reading disability or dyslexia, the trajectory and processes underlying reading and comprehension development, and how all these are mediated and impacted by learning and instructional environments, especially in an increasingly digitally driven world.

Several factors influence how reading literacy research has been changing in the twenty-first century. First, the theoretical construct of reading literacy is undergoing substantial change as civilizations evolve, which influences the relevant cognitive and linguistic processing associated with reading. Throughout the history of writing, the technologies and artifacts of literacy have also been evolving. Reading literacy is a human invention or technology that is several thousand years old. This technology consists of systems of visual symbols that encode oral language into a visual representation (Perfetti et al. 2010, Preston et al. 2016). The adaptations of a cognitive system to the literacy environment interact with how we define the field of study and relevant research problems. If we lived in an era when reading consisted of decoding a library of 100 hand-copied books, the cognitive skills required would be very different from the ones we expected of students and adults at the turn of the twentieth century, when pioneers of reading psychology studied the word-reading processes of college students (Cattell 1886), standardized oral reading (Gray 1916), and pedagogy and processes of comprehension (Huey 1908). Similarly, our expectations of modern readers and consequently the foci of psychological research have changed as readers have become immersed in digital technologies (Magliano et al. 2018).

Current questions explore how reading purpose influences how people select cognitive strategies, construct mental models from multiple and sometimes conflicting sources, evaluate source credibility, and update and revise prior beliefs in the face of new source evidence. Although twenty-first-century literacy is changing in a rapidly evolving digital world, several of the twentieth-century issues of foundational reading and comprehension processes have their modern correlates (Sabatini et al. 2019, Wang et al. 2019).

Arthur C. Graesser¹, John P. Sabatini¹ and Haiying Li (2022). Educational Psychology Is Evolving to Accommodate Technology, Multiple Disciplines, and Twenty-First-Century Skills. Vol. 73:547-5742).

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-113042

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Climate change, a critical new role for educational and developmental psychologists (2020)

“Climate change literacy is necessary for developing science-informed social attitudes and behaviours that can respond to the challenges (Lombardi et al., Reference Lombardi, Sinatra and Nussbaum2013). Attitudes towards climate change, public opinion and social values are at the core of psychologists’ work in understanding human behaviour and our complex, unique interactions with the environment. However, climate change transcends all academic disciplines and is therefore fertile ground for psychologists to engage in collaborative and transdisciplinary work.

The human-induced climate crisis calls for a human-induced response and psychologists are equipped to examine the social and psychological influences that contribute to climate impacts and to work towards designing appropriate responses (Gifford et al., Reference Gifford, Kormos and McIntyre2011; Swim et al., Reference Swim, Stern, Doherty, Clayton, Reser, Weber and Howard2011). Educational and developmental psychologists not only have a moral responsibility towards supporting youth in this critical time, but are also in important positions to drive change. The contributions that have already been made by educational and developmental psychology have been wide-ranging and important, but there is further work to be done for educational and developmental psychologists in this space. While there is currently incredible work being produced in the field of educational and developmental psychology, I invite future research to respond to the unprecedented challenges before us (Alloway & Carpenter, Reference Alloway and Carpenter2020; Furlonger et al., Reference Furlonger, Chung, Ostojic, Busacca, Moore, Anderson and D’Souza2020; Gindidis et al., 2020; Satici, Reference Satici2020; Slaten et al., Reference Slaten, Ferguson, Hughes and Scalise2020; Spadafora et al., Reference Spadafora, Frijters, Molnar and Volk2020; Zamora et al., Reference Zamora, Vernucci, Del Valle, Introzzi and Richard’s2020).

While educational and developmental psychologists are uniquely positioned to help children and young people to cope with stressors and challenges, there is a role for educational and developmental psychologists as a profession to do much more. After all, if we are not passing on an inhabitable planet to our next generation, the good work we do in supporting the psychological and emotional needs is futile.”

Allen K-A. (2020). Climate change, a critical new role for educational and developmental psychologists. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist. 2020;37(1):1-3. doi:10.1017/edp.2020.6

Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert (2018).

“There is intense public interest in questions surrounding how children learn to read and how they can best be taught. Research in psychological science has provided answers to many of these questions but, somewhat surprisingly, this research has been slow to make inroads into educational policy and practice. Instead, the field has been plagued by decades of “reading wars.” Even now, there remains a wide gap between the state of research knowledge about learning to read and the state of public understanding. The aim of this article is to fill this gap. We present a comprehensive tutorial review of the science of learning to read, spanning from children’s earliest alphabetic skills through to the fluent word recognition and skilled text comprehension characteristic of expert readers. We explain why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English. But we also move beyond phonics, reviewing research on what else children need to learn to become expert readers and considering how this might be translated into effective classroom practice. We call for an end to the reading wars and recommend an agenda for instruction and research in reading acquisition that is balanced, developmentally informed, and based on a deep understanding of how language and writing systems work.”

Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19, 5–51. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271

The Power of Explicit Teaching and Direct Instruction (2020)

“This monograph discusses research, theory, and practice relevant to how children learn to read English. After an initial overview of writing systems, the discussion summarizes research from developmental psychology on children's language competency when they enter school and on the nature of early reading development. Subsequent sections review theories of learning to read, the characteristics of children who do not learn to read (i.e., who have developmental dyslexia), research from cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience on skilled reading, and connectionist models of learning to read. The implications of the research findings for learning to read and teaching reading are discussed. Next, the primary methods used to teach reading (phonics and whole language) are summarized.

The final section reviews laboratory and classroom studies on teaching reading. From these different sources of evidence, two inescapable conclusions emerge: (a) Mastering the alphabetic principle (that written symbols are associated with phonemes) is essential to becoming proficient in the skill of reading, and (b) methods that teach this principle directly are more effective than those that do not (especially for children who are at risk in some way for having difficulty learning to read). Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics instruction does help make reading fun and meaningful for children, but ultimately, phonics instruction is critically important because it helps beginning readers understand the alphabetic principle and learn new words. Thus, elementary-school teachers who make the alphabetic principle explicit are most effective in helping their students become skilled, independent readers.”

Rayner, K., Foorman, B. R., Perfetti, C. A., Pesetsky, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2001). How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2(2), 31-74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1529-1006.00004 (Original work published 2001)

_______________________________________________

Some relevant further documents:

Ashman, Greg - The Power of Explicit Teaching and Direct Instruction  London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2020 - 152 p. - Corwin Ltd - ISBN: 9781529756197 - Permalink: http://digital.casalini.it/9781529756197 - Casalini id: 5018713

Mason, L., Otero, M. (2021). Just How Effective is Direct Instruction?. Perspect Behav Sci 44, 225–244 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-021-00295-x

Stockard, J., Wood, T. W., Coughlin, C., & Rasplica Khoury, C. (2020). All students can succeed: A half century of research on the effectiveness of Direct Instruction. Lexington Books.

Butler, K. (2020). The value of direct instruction for at-risk students. Journal of Education & Development, 4(2), 10–16. https://doi.org/10.20849/jed.v4i2.741.

Slocum, T. & Rolf, K. R. (2021). Features of Direct Instruction: Content analysis. Behavior Analysis in Practice.

Rolf, K. R. & Slocum, T. (2021). Features of Direct Instruction: Interactive Lessons. Behavior Analysis in Practice.

The conclusions are for you to make!