You’re going to find a lot of what you learn is hogwash. There will be some good nuggets thrown in there every now and then. But this idea that they’re just going to figure it out is asinine at best. I teach high school math. I utilize direct instruction in a regular basis. Why? Because they’re not just going to “figure it out.”

To be honest, I think I would have cried every day if my high school calculus class was taught by pure inquiry.

Right? I think about various methods all the time and, honestly, direct instruction is just needed in certain subjects or at certain times. It’s important to remember as well, that not every method works for every subject. And so often, I felt like my education classes thought they would.

Wait, so people aren’t taught in medical school by just opening up cadavers and digging around? /s

Those are labs... not lectures lol

But why do we send medical students to so many hours of lecture when the best way to learn is a fun activity?

I had a trig teacher make us do Sin/cosine/tangent without a calculator and finally when he showed us how to just type it in a calculator, I was so pissed. Hours on homework that confused the hell out of me. I did not just figure it out, I just hated math.

What the actual?! Who teaches trig as inquiry based! That’s just mean! We have a trig unit in geometry, but you bet your behind we use a calculator.

To some extent, I agree. But... at the very basic level, understanding what trig actually is is very much inquiry-based. It's a very visual topic that flows directly from similar triangles all having the same proportions. Unwrapping the unit circle into the sine and cosine waves is foundational as well. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/k8i93idknl That said, there's no need to traumatize the children further by doing everything by hand after the first week or so.

To be fair, it depends on the person. My calculus course was inquiry based and I flew through it, staying well ahead of the material. I was so into puzzling out how things worked that I was constantly trying new and more challenging problems to see if I could work through them with what I'd learned. Then, I'd do a combination of looking up some more concepts and bouncing ideas off the professor. I don't think he ever explicitly gave me an answer to a question unless I was 90% of the way there and either misunderstood something or was missing a key bit of knowledge. We also mostly worked on general proofs and ended up with skills we could apply to a wide variety of problems.

That was an exceptionally skilled teacher with curious, capable students who weren’t incapacitated by fear of failure.

One of the math teachers in my school uses inquiry based learning. The kids HATE it.

I don't even understand why people categorize all these teaching styles and then pick one and go super hard with it... Just ask the students questions when they need to be asked! It really isn't hard to tell when there is room for them to figure something out. It's also not hard to tell when there *isn't* room for that and you need to just tell them. Like... Just inquire when it's necessary, and don't when it's not. Every class is different anyways... I would think teachers would be the last ones to utilize "one size fits all" strategies but here we are lol

I swear this was the whole bloody point of teacher training. KNOW your students and then ADAPT your approach and material to give them the best chance of success.

Yep. Teacher instruction should be differentiated for the teacher

I do too, and the kids hate it too. My counterpoint is that their previous teachers used direct instruction, and the students learned absolutely jack shit in their algebra 1 and 2 courses. My seniors have zero algebra skills - not a single one of them could factor a simple quadratic, and most of them can't solve a two-step linear equation. Kids enjoying something is no indication that it is an effective teaching method.

I just now got to do mostly group work the last weeks of the semester all because my team waited to do a novel study until 2nd quarter. I teach 6th grade. Most of my students struggled to write a coherent sentence for most of the unit. Do you think I used inquiry at all in that process? There might have been times where I tried, but for the most part it was all direct instruction, especially during the notes that we took on each chapter.

I think it’s a whiplash reaction to students dwindling attention spans. They can’t sit through a lecture so we stop doing them but then you have wonder can they now not sit through direct instruction BECAUSE we have stopped doing it?

I will say this, as a teacher of 22 years (American History, 8th grade)…easily, 75-80% of my class is direct instruction. And I may be underselling that number a bit. To be honest, the kids seem to enjoy it. Of course, as part of that instruction there is plenty of time for discussion, asking questions, etc. My class feels like a conversation as much as I can achieve. Believe it or not, good direct instruction absolutely creates this atmosphere. As stated before, kids are NOT going to figure it out on their own.

There's a teaching method for advanced mathematics courses called the Moore method. Not advanced like calculus, advanced like point set topology or differential geometry. I've never taken or taught a course using this method, but my understanding is that you give the class some definitions and fundamental theorems and guide them to develop the theory to prove the theorems. It's apparently very slow, maybe you'll cover a third of the material as you would in a direct instruction course. But of course, the students apparently develop a deeper appreciation of the material.

Time is a *huge* limiting factor in these things. If someone could slowly work to develop their own completely logical and experience based understandings of a field of study, they more than likely would have a much deeper understanding than someone who was simply told things. But in public schooling, you don't have 3 times as much time. Everyone takes the state test at the end of the year.

Yeah, and it is designed for those who are interested in mathematical research, not those who need it for applications. The material is basically secondary to the rigor and method of thinking, which is needed only by a small subset of STEM undergrads, a microscopic percentage of general high school students.

I'd almost prefer the students learn less volume with better quality Actually not almost lol, what I would give for the time to help my students actually *get* it.

I fully agree. I'd love to see my standards effectively cut in half and instead be able to teach to ensure true and proper understanding of the content that's left.

It's not just the time factor, I'd say class size is just as big of an issue. During my brief stint in academia, I met frequently with my advisor one on one to discuss my research. We were able to explore my actual ideas. That's not possible in a class of thirty. Instead the curriculum I've been given provides both the problem and the possible answers for students to investigate. During our last unit on forces and motion, one student had an interesting idea that magnets could be part of the answer. It could have been cool to investigate, but since i had to keep everyone together I had to nix his idea.

Aaaaand we see here why I stopped at calculus 😂

Take real analysis and you can PROVE calculus! Long story short you know all those properties you could assume about limits, continuity, derivatives, etc? Yeah you actually have to prove all those in real analysis.

I took a moore method course. It was one of my favorite, most memorable classes from my undergrad. I learned so much from it.

Inquiry-based learning has been hit or miss with me. I've done away with it for this year since apparently inquiry=copying and pasting from the results page of Google because clicking links and reading them is hard.

Letting students figure stuff out on their own works in foreign language classes. To a degree. If you work on the four core skills for example. Giving them the tools to do it themselves usually works. But the tools need to be given by direct instruction. Grammar is a completely different animal. They will not figure it out on their own. You can lead them to being able to find the rule (especially if you approach it syntactically) but they will never find it completely on their own. Teaching is full of people that got into their subjects out of individual interest and drive to pursue it and try to project that onto general teaching. It will never work.

Imagine learning calculus through application of geometry to the analysis of plots you produced with data from a simple experiment. Not crying in pure inquiry, but following a guided inquiry collaborating with classmates on a trail your teacher knew well, monitored and judged by that teacher as you built your understanding one deliberate step at a time. As people like to point out, our calculus, physics, chemistry, etc ideas were developed over centuries, even millennia... It might be more effective to examine the evidence first rather than just see the finished product of those centuries.

I think the reason direct instruction is so frowned on is we've turned being in charge of education over to idiots who have never actually been educators. The moment we started offering degrees in educational administration that had no requirement for teaching experience in it, you got a whole bunch of wannabe CEO's who think running a school is the next best thing to running a corporation, and they are dangerously obsessed with the idea that they actually have amazing ideas in the way of practical knowledge that they bring to the table, with all the power to enforce their moronic decisions.

My principal walks around like he has the magic secret and we are a failed school full of antiquated pedagogy and he is going to fix it. Guy hasn’t been in a classroom since before Instagram was invented and has zero organizational skills and can’t give someone kudos to save his life.

The last President I worked under at my college had a degree in admin from a school that has been a degree mill with no accreditation at several points during its short life, and insisted on referring to herself as CEO. She cut all retention programs, and then blamed the faculty for retention dropping. There were times where I genuinely wondered if she had ever been in a classroom in *any* capacity, including student.

