Daily Archive for February 26th, 2009

For a long time, we have known a lot about effective practices in teaching. Of course, there is debate about whether the specifics are exactly correct, whether some studies have been discredited, or whether the paradigm fits people’s biases. Despite these debates, some general guidelines about effective teaching can be distilled from educational research. Here is one general description of effective teaching practices. I consider it a helpful guide to explicit, systematic instruction. In the parlance I use, this set of features describes “direct instruction” (note the lower-case letters):

In general, researchers have found that when effective teachers teach well-structured subjects, they:

• Begin a lesson with a short review of previous, prerequisite learning.
• Begin a lesson with a short statement of goals.

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