Teach Effectively!

Isabel Sawhill and Jon Baron published an editorial in Education Week calling for a new approach to the venerable Head Start program, one founded on evidence about effectiveness. They argue that in the wake of the discouraging Head Start Impact Study reported by US Department of Health & Human Services, it’s time to bring research into the nation’s play pre-schools.

A new approach is needed. One that has been suggested—defunding these programs—would amount to giving up the fight against major social problems such as educational failure and poverty that damage millions of American lives. A far better alternative is to use rigorous evidence about “what works” to evolve Head Start and other federal efforts into truly effective programs over time, and to use sophisticated models to trace their longer-term effects on children’s life prospects.

Continue reading ‘Evidence-based education in Head Start?’

Over on Facebook Martha Gabler announced the opening a private tutoring center in Silver Spring (MD, US): Kids’ Learning Workshop. The focus is on what she calls “fluent foundation skills” by which she means rapid, accurate performance on such tasks as reading aloud, writing answers for arithmetic facts, and answering questions about academic content.

Readers might wonder why I would post a note about such a private enterprise on Teach Effectively. There are at least three reasons:
Continue reading ‘Tutoring the right way’

Over on Zig Site, Siegfried Engelmann has a new series of articles in which Socrates questions fictitious educators about educational concepts. In the first, Socrates engages one Dr. Gibbs, a “prominent professor of education.” Here’s an excerpt:

Dr. Gibbs: Learning is extremely complicated and influenced by a host of factors, including motivation and parental attitudes. The point I try to make to my students is that every child is an individual who learns according to his or her time table, and in his or her unique way.

Socrates: You give us a lot to think about. But is there some fact or rule that describes all learning?

Dr. Gibbs. Of course not. The learner is what the learner does and what the learner has inherited. Learning is not some kind of cut-and-dried process. The most specific thing one could confidently say about all learning is that it occurs in a series of predictable stages, which have been described by Piaget and others.

Just imagine the hash that Socrates makes of such bologna!

In another, Socrates and Dr. Baram Rosenthal, an “educational guru,” discuss reading instruction. Catch ‘em at Zig Site. Look in the left rail.

Robert Slavin and colleagues reported that reading programs that provide extensive professional development on instructional strategies which promote student participation, strengthen phonics competence, and explicitly teach comprehension strategies are the best bets for improving reading achievement. The clearest examples of the programs that led to the highest achievement were Direct Instruction and Success for All.

Writing in the December 2009 issue of the Review of Educational Research, Professor Slavin and colleagues reported the results of their examination of 142 studies. They wanted to determine whether curricula, technology, instructional processes, or combinations of curricula and processes produce greater reading achievement. The curriculum group included core reading programs, such as Reading Street and Open Court Reading. The technology group included programs that employ computers or similar methods such as computer-assisted instruction, multimedia (e.g., Reading Reels, or Writing to Read). The instructional process group included approaches that provide teachers effective strategies for teaching reading, such as Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). The combined curriculum-and-instructional-process group included programs that function as core curricula and also provide detailed professional development about using instructional strategies, such as Direct Instruction and Success for All. The researchers separated the studies into two groups: those with outcomes at the (a) beginning reading level vs. upper elementary level.
Continue reading ‘Go for DI and SFA’

Over on Children of the Code David Boulton published a transcript of an interview with Siegfried Engelmann, the primary force behind the development of the Direct Instruction methods. In “Instructional Design 101: Learn from the Learners!,” which provides only part of the material that CoC will publish, Mr. Boulton asked Mr. Engelmann a wide range of questions and recorded his answers.

Engelmann recounts how he entered education, how he came to develop scripts, and lots more. Also, there are insightful anecdotes. For example, in one segment Mr. Engelmann recounts a story about the development of the Corrective Reading Program.
Continue reading ‘Engelmann interview on instructional design’

The The Central Ohio Branch of the International Dyslexia Association will hold a conference 16 October 2009 under the theme, “Imagine, Every Child Reading,” according to Mary Damer, a member of the organization’s board. She told me about some of the highlights of the conference:

Keynote Speaker in the Morning is Louisa Moats “Science, Language, and Imagination in Teaching Students at Risk for Reading Failure”

The unique properties of English; the inability of many readers to intuit language structure; and the insufficiencies of many instructional programs and practices, all point to the critical role of informed, skilled, flexible teachers who base their instruction on content knowledge and reliable scientific research .
Continue reading ‘Ohio IDA: “Imagine, Every Child Reading!”’

Zig Engelmann, progenitor of Direct Instruction (DI), has posted a video of a talk he gave earlier this month. The presentation is an explication of the underlying principles of DI, “Theory of Direct Instruction.”

In the presentation (video below the jump), Mr. Engelmann shows some of his chops from his undergraduate degree in philosophy. He starts with philosophers’ fundamental arguments and shows how those correspond (or don’t) with learning and teaching concepts. For example, as he works through John Stuart Mills’ five methods of induction from A System of Logic, he makes clear how each would apply to teaching. I suspect that this particular sequence will show many people why DI instruction (the examples used in the scripts, not the teaching behavior) is structured the way it is.
Continue reading ‘Engelmann explains’

Jeanne Wherrett’s comment on an old post prompted me to update the links there. If one of the three or four TE readers have been frustrated by the 404 results for the links pointing to the old mega-analysis (Steve Forness’s term), those links have been fixed.

For those unfamiliar with that old site, it’s a compilation of meta-analyses about cognitive-behavioral treatment of adolescent depression, cognitive-behavioral treatments, computer-assisted instruction, decreasing disruptive behavior, direct instruction (big DI), early intervention, Feingold hyperactivity diet, formative evaluation of students’ progress, medication for students with mental retardation, mnemonic strategies instruction, modality-based reading instruction, peer tutoring, perceptual training, psycholinguistic training, psychotherapy (including behavior modification), reducing class size, social skills training for students with emotional or behavioral disorders, social skills training for students with learning disabilities, special class placement, stimulant treatment of hyperactivity, teaching reading comprehension, treatment of classroom behavior problems.

Jump to the mega site. Flash of the electrons to Ms. Wherrett (see her site) for alerting me to the issue.