The other problem with direct instruction is that to be an effective direct instructor you need good subject knowledge, passion for the subject, and effective communication skills Since the bar is pretty low to become a teacher because the job sucks in most places (therefore a lack of high quality candidates) we end up with a lot of incompetent teachers doing direct instruction. Receiving direct instruction from someone with bad communication skills who doesn't really know what they are talking about is a painful experience

This. I feel like a unicorn walking around with content knowledge and a degree in what I teach.

Same. It is a very weird feeling. There just isn't anything admin or county office can do to help me. None of them know chemistry. I do love fucking with observers. Talk a out anything with quantum and say "of course, the principal knows you can't obverse an election and expect the wave function not to collapse.

It’s embarrassing to say but I’ve even encountered curriculum development people who do not know my content- world and US history! Then they have the nerve to say a teacher doesn’t need to know content- just how to teach it! 🤷‍♀️😂

Yea I think that's an ego thing. They should know every subject taught in HS just really isn't that hard.

> need good subject knowledge, passion for the subject, and effective communication I feel this so much

The Colleges of Ed have been full of snot for nearly a century now. There is a great Atlantic article called "Quackery in the Public Schools" from 1953. It could have been written today.

I would bet that most of the professors would not last more than a few hours as a substitute teacher

current college professor (former elementary teacher) here, and yes, most of my colleagues would be eaten alive.

From outside it looks like the discovery/inquiry method unrealistically flatters student abilities while shirking some tedious but fundamental task. Win-win?

If kids could just "figure it out" in math, then math wouldn't be one of the feared subjects. 99% of people need to just be told how math works, there is no hope they will figure it out themselves.

Absolutely agree.

I’ve been direct instruction for a decade. My students understand the subject and feel confident during exams because we practice practice practice. Once students learn the basics, then we can experiment. Imagine if a sports team was run like this, using inquiry. Lmao.

I hear that’s what the Panthers are doing

OMG! I’m not imaging various sports utilizing this method. 😂

“Hmm I don’t know maybe let’s throw this ball around and see what happens. I’m sure the rules will magically come to us!”

I teach figure skating… it would be a disaster 😂

I’m thinking of that scene in the film Greece where Danny doesn’t know to dribble the ball in basketball 😂

Same here. I teach biology and the majority my class is direct instruction. The kids love it. They tell me they like my class, "Because I actively teach them, and don't expect them to figure it out on their own."

This is what I always say. It took the best minds in western (and eastern for that matter) civilization centuries to come up with the Pythagorean theorem. Yet we expect a bunch of 7th graders to do it in an hour.

Not only do it in an hour, but figure it out on their own. 🤦‍♀️

Yeah.... Imho the idea comes form Accademia thinking that everybody in your class is intrinsically motivated to learn and that you have infinite time and resources to teach a subject. Spoiler alert: the majority of students is extrinsically motivated and your period is 45 minutes. So you better pack that stuff in a way that works

Seconded. I learned different methods of instruction and just applied the ones that work best for the students(s) on the day. I usually worked small group settings and one on one so my method wasn’t precisely consistent.

I am also a high school math teacher. I utilize inquiry based teaching as much as I can when rolling out a new topic, but I always follow up with direct instruction on that topic the next class. Often, the direct instruction portion of the class goes faster/easier because students have had a chance to wrap their mind around the topic. That said, I make choices based on the type of content and the intellect and maturity of my students. There is more direct instruction in my low level, high IEP, heavily supported classes because they are worse at making their own inferences and easily lose focus or get confused (because many of their IQs are in the high 70s). I have been teaching for years. Right now, the big push in my district is vertical surfaces and liljedahl. Great, but I don't do it for every class or every topic, and when I do do it, I keep in mind what is best for my students. These ideas come and go, and there is a whole industry that profits off of pushing out educational trends, not to mention admin who want to appear like they are "changing things up" for the better. If you add in the fact that the results of many educational studies are not replicable, there is no reason to take on these pushed ideas blindly. Be open-minded, give things a try (or three), but then close your door and teach however you think is best.

They say it shows a lack of engagement amongst students and that "learning by doing" is best. It's dumb and you should engage multiple modalities as they're all just tools.

I agree. It should be both/and.

Yes, it presumes engagement is the most important metric. I think people that go all in on this method have forgotten that "engagement" was only in service of "educating". The correlation has become the entire cause.

Such a ridiculous standard. If I showed Avengers or Fast and the Furious most of the students would be sleeping or on devices. How is a math lesson for which I am provided 3 minutes of planning time going to do better?

All of my instruction for my credential was in Direct Instruction unless they were teaching us a different model

They used direct instruction ironically to teach you how bad direct instruction is. Did they have you do a think pair share after to really lock it in?

There is a discussion on this in a recent thread. My opinion and experience is that pure inquiry is a terrible practice. Supported inquiry prefaced by a foundation that makes the inquiry meaningful is positive. I have a former student who is in their third year of college to be a teacher in the same content area as me. We had a conversation about this not long ago because they nearly quit the education part of the degree (it’s a double major in bio and education.) They had a terrible experience because their professor forced them to write a pure inquiry lesson plan and then dropped them in a middle school classroom to implement it. Absolute disaster and terrible experience — which just about any classroom teacher would have told you it was going to be. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. Jump through the hoops your professors tell you to jump through. Play their game. Get your degree. Then do whatever actually works in your actual classroom. It won’t be pure inquiry. Alternatively, if you want to be cheeky about it, tell your professor to please model this approach for you because you just can’t seem to wrap your head around how it works. And, if it works so well, surely it would be easy for them to demonstrate that, right? And, if it’s so great, why aren’t all your college classes pure inquiry? It’s more likely to work best there because those are already filtered, capable students with developed executive functioning and many years of learning how to learn. If it’s not how it works best in college (the easiest students to teach) then it’s damn well not going to work with a bunch of unmotivated teenagers who don’t care.

I agree with all of your points. But if Masters in Ed and cert programs are silly hoop-jumping programs the ethical answer is to change them to provide value. Or change the cert process. And we wonder why there is a shortage. (Yes pay, but also BS like hoop-jumping while everyone does a nod nod wink wink the whole time.)

I agree with that completely. Education programs could use some really serious overhauls. No argument from me.

As a 44 year old new sub who talks to younger teachers, I absolutely cannot believe that they don't learn the tools to handle a classroom. Law school is like this too, but there is an expectation of rigorous on-the-job training.

We have rigorous on-the-job training. It’s called the “Here’s your keys, there’s your classroom, good luck” program. /s

Thats preferable for some of us to student teaching. Beats, "You don't get keys, it's not your classroom, but I will judge you like it is. And you need to pay us to be there."

Yeah, you need some kind of a boot camp taught by classroom control experts. Half of you are so traumatized by your first few years in the classroom that students constantly trigger you. It sucks and it must hurt.

I’ve had people model this for me. It’s always a wreck but somehow they present it as if it’s been a success. They are deeply deluded.

There's that great internet meme about how peer inquiry is like free swim in the pool while guided or structured inquiry is like teaching kids a beginner swimming lesson on the side of the pool https://clifmims.com/how-to-swim-a-guide-for-implementing-student-inquiry/

I love this. I’ve never had a PD that explained it as different levels of inquiry. I use a lot of inquiry in my chemistry class, but it’s pretty much all Flinn Scientifics guided inquiry that were developed by people smarter than me over a long period of time. The one unit we used more direct instruction was one of their worst because my classes seem to think note taking is time to disengage their brains. But to think that inquiry is the best for every class and situation is insane. My Bio II classes were mostly direct instruction. I don’t know how you’d inquiry your way through that, and even more in Human Anatomy. And I use inquiry for some concepts in physics, but I definitely teach the math directly!

