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Direct instruction

Direct Instruction is a systematic, explicit teaching methodology developed in the 1960s by Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley Becker at the University of Oregon, featuring scripted lessons, precise sequencing of content from simple to complex, frequent student practice, and immediate corrective feedback to ensure skill mastery and minimize instructional ambiguity.^[1] Designed initially to address educational disparities for disadvantaged children, it prioritizes teacher-led delivery over student discovery, drawing on behavioral principles to accelerate academic progress across subjects like reading, mathematics, and language.^[2] The model's empirical foundation was prominently validated in Project Follow Through, the largest U.S. federal educational experiment spanning 1968 to 1977, which evaluated multiple curricula with over 70,000 low-income students in kindergarten through third grade; Direct Instruction sites consistently outperformed other models and control groups in basic skills, reading comprehension, mathematics computation, and even broader cognitive and self-esteem measures, elevating participants' performance to national norms.^[3] Subsequent meta-analyses of over 300 studies from 1966 to 2016 affirm its robust effectiveness, yielding moderate to large effect sizes (e.g., 0.96 for reading) across diverse populations—including at-risk, average, and gifted students—and content areas, surpassing alternative approaches like inquiry-based or constructivist methods in controlled comparisons.^[2]^[1] Despite this evidence base positioning Direct Instruction as an empirical benchmark for instructional efficacy, its adoption remains limited in mainstream education systems, where preferences for less structured, child-centered pedagogies have prevailed, often irrespective of comparative outcomes; critiques have centered on its perceived rigidity or overemphasis on rote skills, though longitudinal data link it to higher high school graduation rates and sustained gains for underserved groups.^[1]^[4]

Definition and Principles

Core Components of Direct Instruction

Direct Instruction operates through scripted lessons that deliver explicit teaching of skills, beginning with clearly defined objectives followed by teacher modeling of the target behavior or concept.^[5] This modeling phase, often structured as "I do," demonstrates the skill with precise examples and nonexamples to minimize ambiguity, enabling students to observe and internalize the instructional content directly.^[6] Guided practice then transitions to "we do," where teachers lead group responses through interactive formats, such as unison choral answering signaled by cues like pointing or finger snaps, to reinforce application under supervision.^[6] Independent practice, or "you do," concludes the cycle, with students performing tasks individually or in small groups to solidify mastery.^[5] Frequent, embedded assessments monitor progress throughout lessons, with immediate error correction applied via a model-test-retest sequence: the teacher models the correct response, prompts student testing of it, and retests for retention.^[5] This ensures errors do not compound, as instruction halts advancement until criteria for proficiency are met, such as 90% accuracy on previously taught material and firm command of new content.^[5] Lessons incorporate small learning increments, with 10% devoted to novel material and 90% to review and application, fostering cumulative skill building through repeated exposure.^[7] Pacing emphasizes brisk delivery and high success rates, targeting approximately 80% correct student responses to balance challenge and reinforcement while predicting academic engaged time as a key achievement driver.^[8] Adjustments occur dynamically, reteaching if success dips or accelerating via fast-paced cycles when mastery is evident.^[6] Students are organized into homogeneous groups of 2-12 based on skill assessments rather than age or grade, allowing tailored pacing within each group's zone of proximal development and frequent regrouping as data indicate.^[7]^[6] This skill-level stratification optimizes instructional efficiency by aligning content difficulty to current proficiency, ensuring maximal reinforcement across varied learners.^[5]

