What is Direct Instruction?
An instructional program that originated in the 1960s has become one of the most effective and heavily researched in existence.
In the 1960s, a man named Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann set out to answer a question about how kids learn: How many times does a child need to be exposed to something before they remember it?
Engelmann worked in advertising, and his agency assigned him to find the answer. The goal was to sell candy.
A philosophy major who also worked in a steel mill early in life, Engelmann had no background in education. But this assignment would change his life — and the lives of countless students.
Engelmann could not find any research to answer his question. So he set out to do his own. Eventually, he would quit advertising and go on to develop one of the most heavily researched and effective education programs in existence.
He called it Direct Instruction.
It’s highly structured, meticulously scripted, and rigorously field-tested. More than 50 years of research support its power to accelerate children’s academic progress.
The ‘desperate efficiency’ behind Direct Instruction
As Engelmann developed his teaching techniques, first with his own children, and then in a brand-new preschool in 1964, he became committed to the idea that everything a child needs to learn can be taught. The key, he thought, was to present new ideas in a way that fit the logic children use to make sense of the world.
This belief in the power of teaching conflicted with a popular theory in education both then and now: that kids learn best through experience and discovery.
Engelmann rejected discovery learning. He believed that kids need to be explicitly taught and that teachers must be responsible for student learning. “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught” became the Direct Instruction motto.
A program that could lift disadvantaged kids to the academic level of their peers was especially attractive in the 1960s when Engelmann began developing his approach. Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration was waging a “war on poverty.”
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. In 1966, a landmark government-funded study known as the Coleman Report documented significant disparities in educational achievement between Black and white students, helping bring national attention to what would become known as the achievement gap.
In the decades since, hundreds of studies have examined Direct Instruction, creating a substantial body of evidence that the approach can help disadvantaged students overcome the academic effects of poverty. In some studies, the gains have been larger than the achievement gap itself.
Zig Engelmann didn’t yet have this body of evidence to prove his approach. But he could see his methods working. And he felt his contribution was needed.
He was furiously trying to correct deficits in schools that he provocatively called “academic child abuse.”
“Use time with desperate efficiency,” Engelmann said. “Treat time as the most precious product you have and make sure that you’re using time to teach as much as you can.”
Engelmann was driven by this sense of urgency, especially to help kids who were already behind.
This is what Direct Instruction looks like
Engelmann’s Direct Instruction is a trademarked curriculum with very specific components. It’s sometimes called “big DI” to differentiate it from lowercase direct instruction (“little di”), a general term for an explicit style of teaching.
A hallmark of Direct Instruction is that it takes concepts and breaks them down into small steps, then teaches them in a precise sequence intended to minimize errors and maximize efficiency. The content builds on itself to promote mastery of material.
Here are five key components of Direct Instruction that can be found in any school or classroom using its programs.
The teacher asks a question, gives students time to think of the answer, and then gives a signal for all students to respond at once. This “choral response” gives every student a chance to answer every question. It also gives students more opportunity for repetition. Teachers learn to track which kids are coattailing on others’ answers and may return to those students during individual turns.
A Direct Instruction lesson doesn’t involve hand-raising. Teachers call on individual students to verify that everyone is learning. By cold-calling students and not relying on volunteers, teachers can keep hesitant students from getting lost behind more eager ones.
When a student gives an incorrect answer, the teacher corrects it immediately. The teacher then moves on but quickly returns to the original student to ask the question again. The teacher will keep doing this until the student gets it right, so the child gets a victory after making a mistake. The goal is to reduce the risk of cementing incorrect concepts in their minds.
One of Direct Instruction’s central ideas is that children learn in similar ways — but require vastly different amounts of practice.
“Your high performer needs about three repetitions of information before they can get it,” said Adrienne Allen, a veteran Direct Instruction trainer. “Your middle performer needs about 35 repetitions before they get it.” Low performers may require 100 repetitions or more in Allen’s experience.
Direct Instruction uses repetition and dedicated practice time to make sure all kids are exposed to material enough to make it stick. Students work in groups based on ability and not grade level, so the high performers are not slowed down — and the kids who are struggling get the practice they need to catch up. Each lesson is 85-90% old material and 10-15% new material, and every student must master the core concepts before moving on.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Direct Instruction is that it tells teachers exactly what to say. Many educators are turned off by the idea of scripting. Surprisingly, though, Direct Instruction’s creators introduced scripting in part because teachers requested it.
Instead of promoting old-fashioned lecturing, scripting is intended to cut down on extra “teacher talk,” and help teachers effectively communicate what kids need to know in as little time as possible.
Faultless communication
Behind Direct Instruction’s precision is a concept called faultless communication. It comes from Engelmann’s conviction that children’s mistakes always reveal flaws in the instruction.
If a concept is communicated faultlessly, there is no room for mislearning, or as Engelmann liked to say, “misteaching.”
When kids misinterpret a teacher’s lesson, they can learn what Engelmann called misrules.
One early example Engelmann recalled was when he taught preschoolers to count to three. He had them practice: “One, two, three.”
When he asked them to count higher, he realized his error. One kid began counting: “One to five.” The child thought the word was “to” and not “two.” He had stumbled upon a misrule. The language needed to be adjusted: “Count and end up with five.”
Every kid can learn (no, really)
Underlying every component of Direct Instruction is a belief that every child can learn, if they’re taught well.
Before his death, Engelmann attended a reunion with many of the people who had helped bring his program to life in the 1960s and ’70s. In that room, surrounded by his colleagues, he reiterated this core idea.
“Our assumptions about the kids were if we presented it properly, they would learn it,” he said. “And the flip side was if they didn’t learn it, we were screwing up. And we had to change what the hell we’re doing.”
For Engelmann, “Every kid can learn” was not just a nice idea. It was his guiding light.
Bonnie Grossen, a longtime curriculum designer for Direct Instruction, remembered the moment this became real to her. She and Engelmann were working on a program together. Out of 30 kids, 28 had learned the concept.
“That worked pretty well,” she said to Engelmann.
But Engelmann disagreed. “It didn’t work,” he said. There were still two kids who hadn’t learned the concept.
Grossen never forgot the lesson: “It only works when everybody in the class gets it.”