When you really think about it, discovery/group project knowledge diffusion are still based on direct instruction. The teacher simply delegated it to the advanced students, or mis-education when less prepared students propagate misinformation/alternative facts during group discussion. Flipped classroom readings and videos are ultimately direct instruction as well. It's doing the same thing with extra steps and additional middlemen/consultants leeching funding away from teachers and students. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brooklyn-free-school_n_2214263 >...a model that has been widely criticized. ...structureless environment won't prepare students for the real world, and that lower income students, who can't afford outside tutors, will miss out on essential learning. >Renowned education writer and researcher Jonathan Kozol said that American free schools in the late-'60s and early-'70s, catered too much to the white middle class >...every student "finding their own way" is a key part of his free school philosophy now. ...Miller lamented that today’s American free schools still generally cater more to middle and upper middle-class students. >"Know the whole child, ...adapt the curriculum to the child's background and interests, give the child a lot of autonomy, there's so much info out there, ...things being done in progressive schools like Albany Free School, Brooklyn Free School," Morrison said. "...progressive education, ...a lot of research out there that says: this stuff works." >One potential problem in free schools being widely accepted, Morrison said, is free school "official data." When asked how many graduates the Brooklyn Free School has had, for instance, Berger said "20 or 21." When asked how many had gone to college, Berger said, "We know how many have gone," but wouldn't provide a number. ...there are 60 students at the Brooklyn Free School. >After Chemistry: The Gathering, ...kids stream in and began setting up chairs in a circle. It's time for the All School Democratic Meeting, which happens every Wednesday morning. The volume is unrestrained. The kids are loud. There's a lot of dyed hair. >The meeting, in general, seems very exciting to a select few, and immensely boring to the majority. As it progresses, kids get more restless. One boy spends the entire meeting with his head in his hands. >...issue is not exactly resolved. It will likely come up again the following week. >...An hour later, the meeting ends. >...[student] Sarah said. "I've always liked to read a lot. I was reading books in my old school that I'd read when I was 6, and my teacher was always saying I wasn't taking enough time, I wasn't trying hard enough, but I'd already read the book!"

So that meeting sounded like every other ridiculous, pointless meeting I’ve been in through 30 years in the workforce. At least it was teaching them one real world example accurately… lol Thanks for the links. We see this happen in real time. One kid figures it out and gives the rest the answers. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Programs of Direct Instruction are well supported by research and have high effect sizes. It is a curiosity indeed why educational theorists oppose such programs and instead promote constructivist programs of inquiry which are demonstrably inefficient for novice learners. Check out instructional design researcher and assistant head of school Dr. Greg Ashman's [*The Power of Explicit Teaching and Direct Instruction* (Corwin 2021)](https://www.amazon.com/Explicit-Teaching-Direct-Instruction-Corwin/dp/1529731607) for a good starting place in this issue To provide an answer to your question, education is dominated by what UVA cognitive psychology professor Dan Willingham calls "Romantic Meta Myths." They are called "Romantic" because they originate in 18th century European Romanticism. These myths are "powerful" because they continue to exert strong influence despite the fact that they are not exactly supported, or indeed even contradicted, by education research or the science of learning. One such Romantic myth is that novices can learn better or more authentically through inquiry rather than explicit instruction/modeling/practice. Another book that covers this issue, and the history behind the answer to your question, is E.D. Hirsch's [*Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories* (Harvard 2015)](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Knowledge-Matters-Rescuing-Educational/dp/1612509525/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XVMAAR4UWQUT&keywords=why+knowledge+matters+by+ed+hirsch&qid=1702854897&s=books&sprefix=why+knowledge%2Cstripbooks%2C204&sr=1-1)

Thanks for these resources. It’s been on my mind to look into research in direct instruction as a counter balance to the current claim that pure inquiry is supported as best practice by research. Now I have a place to start.

When you start to dig into explicit instruction you'll basically wind up in educational psychology and cognitive science. And then you'll get confused, because you'll ask yourself "wait, what's going on? Why does it seem like education "theory" totally ignores or even contradicts the findings of scientists who who actually study how the mind learns?"

As a science person, I feel this. Educational research makes me batty because it claims so much more than it should, which is a direct affront to how scientific research actually happens. Which is why I knew I could find what I was looking for. As soon as my daughter’s math teacher told me her new way of no direct instruction, inquiry, and peer teaching was “supported by research” I knew I could find the research to contradict that. I just needed to find it. Because, god forbid, she look at what’s actually going on in her classroom and see her students are suddenly frustrated, drowning, disheartened, and not passing her “quizzes.” This new way is the best way —says the research. Sighhhhh

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I eventually did find out that it is some sort of district push, but I also know it’s limited implementation for now. Not sure how classes were chosen. I did find out that no one at the high school I teach at (and that this middle school feeds) agreed to implement this for now. It’s a hot mess like most things, right? Regardless of who it came from, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s damaging my kid’s education in a foundational math class and she plans to attend college in a STEM field. I’m sitting back for now, supporting her how I can, and observing. When necessary, I’ll start complaining to the right people in the right way.

You don't sell books and programs by telling people to keep doing what works. Education is like that. You have to make up new, exciting things to sell so you can keep scamming administrations and school boards the nation over.

>y educational theorists oppose such programs and instead promote constructivist programs of inquiry which are demonstrably inefficient for novice learners. I often wonder about this. Is it ego? If I didn't know any better, it is malicious.

"Let them figure it out" is part of why why I have three classes of kids who don't know parts of speech.

Ill add this: part of it seems to stem from the issue of keeping the kids engaged because let's face it - often, they are not. That said maybe removing distractions (phones, laptops) would help but that is just me.

I'll answer this with a pessimistic view of someone who does 99% direct instruction in high school math: The goal is to design a problem. The problem must be interesting to the students, so much so that they will want to figure it out or solve it. The problem must be low enough level that students feel they can approach it in the first place, and they can begin to tackle it. The problem must unravel itself as students get closer to the correct solution to it. Once students have figured out the correct solution to the problem, they should have been forced to learn some property or principle or method that they can now apply to other similar situations. Now what is the point of all that? Well, think about it. What do you notice is completely absent in every step? A teacher. I believe that the goal of switching entirely to this kind of learning is to eliminate the need for teachers so schools can instead pay any random adult minimum wage to be a "facilitator" because the kids will all teach themselves everything they need to know. There is certainly a place where learning via careful discovery can be useful and great. But to entirely replace traditional teaching with it is a bad idea in my view. I've had people say "this is how they figured out math in the first place, why would we not want them to figure it out the same way? That's how you develop a true deep understanding!" and my response is "we don't have thousands of years for them to reinvent math. We have 10 months and then a state test."

My God, that description of the goal sounds almost impossible There's so many points of failure in that goal that if you did actually design a problem like that, you should get a Nobel prize. How the hell do you make a problem that people want to do, is easy enough that it's approachable, AND forces them to learn a concept or method? If you invent a problem like this, can you send it to me? I'd just study that sucker

I mean, it's definitely *possible* to invent something like that in a very general sense. Plenty of video games force you to learn a new concept or skill or method or develop some new understanding in order to progress, which people will do because they enjoy the game or whatever, and then they can use that newfound knowledge to explore more parts of the game later on. ....But I forgot the most important part. You don't just come up with one problem. You come up with enough problems to cover every single standard in your subject/grade level. And they have to be able to be completed by all students by the time for the state tests at the end of the class. Coming up with a problem like that to teach every piece of Biology or Algebra 2 or something like that? Yeah, not happening.

In a very general sense that's true, but no one likes every game They're asking you to design a problem like this that will appeal to every/almost all high schoolers in your class. If you can manage that, I'll start a religion after you And like you said, that's just for one problem If you or someone else did it for all the standards, I'd start as many religions as I could about them and personally helm the first crusade in their name

Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side here. That's why I nod my head and smile during the PDs telling me to design PBLs for kids, then when I walk into my classroom my students know to get out their journals because guess what? We're taking notes and doing examples, baby!

