Table of Contents
When standardized tests are used to assess student attainment of basic
skills, "direct of explicit instruction models most often produce the
highest student scores" (Huitt, Monetti, & Hummel, 2009, in Reigeluth &
General Model of Direct Instruction
In order for direct instruction to be successful, only students who
demonstrated mastery of prerequisite knowledge should be allowed to receive
instruction which builds upon the prerequisite knowledge.
"Essential content should be taught to students via an active
presentation of information" (Huitt, Monetti, & Hummel, 2009 in Reigeluth &
Carr-Chellman, p. 79).
Bloom (1981) stated that teachers should provide a clear organization of
the presentation with step-by-step progression from subtopic to subtopic
based on prerequisite knowledge and skills.
Pretesting or prompting of relevant knowledge (Block, 1971).
More student-teacher interaction (Walberg, 1991).
The use of many examples, visual prompts, and demonstrations to mediate
between concrete and abstract concepts (Gage & Berliner, 1998).
A constant assessment of student understanding before, during, and after
the lesson (Brophy & Good, 1986).
The Transactional Model of Direct Instruction
(Huitt, Monetti, &
Hummel, 2009 in Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman)
- The Presentation Phase
- There are five important instructional methods that should be
used during the presentation phase of direct instruction:
- Review of previous material or prerequisite skills
- A statement of the specific knowledge or skills to be
- A statement or experience that provides students with a
reason or explanation of why these particular objective are
- A clear, active explanation of the knowledge or skills to be
- Multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their
initial understandings in response to teacher probes
- Learning is made more meaningful if the presentation is
proceeded by an advance organizer (Ausbel, 1960). Three methods
should occur before the explanation new concepts begins:
- Review. It is important to have students
activate prior knowledge so that they can more easily establish
links to new information (called elaboration by
information processing theorists such as Craik & Lockhart,
- What. Describe what is to be learned in the
lesson. Teachers should state objectives and how the student is
to be held accountable for the learning activity (Gronlund,
2003; Mager, 1997). Perkins (1992) maintains that clarity of
content is one of the most important conditions for quality
instruction. This clarity should include what is to be learned
and the standards for mastery.
- Why. Describe why a particular objective is
important for students to master. Ultimately it is important
that students have a personal reason to be engaged in the
- Explanation. Provide an active, careful
explanation to students of the content or skill to be learned.
The teacher should move from subtopic to subtopic in an
efficient manner, introducing new material in small portions and
connecting each new subtopic to the previous one (Bloom, 1981;
Walberg, 1999). One of the most important considerations is to
sequence the presentation such that organization is clear and
obvious to students. Researchers have identified a number of
organizations that might be used:
- Component relationships-the lesson could be
organized from parts to whole (inductive) or from whole to
parts (deductive). Research suggests a rule-example-rule
approach as an effective means to teach concepts to students
(Van Patten, Chao, & Reigeluth, 1986).
- Relevance relationships-Organizing content
based on logical or empirical relationships among factors or
categories within the lesson that are not hierarchically
- Sequential relationships-Organizing a lesson in terms of
a step-by-step sequence.
- Transitional relationships-Organizing a lesson in terms
of the movement or transformation from one phase to another
in the content being taught.
- Additionally, teachers should
use many examples, visual aids, and demonstrations in their
presentation to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency in
- Probe and Respond. Probe students regarding their
initial understandings. These are formative assessment
activities and should be quick, short explanations of students
knowledge or skills that inform the teacher if students are
acquiring the concepts being presented. Teachers need to make
instructionally effective use of wait-time, defined as
the interval between a teacher probe and student response
(wait-time I) or the interval between the student response and
the teacher response (wait-time II). Rowe (1974a, 1974b) found
that increasing either led to increased achievement, with
increases in both having a compound effect. Fagan, Hassler, and
Szabo (1981) found that using both higher-order questions and
increased wait-time had greater impact than using either
- The Practice Phase
- Perkins (1992) suggested that providing learners with numerous
opportunities to practice the skills being learned is a critical
activity for student learning.