Theoretical Foundations

Direct Instruction derives its theoretical basis from applied behavior analysis, particularly principles of operant conditioning articulated by B.F. Skinner, wherein learning is facilitated through the systematic reinforcement of correct responses and the correction of errors to prevent maladaptive habituation. This framework posits that skill acquisition occurs via contingent consequences: immediate teacher feedback serves as positive reinforcement for accurate performances, increasing their frequency, while erroneous responses are not reinforced and are instead modeled correctly to extinguish inaccuracies. Central to this is the rejection of innate knowledge or maturational unfolding as drivers of competence, asserting instead that behaviors must be explicitly shaped through environmental contingencies rather than presumed internal discovery processes.^[9]^[10] Curriculum construction in Direct Instruction employs rigorous task analysis, commencing with the specification of terminal competencies and proceeding via backward planning to delineate prerequisite subskills down to irreducible elements. This method identifies causal sequences where mastery of each atomic component logically enables the subsequent, eliminating gaps that could foster erroneous generalizations; for instance, complex problem-solving is deconstructed into verifiable exemplars tested for generality across variations. Such design ensures instructional content is exhaustive and logically tight, derived from empirical scrutiny of learner errors rather than pedagogical intuition or vague developmental stages.^[11]^[12] The approach foregrounds observable actions and quantifiable performance metrics—such as error rates and fluency—as proxies for learning efficacy, eschewing unmeasurable constructs like "motivation" or "creativity" as either causally antecedent or reliably inferable from behavioral data. Proponents argue these subjective states manifest as byproducts of reinforced mastery, not preconditions, and prioritize instructional manipulations that yield detectable behavioral changes over introspective or holistic assessments. In opposition to constructivist doctrines, which presuppose learners actively build schemas from minimal guidance, Direct Instruction contends that novices possess insufficient domain-specific knowledge to self-assemble accurate representations, rendering unguided inquiry inefficient and prone to persistent misconceptions without direct causal intervention by the instructor.^[7]^[13]^[14]

Historical Development

Origins and Key Developers

Direct Instruction originated in the 1960s as a structured teaching approach developed by Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley C. Becker to address the educational needs of disadvantaged preschool children, particularly in response to the limitations of less explicit, child-centered programs like Head Start launched under the War on Poverty initiatives in 1965.^[14]^[15] Engelmann, initially influenced by his advertising background analyzing persuasive communication to children, joined the University of Illinois in 1964 to collaborate with Carl Bereiter on a preschool program for at-risk students, where they critiqued prevailing vague and discovery-based curricula for failing to produce reliable skill acquisition in low-income groups.^[16]^[14] Engelmann led the design of explicit, scripted lessons emphasizing teacher-directed examples and practice, culminating in the 1968 publication of DISTAR (Direct Instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading), the first commercialized DI materials aimed at accelerating foundational skills in reading, language, and math for disadvantaged learners.^[17]^[16] Early pilots at the Bereiter-Engelmann preschool in Urbana, Illinois, demonstrated rapid progress, with children achieving performance levels equivalent to middle-class peers after intensive, daily instruction sessions.^[14] Becker, a psychologist specializing in applied behavior analysis, contributed by integrating principles of operant conditioning into classroom management and instructional pacing, ensuring high rates of student responding and error correction to maximize learning efficiency in group settings.^[18]^[19] Their combined efforts were supported by federal interest in evidence-based interventions amid the 1960s push to combat poverty through education, though initial development predated large-scale government trials.^[16]^[15]

Project Follow Through Experiment

Project Follow Through was a federally funded educational experiment conducted from 1968 to 1977, designed as the largest controlled trial in U.S. educational history to evaluate compensatory programs for low-income kindergarten and primary-grade students.^[20] Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education, it implemented and assessed 22 distinct instructional models across 178 communities, involving approximately 200,000 children from disadvantaged backgrounds, with the goal of identifying effective methods to accelerate basic skill acquisition in reading, mathematics, and language.^[20]^[21] The study employed randomized assignment where feasible, standardized achievement tests, and independent evaluations by Abt Associates to compare outcomes against control groups and non-participating classrooms.^[21] The Direct Instruction (DI) model, developed by Siegfried Engelmann and colleagues at the University of Oregon, emerged as the top performer among basic skills-focused approaches.^[20]^[21] In achievement testing, DI students achieved the highest average effects across domains, elevating scores in reading and mathematics to near or at national norms, while outperforming other models that often yielded negative or negligible gains in basic skills.^[20]^[1] For instance, DI ranked first in basic skills metrics, surpassing even the second-place Behavior Analysis model, and demonstrated positive impacts on cognitive and affective measures like self-esteem, unlike weaker-performing conceptual or open-education models that showed deficits relative to controls.^[21] Long-term follow-up studies tracked DI participants into later grades and adulthood, revealing sustained academic advantages.^[20] By fifth and sixth grades, DI cohorts maintained superior reading and math performance compared to peers from other models.^[1] Ninth-grade data confirmed these gains, with DI students exhibiting higher proficiency levels correlated to their early intervention. Into adulthood, former DI participants showed elevated high school graduation rates and college enrollment likelihoods relative to non-DI Follow Through groups.^[20] These outcomes were causally linked to DI's core mechanisms, including precisely scripted lessons that minimized instructional ambiguity and promoted errorless learning through high rates of guided practice and immediate correction.^[20]^[1] The model's emphasis on structured sequencing and teacher fidelity in delivery enabled replicable success for low-income students, distinguishing it from less prescriptive alternatives that prioritized exploration over mastery.^[21]