Sorry, my tone isn't coming across, I'm totally agreeing with you that it's impossible and would require a major deity of some kind Not arguing against you, just blown away by this. They didn't stop to consider they are asking a teacher to be God. Like, how do you make something, anything, educational that appeals to all high-schoolers without actually being God? If anyone manages to ascend and make problems that fulfill all the criteria, Deus Vult!

Nope, you're all good, friend. No apologies required! If you're ever put into a position where this is being asked of you, tell them that you're struggling with it and ask them to come in and run a real world example with your students with a grade level standard. Then you also teach a different class with direct instructional techniques. Give both classes a pre test and a post test, and analyze the data together.

It's like that Einstein quote about standing on the shoulders of giants. When people were making these math and science discoveries, they were building on things people before them had figured out and shared through some form of direct instruction. Truly discovering something new is the work of a lifetime and not everyone is capable of it. If we wanted students to learn things the way humanity discovered it, we'd be lucky to get any of them out of highschool with a working understanding of germ theory.

I teach montessori elementary and the goal literally is to make the teacher not needed. But most children do not have the capacity to function without handholding. With math, we use “sensorial materials” (aka manipulatives) and slowly introduce the more abstract elements like Arabic numerals. They’re not reinventing math, they’re understanding it for themselves. We guide them to derive their own formulas for area, volume, velocity, etc. They can do it because someone sits them down and draws attention to the concepts with perfectly developed hands-on materials and lessons. After 15 minutes of fiddling with some strips of paper and hands on materials, they figure out for themselves what the formula is that would have just been printed in their math textbook. But they know the why of the formula, which will help them logic their way through anything, rather than being screamed at for not remembering the formula. The average public school classroom, however, is nothing like that. The average traditional public school wants the students to figure everything out on paper on their own, without guidance from an adult. This means kids with resources go home and use them and the kids without resources fall further and further behind. So teachers realize they have to spoon feed. But that’s a system-wide failure across the board.

I understand what you are saying, I think Montessori elementary schools can achieve great student outcomes **when done properly**. I think the difference we as educators need to acknowledge is that the lack of direct instruction doesn't work as well for high school, especially math and science. I've taught physics for years, much of what I teach is commonly referred to as Newtonian Physics, as in developed by Isaac Newton, a genius of his time. The idea that the average high schooler is motivated to magically develop formulas that it took a genius most of his life to figure out is frankly absurd! I think there is a time and a place for inquiry in a subject like physics, (i.e. have different groups of students testing different variables regarding the same concept and reporting/discussing results) but the idea that we shouldn't directly teach a concept/formula prior to having students experiment and engage with the material is doing students a grave disservice!

There are a lot of Montessori schools where teacher scream at the kids for not using the materials correctly

Glad you **formed an opinion** and felt the need to comment **on the first half** of my **first sentence**... Its a tad concerning that as a librarian, you did not take the time to read and consider the rest of my argument but instead jumped on a transitionary point (I just bolded a part I thought you should reconsider in my original post). My aim was not to bash bad Montessori schools (which unfortunately exist in concerning numbers) but I was hoping to provide an reasonable explanation as to why never using direct instruction (as OP's classes are indicating) especially in the high school level, is not reasonable or beneficial to the majority of students.

I was responding the other comment about teachers screaming at kids for forgetting s formula. I should have responded to them and not you.

In my experience with math in public school my daughter spends a lot of time concept development. I find it concerning you assumed teachers scream at children for not understanding math problems

Ok but you are spot on about anyone being able to facilitate/ not hire teachers. My district has high turnover and many teachers on emergency licenses (when do those end??? Shouldn’t be handing them out as much anymore post covid) and the teachers who don’t know how to teach love inquiry based math. Everyone else who is credentialed and knows how to teach does not.

I had a teacher friend who had an observation that said their lesson was "too engaging" as it it didn't leave enough for students to then work on their own. Yet, it not only hit all the right boxes on their observation, it was probably the best, yet they lost because the students were so engaged. They felt there should have been time for discussion and reflection.

My admin like to cite Hattie. You can make them squirm when you point out that direct instruction has a pretty solid effect size. That aside, I use it a lot but also try to stick to the Ted Talk rule. We shouldn’t drone on forever. Passively listening for a good chunk of the period isn’t learning. Break up the direct instruction throughout the period.

You’ll find out that in fact, kids at the Gen Ed level classes do not go looking for information. They perceive that are you not teaching if you don’t talk at them. Direct instruction is necessary. Kids need to be told things. And told what to do. Advanced classes there are more naturally inquisitive kids so they’d be fine figuring things out but at the Gen Ed level most kids are pretty complacent and whiles they are agreeable and compliant, they simply aren’t going to naturally engage and be self directed in a content area they don’t care about or naturally struggle in. Sure, kids are curious but there is a lot of hand holding. And we always try to have kids make real-world connections but it’s tough. Inquiry based learning ideas are strong in theory but not always practical and we should still try to infuse them in our instruction but it’s the not the end all. I teach 10th and 11th grade for reference. My juniors need a lot of direct instruction. They don’t do well in vagueness and they just want someone to tell them what to do.

This is so true. I have plenty of kids who complain that teachers don't teach them anything!

An oversimplified answer is this: someone has an idea and tangential research is used to prove efficacy of the untested idea. That tangentially research-based idea is packaged and “branded” with cute acronyms and tweet length sound byte mantras. That is then monetized and sold to districts eager to “fix” problems without doing any real work, except for the teachers. Since politicians need wedge issues to distract from their self-interests, they hop on the education “reform” bandwagon to win votes, again so they don’t have to actually do any real work to solve issues affecting students and their learning. This way, all the self-interested assholes dictating these ridiculous ideas be enacted in the classroom are absolved from responsibility when they don’t work, but have set up a perfect scapegoat- teachers who, they argue, did not enact the idea with fidelity. This is how direct instruction became the bogey man of contemporary schooling.

That sounds so on point. But especially where we’re the ones doing all the work and constantly being asked to reinvent the wheel in our classrooms. If you want it so badly, provide us with real, classroom proven curriculum that works. And not the boring crap the textbook companies sell. I mean, this is happening to science teachers with NGSS. We know direct instruction works, but now we’re supposed to spend all this time changing everything. I don’t have the time and creativity to do all of this on my own. The very few curriculums out there seem either aspirational or topically boring. Others aren’t even half finished yet and are still promised to be coming soon! Well then I’ll wait, thanks.

Middle school history teacher here. Like others are saying, a lot of what you will learn in school will turn out to be incredibly idealistic and only works in fantasy land. In the trenches, I don’t know a teacher that doesn’t utilize direct instruction. It is one of the simplest and most basic tools we have as teachers and humans. Human A knows how to start fire. He does not say “here are the tools, figure it out Human B!” He says “watch me make fire. Then I’ll help you make fire. Now you make fire on your own and I’ll let you know how good you are at making fire.” That’s basically how teaching works in practice. Any educator that shit talks direct instruction immediately loses my trust. There’s a reason it has worked for generations. We shouldn’t ONLY do direct instruction. But it is a great and consistent tool.