- Guided Practice. Students practice the
newly learned knowledge or skills under the teacher's direct
supervision (Walberg, 1999). At this point in the lesson, the
teacher must actively monitor student activity while providing
immediate feedback. At the end of this method, teachers should
have rather precise information regarding each student's
knowledge or skill with respect to the lesson objective(s).
- Independent Practice. Student practice the
new concepts independently. This may be done in the classroom or
at home. While there has been some research that homework is
relatively less important for elementary students, the vast
majority of research supports the positive effects of homework
for for middle and high school students. Most importantly
homework must be be completed and graded if it is to be
effective. It seems obvious that if the instructional day can be
increased, thereby giving students more engaged time, then
student achievement will increase.
- Periodic Review. This method can be
incorporated into teacher probes, guided practice, and
independent practice. Teachers would be well served, when
designing instruction, to make sure students have opportunities
to revisit material learned a week, a month, or even a year
previously. While cognitive research has shown that once
material is in long-term memory it is there permanently
(Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968), students need practice retrieving
that information and using it appropriately. This is an
excellent place in the lesson to use cooperative learning
- The Assessment and Evaluation Phase
- Assessment and evaluation involves collecting data and making
decisions about end-of-lesson or end-of-unit assessments.
- Formative Assessment. Teachers make
formative evaluation decisions about students on a daily basis
to determine if they are making progress. Data from the previous
methods of probing and responding, guided and independent
practice, and periodic review activities might be used. The
primary function of this evaluation process is to make plans for
additional teaching on the topic, if necessary. Walberg (1999)
asserts that additional teaching should occur when students
perform at less than a 90% level during guided and independent
- Summative Assessment. Teachers gather
summative assessment data to see if students have mastered the
required concepts and skills. This usually is in the form of
unit tests or projects covering material from a week or two of
instruction. Other types of summative evaluation may include
semester or annual exams. It is important that summative
evaluations match the content, form, and standards of external
audits of classroom learning. Teachers should know the
expectations of standardized tests, the requirements of any
related courses students might take in the future, and
requirements for future employment.
- Monitoring and Feedback
- There are two important instructional methods that should occur
throughout the lesson on an "as needed" basis: providing cues and
prompts, and providing corrective feedback and reinforcement.
- Cues and Prompts. Providing cues and
prompts, is often used when teachers review previous material,
ask questions or probes, or have students engage in guided
practice. The use of cues to hint at important information or
indicate lesson transitions and the use of prompts when having
students demonstrate the initial understanding of during guided
practice are important instructional activities. When a student
is in what Vygotsky (1978) called the zone of Proximal
Development, the student will sometimes need a cue or prompt in
order to be able to recall the required information or
demonstrate the desired skill. However, when no amount of
prompting evokes the desired response, further instruction is
indicated. This assistance of further instruction should take
place through a process of scaffolding whereby the teacher
models the learning task or activity and then carefully and
systematically relinquishes more and more responsibility to the
student to perform it (Moll, 1992).
- Corrective Feedback. Providing corrective
feedback and reinforcement is done whenever the teacher has made
an assessment of student learning at any point in the lesson.
Perkins (1992) suggested that corrective feedback is one of the
most important instructional activities provided during
instruction. Walberg (1986), in his meta-analysis of research on
teaching, found that providing corrective feedback and
reinforcement showed the strongest relationship to student
achievement of any single teacher action studied. Feedback
should be provided for both correct and incorrect responses. An
important principle is that students should not only hear or see
the correct answers; they should also know why a particular
answer is correct or incorrect. Dihoff, Brosvic, Epstein, and
Cook (2004) showed that immediate feedback is superior to
delayed feedback and the teacher should strive to provide
feedback as quickly as possible.