Instructional Methods and Programs

Scripted Lessons and Delivery Techniques

Scripted lessons in Direct Instruction (DI) consist of precisely worded teacher scripts that dictate exact phrasing, examples, and sequences to minimize ambiguity and ensure consistent delivery across instructors.^[6] These scripts incorporate small learning increments, with approximately 10% new content per lesson and 90% focused on review and application to build fluency.^[7] Teachers deliver lessons to skill-homogeneous groups, using frequent active student responses to gauge understanding in real time.^[6] A core progression in DI delivery mirrors a fading scaffold: teachers first model skills through direct presentation and exemplars ("I do"), followed by guided group practice ("we do") emphasizing choral responses, then transition to supervised independent work ("you do").^[6] Choral responding involves the entire group providing unison vocal answers, cued by teacher signals such as pointing or hand gestures, to promote high participation rates and immediate error detection without singling out individuals.^[6] Immediate corrective feedback follows errors via a structured model-test procedure, where the teacher re-presents the correct response, tests again after a brief delay, and reinforces until the group achieves firmness.^[6] Pacing rules prioritize brisk momentum to sustain engagement, with adjustable think times (typically 1-4 seconds) and speech rates calibrated to student performance, speeding up for correct responses and slowing or repeating for errors to avert frustration or boredom.^[6] Teachers signal for responses to synchronize group attention, maintaining a rhythm that ensures no student disengages during waits.^[6] Daily reviews and embedded checks, including short probes like oral reading or computation tasks, inform on-the-spot adjustments, such as reteaching weak areas or accelerating for mastery.^[7] Subject-specific adaptations tailor response modes and emphases: in reading, scripts stress phonics through repeated sound blending and decoding drills with choral echoes; in mathematics, delivery focuses on rule induction via concrete examples transitioning to abstract applications, often using written responses for precision.^[6] Across subjects, scripts embed signals for transitions, ensuring high-fidelity execution while allowing flexibility in grouping based on probe data.^[7]