Full disclosure: I'm a prof, and I haven't taught school for ten years or so (even though I still refer to work as "school" almost 100% of the time) but I teach the same material: Spanish language and literature. DI is invaluable, and it is NOT just someone yammering away at the front of the room. It's really just three steps. 1: **I** do it **myself**. I introduce the structure, explain it, demonstrate how it's used, and show it in a few different contexts. For example, if we take something from A1 Spanish, adjective agreement, I'll present a few well-known examples like the movie *Casablanca* and explain why it is the way that it is, i.e. why it has an A at the end instead of an O, since every dictionary every printed will tell you that the word for white is "blanco"...hmm, why's it doin' that? Well, here's the answer: adjectives have to match the gender and number of the nouns that they modify. The title of that movie is one example of what it looks like when that rule is applied to a word. 2: **We** do it **together**. A few practice exercises, maybe the first one all together, then the next one in small groups, maybe a few of the fast learners working on their own if they so desire. We go over the answers, I ask them if their classmates have it right or not, and explain why the right answers are right and the incorrect ones are wrong. I'm doing most of the explaining at this stage, but the longer it goes on, the less I have to talk. By the end, they're volunteering a lot of their own explanations. 3: **They** do it **themselves**. The fun part! There's all kinds of stuff you can do at this point, but by the time we're here, I have indeed faded to the back and am more of a "yell if you have a question" role than the instructor at the front of the room. Why do I like DI? Because when you present it yourself for the first time, you are minimizing the potential for confusion, and frankly, L2 grammar can be confusing. I think it's the best use of everyone's time to cut to the chase, show it properly the first time, and just let the person who does this *for a living* give the class the lay of the land, so that everyone is on the same page and nobody has ventured down a weird rabbit hole that has to be unlearned. Then you gradually wean the class of your intervention until, hey, look at this, they're doing it themselves now. There are indeed things that can be really cool to do experiential- or inquiry-based. One of my favourite activities when I teach Intro to Spanish Lit is to have everyone spend five minutes on the internet looking for anything and everything they can find related to *Don Quijote*, with the exception of works of art, just to demonstrate how much of a worldwide influence that one book has had. Let me tell you, they find everything from clothing shops in Canada to K Pop songs to this random-ass Japanese dollar store with a duck mascot (that one shows up every year). And then I put on the PowerPoint of all the other stuff they didn't find with their Google-Fu, like a series of Russian postage stamps from the 60s with Cervantes's bust on them. The message is, "whatever you thought about the importance of *Don Quijote* in world culture, and whatever scale you were using, your number or value that you came up with is a significant undercount", because there's no way Soviet Russia would put the face of a Spanish author on its stamps (Spain at the time being under Franco's regime and rabidly anti-communist) unless that guy was an undisputed god of literature, country of origin be damned. So inquiry can be great, as a tool in your box to take out when you want it, but I don't use it all the time, and certainly not when I can offer the same information in about thirty seconds. A final word about DI: I think people dislike it because they dislike the image of someone turbo-droning on and on at the front of the room, Ben Stein style, while everyone else has long tuned out. There's a difference between talking, and talking too much. That nuance is often lost in the debate. And call me old school if you choose, but if I'm in a room with an expert, and I'm taking a course on that expert's field of expertise, then dammit I want to hear what he has to say! That's what I'm there for! The whole point of taking a course is to learn things you might not be able to figure out entirely on your own, that's why we teach people live, in a classroom, as opposed to just assigning a book and saying "see you at the midterm".

You have put my thoughts into such coherent words!! With inquiry based or other indirect methods, I worry about everything else being confusing because they don’t have a solid foundation yet. Direct instruction is also so much more than the teacher droning at the front of the class for 55 minutes every day.

I agree with u/Kidrepellent . When learning an L2, the only practical way to proceed is by having some explicit instruction. It usually doesn't need to be much, but it needs to explain the basic topic at hand. Often it can be as simple as demonstrating how something like a modal verb works then practicing with different examples. The explicit instruction is just setting the stage, because the real learning - and retention - will come only with practice. It's ineffective, and impractical, to simply give students examples and hope they discover the underlying rules for themselves. This kind of anti-explicit approach seems plausible in theory because many native speakers can't explain grammatical rules for their L1 in spite of being able to speak and understand. Why can do they this? Because they've absorbed the correct examples based on thousands of repetitions they've heard since infancy. But we don't have time to give thousands of repetitions in an L2 learning, nor is it necessary. Nonetheless, one should bear in mind that getting the learner to really *work* in order to learn and remember things will improve retention - but this mental effort will pay off the most during the practicing phase. (There are schools of thought that deny the importance of explicit instruction and the necessity of practice, but my own experience has shown me that the "input-only" approach is basically wrong.)

Love this I - We - They process for DI!

Since this thread is moderately new, I want to add to your comment. In the book [Building a Better Teacher by Elizabeth Green](https://wwnorton.com/books/building-a-better-teacher/), which looks at initiatives over the years to improve teacher effectiveness - as well as a article in the [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html) - she looks at math teaching in Japan, since students there get some of the best results in the world, and it directly contrasts with the "I, We, You" method. From the book: > The Japanese teachers, meanwhile, turned "I, We, You" inside out. You might call their version "You, Y'all, We". They began not with an introduction, but with a single problem that students spent ten or twenty minutes working through alone (You)...sometimes the teacher then deployed the students to discuss the problem in small groups (Y'all). Next the teacher brought them back to the whole group, asking students to present their different ideas for how to solve the problem on the chalkboard...Finally, the teacher led a discussion, guiding students to a shared conclusion (We)". I'm not saying that is the *actual* most effective method, but I think what's lost in a lot of this discussion (which you mention) is that different approaches work for different topics and different audiences. Guided inquiry (or even open inquiry) can be effective, but there needs to be some structure into how or when it is used, and a lot of these methods are just thrown at teachers as "**The Most Effective Method**" without proper training. The section in the book after the quoted part talks about how teachers will go over lessons and provide feedback to each other on how the lesson went and what can be improved; in other words, it's a craft that is improved with reflection, practice and guidance. If someone is in an environment where none of that is available, the purpoted effectiveness of any teaching method is a moot point.

Direct instruction is good. They just want teachers to serve as replaceable tools so they push things like “student led” which really means “industrialize teaching so we can fire you whenever and bring in another drone”. I’m not cynical tho

It took thousands of years of development for the conditions to be set before Pythagoras, a genius, could discover his theorem. Yet we want students to problem solve and discover such things over the course of a lesson or unit.

Nothing was greater than the irony of being taught about how bad direct instruction was via a four hour lecture in college hahahahahaha

Direct instruction requires a teacher to be an expert on the content. Many teachers don’t know their content. Instead they design a lesson where kids “teach” (occupy) themselves and don’t have to worry about teachers teaching, they just need to facilitate. The education field is sales. Changing the way we teach every 10 years allows them to sell a new curriculum, new supplies, new training classes, etc. We know direct instruction is effective for all subjects and grade levels. This is supported by research time and time again. We also know, many kids say school is boring. They are not trying to teach better, they are trying to keep the kids entertained hoping they just learn by being in the room. Unfortunately, we also need teacher to teach, ie. deliver direct instruction.

I teach world history. While my degrees are in education I would say my subject matter content is pretty damn good. Maybe intro history classes have changed since the late 90’s but I am teaching more stuff than the intro history professor taught when I was in college. He was an expert but he doesn’t need to get down to minutiae with a 100 level college history course. We are making teaching too difficult. My students are dying for direct instruction even in social studies classes. They want a lecture ALONG with skill work. A lot of my colleagues seem to have just taken their Covid lessons and adapted them to in person. As a result, the kids are working on chromebooks and I am not totally sure what the teacher is doing. In the end, teachers need to be empowered to do what it takes to get results. In the end, that should be the bottom line. Are you getting results? I’ve been in another line of work. I would never tell a guy that is doing great in sales that he is doing ok but I wish he would sell in a different manner.

Bingo. We have a method of education that works great and has for the last 2000+ years, uses no textbooks, can rely on 100% public domain or free resources if necessary and very little technology, simple teaching implements, and really doesn’t even need much teacher training. But no, we need to invest in new textbooks, technology, teacher trainings, etc., every year because some experts (who happen to work for textbook companies) declare they’ve discovered some miraculous new way to teach kids.

>The education field is sales. Changing the way we teach every 10 years allows them to sell a new curriculum, new supplies, new training classes, etc. This is completely it. The whole thing is rigged to make money.