- The relationship of reinforcement during instruction to academic
achievement has been one of the most consistent findings in
process-product research (Brophy & Good, 1986; Roseshine, 1995;
Walberg & Paik, 2000). The most common form of such reinforcement is
teacher attention: a nod, a smile, or a quick comment. Cheery notes
on the assignment or stickers can be used effectively. Making a
practice of sending a positive note home to parents or caregivers
for at least one student in subject area or class period is an
excellent way to provide reinforcement for quality work.
The Scripted Model of Direct instruction
Methods used are the same as the General Model, but differ in terms of the specificity of teacher statements and student responses. Scripted lessons present smaller amounts of new information and skill training in each lesson, often accounting for only 10 to 15% of the total lesson (S. Engelmann, 1999). The remainder of the lesson firms and reviews content presented in earlier lessons. As in the general model, a scripted lesson
approach assumes that nothing is completely taught in a single lesson.
Instead, new content is presented in parts of two or three consecutive
lessons to provide students with enough exposure so they are able to use it
in applications. Each lesson presents content that is new today; content
that is being firmed, having been presented in the last two or three
lessons; and content that was presented even earlier in the sequence and is
assumed to be thoroughly mastered. This content often takes the form of
problems or applications that require earlier-taught content (S. Engelmann,
1999). Thus, scripted lesson approaches could potentially utilize more
allocated class time than other approaches to address learning objectives.
While a scripted lesson approach was originally developed as a method to
help predominately impoverished children who were not academically
successful in traditional public school programs, it has been shown to be
effective and efficient with both low and high performing students (Adams &
Engelmann, 1996). In Project Follow Through, this scripted-lesson approach
was compared to eight other models of instruction (including traditional and
constructivist approaches and a home-based model) on outcome measures of
three dimensions: academic basic skills, cognition, and affect (Stallings &
Kaskowitz, 1974). The scripted-lesson approach produced the highest average
performance of any program in all three dimensions (Watkins, 1988). In an
analysis of Project Follow Through, Watkins (1988) found that there was an
increased emphasis on mastery of content and skill prerequisites for
additional lessons for all students. The analysis also indicated that a high
degree of student success helped raise students' self-efficacy and,
indirectly, improved the students' satisfaction with their schooling.
Gersten, Taylor, and Graves (1999) assert that an emphasis on detail sets
a scripted lesson approach apart from the general model.
The scripted lesson approach shares many similarities with the general
model of direct instruction. Scripted lessons begin with outcome behaviors
being identified and then aligned with national or state curricular
standards. The responsibility for this identification and alignment rests
with the party (the individual teacher, a group of teachers, or a
commercially available program) who generated the scripted lesson(s). These
identified and aligned outcomes are then thoroughly "task analyzed." This
involves breaking the complex skill or concept specified in the outcome into
its component parts so that every student in a particular track has
background skills and knowledge to learn the new skills and content. The
scripted lesson approach differs from the general model in that: (1) the
scripted lesson approach often involves a more detailed analysis, producing
smaller steps in the task analysis than might be used in the general model;
and (2) in scripted lessons, the exact wording the teacher and student use
is written down.
Format: answer→ question→ response (Huitt,
Monetti, & Hummel in Reigeluth, 2009)
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method originally developed by
Howard Barrows to teach problem-solving techniques to students of clinical
Problem-based instruction (PBI) is rooted in experience-based education.
Research and theory on learning suggest that by having students learn
through the experience of solving problems, they can learn both content and
PBI is facilitated problem solving where student learning is organized
around a complex problem that does not have a single solution. PBI typically
starts with the presentation of the problem rather than a lecture or reading
assignment intended to impart discipline-specific knowledge to the student.
Students engage with the problem, generate ideas and possible solutions,
determine what they currently know and do not know, establish learning
goals, conduct research to acquire knowledge and skills needed to develop a
viable solution to the problem, reflect on the problem utilizing the new
information, and reflect on their problem-solving process (Savery & Duffy,
1995). As the learners work through the hypothetical-deductive reasoning
process, the tutor provides support for their learning and their development
of metacognitive skills.