Major Programs Including DISTAR

DISTAR (Direct Instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading), first released in 1969, comprised scripted curricula designed for explicit teaching of core early skills to at-risk learners. DISTAR Reading targeted phonemic awareness through sound manipulation exercises, decoding via systematic phonics and blending instruction, and initial fluency in word recognition.^[22]^[16] DISTAR Arithmetic emphasized rote mastery of basic addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts alongside conceptual understanding of operations.^[23] Subsequent programs expanded DISTAR's framework while retaining its precision. Reading Mastery, an evolution of DISTAR Reading introduced in later editions, progressed from sound blending to connected text reading and basic comprehension, with lessons sequenced by skill difficulty.^[24] Connecting Math Concepts, a six-level series (A-F) for grades K-5, integrated arithmetic facts with procedural drills, conceptual explanations, and application problems to foster mathematical proficiency.^[25] Central to these programs were mechanisms for retention and speed, including daily cumulative reviews that revisited prior content in varied formats to prevent forgetting, and repeated guided practice with immediate corrections to develop fluent, error-free performance.^[5] Implementation extended to special education and remedial environments, where DISTAR's structured format accommodated diverse learners, including those with developmental delays or prior skill deficits, through adapted pacing and one-on-one scripting options.^[26] Success for All (SFA) is a whole-school reform model developed in 1987 by Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students, targeting high-poverty elementary schools to improve reading outcomes through structured literacy instruction combined with additional supports.^[27]^[28] The program's reading component draws on Direct Instruction principles, such as phonics-based curricula and frequent assessments, but integrates Slavin's cooperative learning techniques, including cross-age tutoring where older students assist younger ones in small groups and family engagement strategies to reinforce skills at home.^[29]^[30] In contrast to pure Direct Instruction's emphasis on teacher-led, highly scripted lessons with individual pacing and error correction until mastery, SFA reduces scripting in favor of more flexible group work, peer tutoring, and regrouping by ability across grades, which can introduce variability in instructional delivery.^[31] These adaptations aim to build a collaborative school culture but have been noted to dilute the precision of core DI methods, potentially contributing to implementation challenges in diverse urban settings.^[32] Early implementations in Baltimore urban schools reported reading gains, with participating students outperforming controls by approximately 0.2 to 0.3 standard deviations on standardized tests after one to two years, particularly in foundational skills among low-income and minority students.^[33] However, critics have highlighted fidelity problems, such as incomplete adoption of tutoring protocols and deviations from recommended grouping, which observational studies in four urban districts linked to diminished effects and overstatements of program success in promotional materials.^[34] Randomized controlled trials in the 2010s, including a national scale-up evaluation involving 41 schools, demonstrated modest positive impacts on phonics (effect size around 0.11) but null or insignificant results for fluency, comprehension, and overall reading achievement compared to business-as-usual controls.^[35] A quantitative synthesis of U.S. evaluations through 2020 confirmed an average effect size of +0.24 for SFA, effective primarily for early grades and low achievers, yet smaller than the larger gains (often 0.5 or more) observed in pure DI baselines from prior experiments like Project Follow Through.^[36] These findings underscore SFA's value as a DI-influenced hybrid but reveal limitations from its less rigorous elements when scaled beyond initial developer oversight.^[37]

Empirical Evidence

Results from Project Follow Through

Project Follow Through, conducted from 1968 to 1977 across over 70 communities and involving approximately 70,000 low-income students, evaluated 22 educational models, including Direct Instruction (DI), using standardized tests in basic skills, cognitive skills, and affective domains.^[20] The DI model demonstrated effect sizes of 0.5 to 1 standard deviation above other models in basic skills such as reading, spelling, and arithmetic, based on Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) scores at third grade.^[38] For instance, in total math performance, DI sites exceeded all other approaches by at least 0.5 standard deviations.^[39] In reading comprehension and word attack skills, DI students achieved national percentile ranks averaging in the 70th percentile on the MAT, while students in non-DI Follow Through models scored in the 20th to 40th percentiles, compared to an expected baseline around the 20th percentile for similar disadvantaged cohorts.^[21] Spelling outcomes under DI similarly showed gains exceeding 0.5 standard deviations over alternatives.^[38] These metrics reflected consistent advantages across 10 DI implementation sites, with no other model matching this breadth of superiority in basic skills.^[20] Secondary outcomes included affective measures, where DI produced the highest self-esteem scores among all models, as assessed by standardized instruments like the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, outperforming open-classroom and other child-centered approaches.^[21] Attendance rates also improved under DI, with longitudinal data from the study indicating reduced absenteeism relative to comparison groups, attributed to structured routines and engagement.^[40] Attrition analysis across sites confirmed no selection bias favoring DI, as dropout rates were comparable to non-DI Follow Through classrooms and national norms for low-income students; equivalence at entry on pretest measures further supported the validity of observed differences.^[38] Planned comparisons to non-Follow Through control schools reinforced these findings, with DI sites maintaining gains without evidence of differential loss to follow-up.^[21]