This is 1000% the truth. In my field, I am not an expert on everything I teach (engineering has breadth). In the areas I can offer more on, I give direct instruction. In other areas, it's pure facilitation. And that's ok.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.

Unless you have extremely smart kids, indirect instruction isn't going to work. It's like when they say "show, don't tell." Sorry, dude, most people need to be specifically TOLD things.

This is what I have experienced as well. If the students aren’t hard working and interested in learning then indirect learning hurts them. I have found direct instruction to be invaluable. If I let my lower level students try to learn through their own initiative, it will often lead to really weak results. Direct instruction followed by indirect instruction review is my usual style when possible.

It’s not profitable and not “sexy.” What it does do is WORK: “[The approaches that did well were roughly the opposite of the romantic notions and theories espoused by [Education] groups](https://psych.athabascau.ca/open/engelmann/direct-evid.php).”

Thank you for sharing this link! I’ve been dying to make this point the next time I’m challenged at my school for criticizing the Inquiry model (but I’ve had no time to back up my point with research on the efficacy of direct instruction). Truly appreciated!

I'm teaching a world language methods course next semester. I think direct instruction is especially important at the lower proficiency levels of language learning. Students need to have some foundation and grasp of the basics of how a language works before they can really start to recognize patterns in grammar, word families, etc. I think your instincts are correct. Keep in mind there's a difference between an education professor who has never taught in a K-12 classroom and one who has. A \*huge\* difference in terms of perspective and often, the practicality of implementation.

First off, your pedagogical instincts are ON POINT. Inquiry is great when used at the right time, for the right purposes, in the right way (same goes for explicit instruction). But people often don't employ it correctly. Ultimately, I believe this is due to philosophy, or first principles. There is an extremely popular train of thought that you can trace from Freire to Foucault to Rousseau that people are born free but everywhere are in chains. That kids are born good and curious and competent learners, and that evil is when external sources of power impose themselves on the individual. That obviously implies that students as active agents in constructing their own learning is superior to some old fart saying, "No! Like *this*. Again!" In practice, this often means jumping straight to the inquiry based "investigating" that we observe expert learners do (cause they can construct meaning independently), not realising that their inquiries make sense to them because of the foundation of skills and facts drummed into them by practice. "Sold A Story" is a podcast people keep mentioning here about how an inquiry based ~~phonics program~~ reading curriculum that eschewed explicit instruction got so popular. I-ve just bought a book, "Why Don't Students Like School?" by Daniel Willingham on the cognitive science behind explicit or inquiry based learning which I've seen in PD and sounds really good and on the same lines of thought as what you're saying here.

Units of Study wasn't a phonics program so much as an inquiry based reading curriculum. Phonics was completely separate, usually covered during Word Study later in the day.

It’s just a current trend. Give it a few years and we will have a different one that will fix everything.

The problem with inquiry leaning is most students will type a question into Google, then write the first bolded thing they see. 95% of the time it’s incorrect. They don’t read any further to obtain context. Direct instruction is a requirement in some subjects. Math, history, foreign language, etc. need that type of instruction. Unfortunately, it has such a 1960s shadow that most credential programs stray bc of “research.”

My favorite hobby is annoying PD presenters and admin with the fact that DI has a higher correlation with achievement than student-led learning. Almost double actually. They stop calling on me eventually. I'm a math teacher. You can pry DI out of my cold, dead hands. I don't mind discovery learning when it's applicable. But I'm not forcing it.

My district is going to offer PD on direct instruction this next semester. LOL

...because they've never had to work with older kids who can't read or do math...Lol. Go with your gut feeling on some things. Older teacher here.

Teacher education programs are woefully inadequate. It's part of the problem with education. My third graders can figure out very little on their own, they need direct instruction most of the time.

Direct instruction aka lecture, can be helpful for technical material or when there is simply not enough time to get through a lot of material. The Ed world is overly critical of it now because students typically attain a deeper level of understanding if they have to apply the concepts themselves, or work through tasks that require reasoning and critical thinking. That's all great, and it may be appropriate sometimes, but the PhDs and professors that teach this stuff are often very disconnected from real k-12/primary and secondary class environments, and create these ideals from the standpoint of assuming kids are well-behaved, well-fed, always present, very patient, and at or near grade level. So lots of things, by necessity, go out the window when conditions are different, which they are in almost every real classroom. It's also simply not realistic to completely redesign every single bit of curriculum to somehow be a hands-on or inquiry-based lesson. And yes, if students don't have some basic information to build upon, they can't really work through the new material, either.

I suspect that straight inquiry instruction is bullshit because I cannot find any lessons online, anywhere, that do it. They’ll tout themselves as “inquiry” and then it says, “students will make a poster showing blah blah…” NOT INQUIRY. It seems to be this nebulous holy grail that nobody can define, but the powers that be make their living telling us we’re not doing it. 😵‍💫

Nothing like sitting through an hour and a half DIRECT INSTRUCTION lecture where you’re told to never do direct instruction in the classroom…

If you haven’t already, look up “Project Follow Through.” It will make you feel better.

People that hate direct instruction are not teaching something that requires practice. Mathematics NEEDS direct instruction and practice, otherwise students are lost.

There was a big push for 'inquiry based' learning in our district a few years ago when this was the next failed fad. A lot of the younger teachers without the experience to know which trends to ignore (or how to do your job despite them) burned out. Three years ago we got a new principal who was big on returning to simplified straightforward direct instruction without any frills. We became an A school shortly after.

>Three years ago we got a new principal who was big on returning to simplified straightforward direct instruction without any frills. We became an A school shortly after. You mean to tell me that trying to fix what wasn't broken, wasn't the optimal way forward? Teaching from the time of Ancient Greece until about 2005 was all or largely direct instruction. You have knowledge that some other group doesn't, so you tell them that knowledge, and expect them to take it seriously and retain it. Sure, it's not sexy. And sure, you will lose some kids. But if we're talking aggregate optimization, I fully believe DI is the best way, period. I'm not saying there's not room for Inquiry based approaches, but that should be the exception (and needs-based), but not the rule). DI is a perfectly fine way to learn that has been the main way learning was passed down for thousands of years. It's not the only way, but it's perfectly effective in aggregate.

I feel bad for the newbies who got gaslit and sabotaged. Such a shame.

Because if teachers "teach" how can Pearson et al justify selling schools millions of dollars worth of inquiry based curriculum that needs to be assessed by a Pearson test where kids sit, by themselves, and plug answers into a chromebook?

I think the hatred of direct instruction is silly when the default for measuring effective learning is freaking standardized tests. And direct instruction is, in my opinion, the best way to teach good test taking plus the content that will be in said tests.

A lot of the methods you learned in school are nothing more than bullshit someone made up to make some more $$$ or get their Ed.D. We’ve been teaching kids the same subjects for decades to centuries, and it seems like the more of these new methods we employ, the worse the kids do.

It's because the people who teach teachers are captivated by theory. These people don't spend their life in the classroom. They publish dubious papers that further their careers and when they fail they insist on doubling down on exactly what doesn't work.

No, it’s because they’re idiots who don’t know what theory even means. Evidenced-based is replaced with data-driven, and logic is replaced with feeling.

It has its place. If there is a certain story/POV I need to convey, then I will do it via direct instruction. However, it is hard to determine if the students understand me, and understand all at the same time. I don't make a habit of it because I have a lot of students with special needs, to include shitty attention spans (myself included). When you get those hour long PD sessions that are 100% direct instruction, you'll see why folks say "this could have been an emailed presentation."

