Two long and contrasting histories in education research

Direct Instruction is a program of learning developed in the 1960s involving very structured and standardized explicit instruction.  The primary focus is on the teacher imparting knowledge and skills through direct instruction and practice by students in contrast to more learning-by-exploring or Socratic method which has been immensely popular in Education programs for the past fifty years.  

DI has advantages in that it is very standardized.  Teachers need to be proficient in the program but do not otherwise need advanced degrees (thus reducing costs and reducing dependence on scarce credentialed talent).  The standardization also allows outcome tracking over time, both teacher performance and student accomplishment.  It is relatively egalitarian in that it benefits a wide range of student capability.

It is widely despised in the education establishment because it centers the focus on outcomes rather than teachers.  Criticisms tend to be heated but amorphous.

Most importantly, DI seems to work.  And works under a broad range of circumstances.  Fifty years of studies seem to consistently return positive results of a greater or lesser magnitude, usually greater.  

Alex Tabarrok has a recent update on the empirical results.  From Direct Instruction Produces Large Gains in Learning, Kenya Edition.

In an important new paper, Can Education be Standardized? Evidence from Kenya, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Michael Kremer, Isaac Mbiti and Owen Ozier evaluate Bridge International schools using a large randomized experiment. Twenty five thousand Kenyan students applied for 10,000 scholarships to Bridge International and the scholarships were given out by lottery.

Kenyan pupils who won a lottery for two-year scholarships to attend schools employing a highly-structured and standardized approach to pedagogy and school management learned more than students who applied for, but did not win, scholarships.

After being enrolled at these schools for two years, primary-school pupils gained approximately the equivalent of 0.89 extra years of schooling (0.81 standard deviations), while in pre-primary grades, pupils gained the equivalent of 1.48 additional years of schooling (1.35 standard deviations).

These are very large gains. Put simply, children in the Bridge programs learnt approximately three years worth of material in just two years! Now, I know what you are thinking. We have all seen examples of high-quality, expensive educational interventions that don’t scale–that was the point of my post Heroes are Not Replicable and see also my recent discussion of the Perry Preschool project–but it’s important to understand the backstory of the Bridge study. Bridge Academy uses Direct Instruction and Direct Instruction scales! We know this from hundreds of studies.

Tabarrok's post is link-rich and full of useful background information.  

What is interesting to me is the study in contrasts this most recent research creates.  

No teaching philosophy is ever going to deliver equally good results to everyone, always.  There is a heterogeneity in students (basic abilities, cultural orientation towards learning, competing demands for time, etc.)  and a heterogeneity in teacher capability, talent and experience which together drive a diversity of outcomes.  The question is, which program provides the best and most reliable results for the largest number of students over the greatest period of time and circumstances?  

In any random population, special accommodations are likely needed or warranted for either the very best and the least able learners.  That is a given.

What I have experienced in my personal education experiences and those of my children, over sixty years in multiple countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific (DI-like approaches being common in many Asian countries with widely admired outcomes) is that there is value in both the directed instruction approach and in the Socratic exploratory approach but at different times.  

Socratic works when there is a solid base of factual knowledge.  Without that base, kids flounder.  On the other hand, a rigid and unvarying scripted direct instruction approach begins to have declining returns over time by age of student.  

Crudely, my guess is that Direct Instruction for K-5 with a mixed transition from 6-8 and then more Socratic-exploratory from 9-12 might be the richest and most productive synthesis for the greatest good for the largest number of kids.  

Socratic exploratory only and from the start risks kids not having the deep content knowledge they really need in order to usefully explore.  Direct Instruction only probably risks disengagement, particularly among your brighter students.

Regardless of my intuitions, what is notable is that we have spent fifty and more years exploring these two approaches.  In that time, Direct Instruction produces consistently positive and usually very material results.  Yet we keep ignoring that.

Meanwhile, the Socratic-exploratory approach, under the guise of Perry School, Headstart, ABCderian and other such programs have also been studied for those fifty and more years.  The research has consistently shown that these program results disappear within a year and that there are no material differences in outcomes between those in the programs and those not in the programs.  

So two different programs each being widely and deeply researched over fifty years and each in their fashion producing similar results, one being shown to work and the other being shown not to work.

And yet our educational establishment is steadfast in their support of the program which does not work and is equally steadfast in resisting the program shown to work.  

Notably, that is also the program with the greatest prospects for raising the educational and life outcomes of the poorest students.   

This seems an abomination.  On the right there are factions which routinely call for the dissolution of the Department of Education as a recent, wasteful and ineffective department.  I am powerfully committed to the idea of education and regard such proposals as crass and simplistic.

But when I consider the studied indifference towards that which works and the support for that which does not work, then I wonder; maybe they are on to something.