Meta-Analyses and Long-Term Studies

A comprehensive meta-analysis by Stockard et al. in 2018 reviewed 328 studies published between 1966 and 2016, encompassing 413 designs and nearly 4,000 effect sizes, and found consistent positive and statistically significant effects for Direct Instruction (DI) programs across academic domains, with an overall effect size of d = 0.60 (95% CI: 0.54–0.66).^[2] Effect sizes for achievement outcomes ranged from d = 0.37 in language to d = 1.07 in spelling, with moderate to large impacts in reading (d = 0.74) and mathematics (d = 0.75), deemed educationally significant as they exceeded benchmarks for practical relevance in educational research.^[2] These findings held across diverse implementation contexts post-1977, including varying student demographics and program fidelity levels, underscoring DI's robustness beyond initial large-scale trials.^[2] Subgroup analyses within the Stockard review and related meta-analyses confirmed DI's efficacy for vulnerable populations, with positive outcomes observed in approximately 5% of effects involving English language learners and in at-risk groups comprising over 30% of the sample, including those with disabilities.^[2] A dedicated meta-analysis of DI in special education, drawing from controlled studies, reported an average effect size of d = 0.84 standard deviations favoring DI, with 53% of outcomes statistically significant.^[41] Experimental evaluations of DI-specific interventions, such as Direct Instruction Spoken English, further demonstrated gains in language proficiency for English learners, with treated groups outperforming controls on standardized measures.^[42] Longitudinal tracking of DI implementations revealed sustained benefits, including minimal decay in effects during maintenance phases and associations with improved distal outcomes like reduced grade retention and elevated graduation rates compared to non-DI cohorts.^[2] For instance, follow-up studies from the 1990s and beyond linked early DI exposure to higher high school completion and lower dropout rates, with effect persistence evident up to several years post-intervention.^[43] Critiques of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) have highlighted its tendency to undercount DI's evidence base by applying overly restrictive standards that exclude quasi-experimental and implementation-variant studies, leading to ratings that diverge from broader meta-analytic syntheses affirming positive impacts.^[44] Subsequent reviews, building on datasets like Stockard's, have reinforced these meta-analytic conclusions through 2023, emphasizing DI's consistent advantages in achievement for diverse and at-risk students when fidelity is maintained.^[2]

Comparative Effectiveness Against Alternatives

Direct Instruction (DI) has demonstrated superior outcomes compared to unguided discovery learning, particularly for novices acquiring foundational skills. In a 2004 experiment with children aged 7-11, Klahr and Nigam tested learning the control-of-variables strategy (CVS) for designing experiments. Children receiving direct instruction on CVS achieved higher mastery rates (76% correct on near-transfer tasks versus 21% in discovery groups) and equivalent or better performance on far-transfer tasks, indicating DI's efficiency in building transferable knowledge without the inefficiencies of trial-and-error exploration. Meta-analyses further substantiate explicit instruction's edge over inquiry-based alternatives. John Hattie's 2009 synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses ranked direct or explicit instruction among the highest-impact strategies, with an effect size of 0.59—exceeding the average educational intervention (0.40) and outperforming problem-based or discovery methods, which often yield lower or inconsistent gains due to variable implementation and learner prior knowledge. This aligns with broader reviews showing explicit methods accelerate skill acquisition in structured domains like mathematics and reading, where inquiry approaches falter without sufficient scaffolding.^[45] Cognitive load theory provides a mechanistic explanation for these disparities, emphasizing that novices possess limited working memory capacity and schema development, rendering minimal-guidance methods counterproductive. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) analyzed constructivist approaches, including unguided inquiry, and concluded they impose excessive germane and extraneous cognitive load, leading to shallower processing and poorer retention compared to worked examples and explicit guidance in DI, which reduce load by sequencing information hierarchically.^[46] Empirical tests confirm novices under minimal guidance solve fewer problems correctly and retain less over time than those given structured support.^[47] Claims favoring "guided play" over DI often highlight short-term engagement but understate deficits in long-term retention for skill mastery. While some preschool studies report equivalent immediate learning, follow-ups reveal guided play yields weaker procedural fluency and transfer in foundational literacy and numeracy, where DI's deliberate practice fosters durable schemas.^[48] For instance, explicit sequencing in DI minimizes error-prone exploration, enabling higher retention rates (e.g., 80-90% in scripted phonics versus 50-60% in play-based approximations), as novices consolidate basics more reliably under directed feedback.^[49]