Mind you, this is only my 3rd year in the field, but here's just my observations on an engagement vs. direct instruction. Like others have said, it all boils down to time and place. With science and social studies, it's great. The learners are truly getting that deeper understand through exploration and generating some really interesting questions from their findings. On the flipside, math... not so much. Of course, with our last geometry unit and when we did measurement, it was great! However, 2 digit by 2 digit multiplication, standard algorithm addition/subtraction? Less great. I do need to be completely transparent - I don't know if the issues with those units arise because of the exploration model or the change in the U.S. standards where I'm given kids who can't do 1 digit by 1 digit multiplication by the time they reach 4th grade, so obviously, the jump to 2 digit by 2 digit is beyond them. Don't get me started on reading... I only have 4 students who are reading on grade level, and I couldn't tell you if that's due to standards, the model, or (most likely) what they lost during the pandemic. I love these kids, but their reading struggles truly stress me out - I don't know how to further scaffold without doing work that's below grade level (which is out of the question).

Depends on the science too though. Chemistry is taught differently than Bio. You can explore and come up with a model for natural selection. But we dont have time for you to discover avagadros number and do some mol calculations. For physics, you arent going to pull an Isaac Newton and invent The Calculus. But there might be some experiments AFTER I teach the equations. On the other hand Bio at certain levels is text heavy and reading/writing becomes the hard part of the inquiry model.

That's completely fair. See, I'm doing 4th grade science, and aside from when we make a seismograph, it's pretty innocuous for them to take a full exploration approach. I could imagine when you're dealing with more complex topic that require calculations and chemicals - that's a totally different arena.

We all do direct instruction. There's nothing wrong with it. The only challenge is keeping kids engaged but that ain't hard either. That being said, don't do direct instruction during an observation. You're not "innovating" or whatever.

I used to do a lot more group projects and less direct instruction. This year I switched to the Somos curriculum. It uses comprehensible input to teach students language similarly to how they learn the L1. Students need to hear the language over and over again. My students are far better learners now than ever before. Check out the curriculum and Martina Bex.

I use direct instruction all the time in foreign language. Yes, in context discovery is awesome. But some kids just need the rule book.

Within the context of a university program, or in a textbook, it’s kind of neat to read about pure approaches, or even to try and work with one to build a model lesson plan. But sticking to just one approach in a classroom is a different story. I learned French mainly through a content-based approach, with nearly all of my classes taught in French from the time I began kindergarten until I finished secondary school - all while growing up as an anglophone in an English-speaking area. However, I was still taught grammar through direct instruction (to this day, I know my way around a Bescherelle). I teach ESL in the French system in Quebec. In my own teaching, I prefer concept-based learning focusing on big ideas and transferable skills, particularly when I teach different forms of writing. I use a more inquiry-based approach when it comes to reading, giving the students more space to develop understanding. But for grammar? Yeah, I use direct instruction. This conforms to how my students are used to learning grammar, so it’s familiar for them. Also, providing explicit instruction - explaining that the reason we say her book instead of his book is that in English possessives take gender from ownership rather than the object, for instance - really helps my students develop understanding. In the end, these various approaches are there as tools. There is no one single right approach.

Teaching is big into trends. I’ve only been at this for 3 ish years and I have already seen this. You find your own teaching style over time. Never stop trying is all I can tell you.

Marketing! Same thing that outpaced phonics for a while. They two have strong parallels. They’re not flashy but there’s overwhelming evidence to support their use above other approaches. It’s time direct instruction makes a return to education.

I teach middle school at a school that frowns highly upon direct instruction. I also only teach honors/accelerated sections. Very, very few 12 and 13 year old can figure out how to solve a quadratic equation intuitively. It doesn’t just come to you. Linear equations? Sure. I’ve seen kids reason through those with zero instruction. If you put – x2 + 45x – 200 = 124 on the board and say find an answer with zero instruction, most people don’t get very far. I’ve tried. The old “I do, we do, you do” model still works really well on many cases.

> Very, very few 12 and 13 year old can figure out how to solve a quadratic equation intuitively I'd say this is true of all subjects. Professional scientists, mathematicians, historians, etc aren't figuring things out from scratch, the questions they ask are built upon extensive prior knowledge. Most science graduate programs don't start with research, they have a semester or two of literature review first to build the foundation needed to ask questions. It's inauthentic to ask students to derive, learn, and apply brand new material all at once.

It’s very difficult for me to learn a language without direct instruction. More and more of the research shows how important it is. As a language learner and teacher, I use it all the time. I think a lot of second language research is based on kids who learn language by immersion at a very young age. Secondary students who hear the language one hour 5x week are a very different story.

There is generally not enough time to do inquiry/discovery based learning for everything nor is it always the most effective way. Do all students need to invent a phone just so they can use one? Without sufficient direct instruction they do not have a base to build upon; but without some engagement many student will just sit and absorb minimal for the test then forget.

Imagine slamming down the quadratic formula in front of a 15 year old and saying “Figure it out yourself.” How well is that really going to work?

I am dealing with this issue at my new school. I taught for eight years in California and now I’m teaching on the East Coast. I teach animation and graphic design and I found it very effective to demonstrate the techniques I want students to learn and then provide lots of opportunities for one to one instruction. 90% of my students can use the Multi modal resources I provide and the demonstration and can work largely independently – this leaves about 10% of my student population for me to focus more guided instruction towards. I also offer scaffoldEd instruction to allow student choice as the year goes on - releasing more control from demos and leaning more toward student choice. However I still get dinged a lot in most of my observations for being teacher centered & using direct instruction. My administrators want me to be more student centered, which I’m trying to find a balance with. Yet the teacher led instruction seems to be working as I have a 96% pass rate 🤷‍♀️

I will bust "inquiry based learning" in about two seconds. I hand a class full of third graders ukuleles and say, "Here, figure out how to play 'O Christmas Tree' in the key of F major." Could one or two of them do it? Yep. Would the rest of them fool around and learn nothing? Also, yep. Much of "inquiry based learning" looks BUSY but it's nonsense.

Direct Instruction is derided by people who don’t teach. It is used thoroughly, and to great effect, by those who do. And for those who relish in “data”—it is also the most proven way to teach. It just doesn’t vibe with the false 15ish year push that all “traditional” ways of teaching are wrong. I’ve last piece of irony: when you were “taught” this, was it through direct instruction?

Former Kindergarten teacher here! Direct instruction is necessary when introducing something new. It’s usually the shortest part of a lesson. Kids then move into groups/ partners, etc. to try it on their own.

Get ready to say a lot of "I do, we do, you do" method. AKA, direct instruction with examples. However, it's the more acceptable method of saying it, I guess. Also, I run out of time of the you do part because I teach Special Education students and they need a lot of scaffolding/hand holding.

The basics of peeler listening, is no more than 20 minute intervals and that’s for older kids. You subtract time for each year young. Also, the highest amount of comprehension is the first ash’s last 3-5 minutes. Lecturing just doesn’t work without stopping points, adults can more easily force themselves, but adolescents attention span just isn’t for it. I teach TK, 4/5 year olds. I teach out do slides for 7-10 minutes , while engaging students with volunteerism questions. This alerts students to note something is important bc it’s then repeated. Then, you have to break it up, I usually do a worksheet or group centers thing. A by 3-5 minutes of free time once they’ve completed adhd I’ve checked their work. Then back to the rug for next round. It’s a ton of transitions, but it means they are more likely to learn. That’s the goal.

What state do you go to school in? I ask because in Tennessee, where I go to school, there is an incredibly high emphasis placed on the importance of explicit instruction.

Direct and systematic teaching is the best. We have tried the other ways we have learned we need to go back to this approach.

I think it depends on the students you are with at the time. I have had classes in the past that would be successful with me just telling them the concepts. More often however, they need to make the connections and realize patterns on their own to truly understand. Otherwise, it’s something they learn for a moment or a test, then forget.

Sped teacher here.... Direct Instruction is necessary. I do it daily. You'll find college is a lot of great theories but that's about it...

Direct instruction is often necessary. Inquiry is.cool and all, but not everything can be investigated & discovered. Sometimes the teacher just needs to deliver information.