PBI is sometimes confused with a case-based approach. While there are
several similarities between a problem-based approach and case-based
approach, there are significant differences, as clearly explicated by
Williams (1992). The fundamental difference lies in the purpose of the
instruction. If the tenet it to provide vivid and complex exemplars that
assist the learner in forming conceptual relationships that may be abstract,
then the well-written cases are an excellent vehicle. A well-structured case
study will include critical information needed to arrive at a predetermined
conclusion. With most case studies there is one right answer and the
learning task for the student is to pick up on all the clues that are
important (and avoid the red herrings). A problem-based approach is
different in that the nature of the problem selected is clearly less
defined-part of the task for the learner is to refine the general problem
into component parts-and the solution or range of solutions is not
predetermined. By utilizing current resources, solutions to a problem can
change over time.
Learning is Knowledge Dependent
Research by Glaser (as cited by Resnick, 1989) suggests that both
reasoning and learning are knowledge driven and, more specifically, that
"Those who are knowledge-rich reason more profoundly. They elaborate as they
study and thereby learn more effectively. Knowledge thus begets knowledge"
(p. 2). Knowledge and experience are supported by research on problem
solving as critical elements in effective problem analysis and the
development of a viable solution (Jonassen, 2004).
Learning Is Highly Tuned to the Situation
Cognitive flexibility theory (Spiro et al., 1991)
suggests that using complex, messy, real-world problems helps students
transfer the knowledge and skills they learn to future complex, real-world
problems and learn to apply the knowledge and skills to novel or
ill-structured problems (Jonassen, 1997). In a similar vein, Bransford,
Brown, and Cocking (2000) identify PBI as a strategy to encourage transfer
of learning between school and everyday life (p. 77). Situated
cognition theory (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) identifies the
importance to learning of ill-defined, authentic problems. Thus these three
areas of learning theory collectively underscore the use of a problem-based
PBI has been adopted by different disciplines and, in the process, has
been changed in both small and substantial ways to accommodate local
conditions. This has led to some misapplications and misconceptions of PBI,
and consequently certain practices that are still called PBI or PBL do not
achieve the anticipated learning outcomes.
Universal Principles or Methods for PBI
There is remarkable consistency and convergence among researchers and
practitioners concerning guiding principles for the design of effective PBI.
The four main clusters of principles are:
- Select problems that are authentic and fit within the curriculum for
the discipline and encourage cross-discipline thinking.
- The role of the tutor is to support the development of the learner's
metacognitive processing skills and the learner's expertise as a
- Use authentic assessment practices to validate the learning goals.
- Use consistent and thorough debriefing activities to consolidate key
concepts learned from the experience.
One common criticism of PBL is that students cannot really know what might be important for them to learn, especially in areas which they have no prior experience. Therefore teachers, as faciliators, must be careful to assess and account for the prior knowledge that students bring to the classroom.
Another criticism is that a teacher adopting a PBL approach may not be able to cover as much material as a conventional lecture-based course. PBL can be very challenging to implement, as it requires a lot of planning and hard work for the teacher. It can be difficult at first for the teacher to “relinquish control” and become a facilitator, encouraging the students to ask the right questions rather than handing them solutions.
Barrow, H. S. (1986). A taxonomy of problem-based learning methods.
Medical Education, 20, 481-486.
Savery, John R., Duffy, Thomas M. (1995). Problem based learning: An
instructional model and its constructivist framework. Educational Technology
Discusses the link between the theoretical principles of constructivism, the practice of instructional design, and the practice of teaching. Defines constructivism, lists three primary principles of learning and understanding, identifies eight instructional principles needed for the design of constructivist learning environments, and presents a detailed instructional model of problem-based learning. (JMV)
One or more dynamic models of physical or conceptual systems . . . that
engage the learner in interactions with the models that result in state
changes. . . . According to nonlinear logic . . . with supplementation by
one or more designed augmenting instructional functions. . . employed
in the pursuit of one or more instructional goals (Gibbons, McConkie, Seo,
Wiley, 2009 in Reigeluth 2009)