Criticisms and Responses

Ideological and Philosophical Objections

Critics grounded in constructivist philosophy maintain that Direct Instruction embodies an instructionist paradigm, characterized by teacher-controlled lessons, rote drill, and prescriptive outcomes, which they argue suppresses students' innate capacity for active knowledge construction and self-regulated learning.^[50] In this view, DI's emphasis on explicit skill transmission treats knowledge as an external, stable entity to be mirrored rather than personally interpreted through experience, thereby limiting opportunities for conceptual depth and adaptability.^[50] Constructivists such as Ernst von Glasersfeld posit that true understanding emerges subjectively from individual interactions with the environment, rendering DI's structured approach philosophically antithetical to fostering authentic cognition.^[50] Objections frequently highlight DI's potential to stifle creativity and critical thinking by prioritizing memorization over exploratory processes. Alfie Kohn contends that DI's step-by-step delivery and contrived exercises constrain students to predefined solutions, hindering the flexible meaning-making essential for innovative thought, in contrast to inquiry methods that encourage open-ended engagement.^[51] Similarly, Karen Smith of the National Council of Teachers of English has characterized DI practices as mere rote repetition, inadequate for developing higher-order thinking skills beyond surface-level acquisition.^[52] These critiques frame DI as promoting passive reception, incompatible with goals of cultivating independent problem-solvers capable of transferring knowledge to novel contexts. Resistance to DI's scripted lessons extends to concerns over teacher professionalization, with detractors alleging it deskills educators by supplanting judgment with rigid protocols. Henry Giroux describes such scripting as proletarianizing teaching, diminishing opportunities for creative adaptation and reducing instructors to mechanical deliverers devoid of autonomy.^[52] Allan Luke echoes this, arguing that DI enforces an inflexible power hierarchy between teacher and student, sidelining cultural variances and individual teacher expertise in favor of uniform control.^[53] These philosophical stances resonate with broader progressive educational traditions favoring child-centered pedagogies that emphasize equity through student-led discovery and relational dynamics over hierarchical skill drills.^[53] Post-Project Follow Through in the 1970s, which empirically favored DI, constructivist-oriented educators in academia and policy circles mounted ideological pushback, prioritizing naturalistic, experience-driven models aligned with beliefs in children's self-directed potential despite the intervention's structured success with disadvantaged cohorts.^[3] Such resistance, often embedded in education scholarship's prevailing subjectivist leanings, underscores a preference for philosophical coherence with experiential learning ideals over alternative instructional frameworks.^[53]

Claims of Rigidity and Overdependence

Critics of Direct Instruction (DI) have asserted that its reliance on scripted lessons promotes rigidity in teaching, constraining educators' ability to adapt spontaneously to emergent classroom needs or student queries.^[54] This scripted format, requiring teachers to follow precise wording and sequencing, is said to undermine professional autonomy and foster a mechanical delivery that stifles improvisation.^[55] Such concerns often emanate from progressive education advocates who prioritize teacher-led discovery over structured protocols.^[53] Another frequent claim involves student overdependence on teacher-provided cues, with detractors arguing that DI's choral responding and signaled prompts condition learners to await external direction rather than initiate problem-solving independently.^[1] Proponents of child-centered pedagogies contend this cue-reliance impedes skill transfer to novel contexts, as students purportedly develop reflexive responses without internalizing underlying principles.^[56] These assertions typically arise in critiques from constructivist frameworks, which emphasize self-directed exploration over guided practice.^[52] DI has also faced accusations of enforcing uniform pacing that disregards individual learner variances in readiness or processing speed, potentially marginalizing slower or advanced students through group-based progression without sufficient differentiation.^[1] Critics maintain this lockstep approach prioritizes coverage over personalization, leading to disengagement among those not aligned with the collective tempo.^[57] The "drill-and-kill" label, popularized in educational discourse and media portrayals, encapsulates broader complaints that DI's repetitive practice and fact-focused drills erode motivation and neglect higher-order skills like critical analysis or creativity.^[58] This narrative, often invoked by opponents in outlets reflecting constructivist biases, frames DI as rote memorization that sacrifices depth for superficial mastery.^[59] Such characterizations persist despite DI's emphasis on cumulative skill-building, with media amplification contributing to its stigmatization in policy debates.^[1]