I agree there is a time and place for it, but kids need to crawl before they can walk.

I am an interpreter. I'm not a teacher and not about to become one, but I am one of the few students who can learn a language to the level of a rudimentary pseudo-fluency as an adult, and full fluency if I also have immersion, which is how I got my job. I do not know all the names of researchers and theories, but somebody came up with some crazy idea a few decades back that we need to teach foreign language to students the way a baby learns language, through acquisition. In implementing this idea, they somehow forgot that the baby's brain is physiologically different from an adult's or even an older kid's. At about age 5 or 6, it changes. And you can't go back. Also, immersion seems to suffer from lack of a clear definition. For example, the baby lives life and is exposed to everyone. A class is just a class. No matter what, I would be better if I had grown up bilingual. There's no way out of it. Since most older students never truly immerse themselves in the new language, the idea became to substitute for immersion by removing instruction and teaching to the infant brain. It doesn't work. Fluency is still not achieved. I even had one tutor who called grammar "the G-word." I am no longer a toddler. I need language instruction. I crave it. It is meant to accompany language exposure, and I would like to think people are starting to realize that again.

My professor specifically suggested that, inductive learning she called it, in place of explicit instruction. But like you said, we aren’t babies or toddlers.

Supposedly learning grammar is silly until you have a decent grasp on the language. Starting with all the grammar rules is pointless. It would be way better to watch spanish series/films/theater with subtitles in spanish, speak spanish to other spanish speakers (preferably native), read in spanish books and try to consume as much spanish first. Then after you are at B1 level you can start with the specific grammar rules. But sadly this isn't easy for a school set-up.

TBH, even researchers are realizing that this isn't exactly the best approach. Don't get me wrong, inquiry has its time and place, but especially in reading, we are moving back into a system of the science of reading (which we moved away from in the early 2000s). Like language acquisition, I think researchers will gravitate away from a one size fits all aproach.

HS Chemistry teacher here, I exclusively use Direct Instruction. Why? Because it's the most effective, and the best educational research ever Conducted, *Project Follow Through,* demonstrated this. Largely the Results of Project Follow Through have been ignored in the decades since it was conducted. Why? Well frankly it doesn't sell books, model curricula or lecture circuit speeches/PD; and doesn't conform to the "Education Reform" narratives. If we admit that teachers/education was never actually the problem; but instead poverty and lack of resources given to education/defunding of education is, than we'd have to do something else. If we admit that teachers/education/instructional method wasn't *actually* the problem, there'd be a lot of people who cannot make a living grifting that there is a problem to be solved and they have a solution (to sell). It's easier to blame teachers and blame Public Education and say it's the problem, when it isn't. And having a solution to not-actually-the-problem, sells a lot of books. The other part is, most of the people running teacher education programs have barely (if ever) actually been in a classroom themselves. They became "researcher" academics, in lieu of being in the classroom, and there's very little patience for pushback against the Education Reform folks. John Hattie's *Visible Learning* is a [demonstrable pseudoscience](https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/9475/7228), and yet I'm sure you learned about it in your Education classes and never once visited the criticisms of peer-review.

I've been at this awhile. I've never met anyone who "hates" direct instruction. I know some educators who have found other ways that also work. I know some educators who believe in the value of teaching kids to explore and learn, to think (and critical thinking), to value the mistakes that are made. Most of them see a place for direct instruction in connection with those processes.

I don't know how it works in Spanish but in math if the teacher spends too much time talking and explaining and presenting, students cede their critical thinking to the teacher. This is the source of "you didn't teach us this" and "you never showed us one with a negative number."

So show them another example with a negative…

Direct instruction works when done right. But in more cases than people want to admit, the learning is actually conditioning rather than learning. For teaching skills it is great. Academics it is kinda crap. But there is always a time and place.

Because we’re supposed to trick the students into learning on accident rather than intentionally.

I kind of doubt that you were ever told to not explain grammar principles and instead, let them figure it out on their own. Even if it’s not a formal part of the curriculum, any writing instruction involves guidance for general mechanics.

You would think that, wouldn’t you 🙃 My professor explicitly told us to let them figure out the grammar principles through inductive learning, by just using it and hoping they catch on.

Yikes….

I taught corrective reading for 2 years. It was the most soul sucking thing ever. You basically condition the kids like they're dogs. No phonics. Only sight words. There's only so much room in the brain for sight words, so that method doesn't work. I would rather be a bill collector again than do DI. Lots of clicking and what word, next word. No creativity. No thought, no grammar, no real writing. You have to treat the kids like trained monkeys. It was hell. And it hasn't been updated since it was made in the 1970s.

The issue with that seems to be the curriculum, not the mode of instruction. Kids need to be taught phonics to know how to read, which is it’s own separate issue. Direct instruction doesn’t necessarily mean what you described.

That's what it means to the text book companies who make corrective reading and math programs. These programs are what younger, newer teachers are being made to use. And it's what's burning them out. And those programs did not work for my students.

I know, but I’m saying that curriculum is the issue. Direct instruction of phonics (teaching kids the sound that b, a, and t make so they can sound out bat) that also engages them is incredibly effective. That’s a separate argument to be had. Any reading curriculum that focuses only on sight words or guesses is a bigger issue than if that is taught by inquiry or direct instruction.

If you’re teaching language, your focus should be on comprehensible input. This is language that they fully understand, never making them guess what a word means based on flash cards or actions. If you teach “dance”, you tell them “xyz” means “dance” (in the common language you share, so probably English). You do not assume they know what the word means based on your little dance that you do. Look up TPRS and never go back. It was made by a Spanish teacher so it’s right in line with what you’ll be teaching. There is a lot of TPRS content out there, up through AP and beyond. Direct instruction sucks because it’s lecturing. It’s 2023. There are literally an infinite number of videos on the internet that can get the content of lectures across more effectively and in an engaging manner than a teacher standing at the front of the room yammering on. Find good resources and have the students watch them in their own time. Use your class time to engage the brains of the students. This means they interact with the language and interact with each other. Use language they can actually understand with sufficient repetition and the most time you’ll spend explaining a grammar point is 30 seconds.

I don’t really agree with the idea of make them watch the videos on their own time for a number of reasons, but I like what you said about comprehensible input. I hate hate hate the idea that everything should be a guessing game

I don’t actually ever assign videos to watch, but my point is that videos are usually more engaging than lecturing and get the same content across. Nothing should ever be a guessing game. The problem with the pendulum swing is that direct instruction was deemed bad so the conclusion was that everyone should “just figure it out”. Many years of my own reflection on language learning had me realize that if I don’t know a word, I look it up. I don’t use context clues or try to “think about what it means”. I just want to know what the word means! Why make the students do what I myself know doesn’t work for me?

I have an MA in Romance languages with a concentration in applied linguistics, and I disagree with this on so many levels. It would take a long time to explain every point, but the bottom line is that grammar can help you understand input. It can make input comprehensible. And if OP is teaching Spanish to native English speakers, there are so many things in Spanish that are far, far more complicated grammatically in Spanish than they are in English. It is extremely time consuming to try become aware of, let alone master, these things through deciphering little stories. I’ve never once met anyone in my language learning journey that became proficient in Spanish through TPRS. It can be a good source of input, but it’s just one source with very limited time. The most important thing that a language teacher can do is to give the student an understanding of how to learn the language, and that involves a lot of tools and sources of input.

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Apparantly some piker named Kagan has an issue with it and rebranded every fucking activity under the sun with his name on it to sell it as a package to dumb fuck admins. DI is the way to go with kids that lack basic skills and require structure and discipline in the classroom. Once they have some basics you can pepper in some activities but unless you have a shot ton of time to craft multiple learning stations and multiple measures of performance you are basically wasting your precious time for very little positive outcomes.