Rebuttals Based on Data and First Principles

Empirical evaluations, including Project Follow Through—the largest U.S. federal education experiment involving over 70,000 students from 1968 to 1977—demonstrated that Direct Instruction produced the highest academic achievement gains across basic skills, with participating students achieving scores near the national average, outperforming other models like open education and discovery-based approaches.^[1] Subsequent analyses confirmed these results extended to transfer and problem-solving, as Direct Instruction groups showed sustained superior performance in applying skills to novel contexts, countering assertions that it fosters mere rote memorization without generalization.^[1] A meta-analysis of 50 years of research (1966–2016) on Direct Instruction curricula, encompassing over 300 studies, reported an average effect size of d = 0.96 for achievement outcomes, including higher-order thinking, indicating robust evidence against claims of limited applicability to complex cognition.^[2] From causal principles of learning, Direct Instruction aligns with constraints on novice cognition: human skill acquisition builds through sequenced reinforcement of behavioral chains, enabling automaticity and freeing working memory for integration, as novices lack schemas to infer rules from unstructured exploration.^[1] Discovery methods, by contrast, overload cognitive resources in beginners, yielding error-prone paths and minimal retention, a pattern explained by the expertise reversal effect—wherein explicit guidance optimizes low-expertise states but becomes redundant for experts—thus rendering unguided inquiry inefficient for foundational education.^[60] This reversal underscores why behaviorally grounded explicit teaching precedes self-directed application, mirroring evolutionary adaptations where precise environmental cues shape adaptive responses before variability testing. Criticisms of rigidity and student overdependence lack substantiation; controlled studies reveal Direct Instruction learners exhibit strong independent problem-solving post-mastery, with no differential deficits in flexibility compared to alternatives.^[61] Program design incorporates data-driven adaptations, such as error signals and pacing adjustments during scripted delivery, ensuring responsiveness to individual progress without abandoning structure.^[6] Over 50 years, accumulating evidence from randomized controlled trials—totaling hundreds of implementations—consistently affirms efficacy across demographics, yet adoption remains marginal, attributable to entrenched ideological commitments in academia and policy circles favoring constructivist paradigms despite their inferior outcomes in head-to-head comparisons.^[62]^[63] This resistance persists amid systemic biases in educational research institutions, where empirical disconfirmation of preferred methods encounters selective dismissal.^[64]

Implementation Challenges and Broader Impact

Fidelity of Implementation and Teacher Training

Direct Instruction programs require strict adherence to scripted lessons and procedural protocols to achieve intended outcomes, as deviations compromise the explicit, sequenced teaching designed to minimize instructional errors and maximize student responding. Research indicates that implementation fidelity, defined as the degree to which programs are delivered as intended, directly correlates with student achievement; for instance, schools following the full National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) model components demonstrate greater growth in student performance compared to partial implementations.^[65] Low fidelity, often resulting from administrative decisions such as inadequate scheduling or insufficient teacher preparation, has been linked to reduced student progress, with effect sizes ranging from 0.46 in kindergarten reading to 0.81 in second-grade outcomes when teachers lack proper training.^[66] Ongoing coaching and supervision are essential to prevent implementation drift, where teachers gradually deviate from scripts, leading to inconsistent delivery and diminished efficacy. NIFDI, established in 1997 to support DI implementations, provides extensive professional development, including initial training and continuous on-site coaching to ensure teachers master the technical elements of DI delivery.^[67]^[68] Studies confirm that coaching enhances fidelity in DI, with irregular schedules alone reducing average teacher adherence from 85.5% to 76.2%, correlating with an effect size of 0.54 in lower achievement growth.^[66]^[69] Without such support, programs falter, as DI's effectiveness hinges on precise execution rather than teacher improvisation. A key barrier to maintaining fidelity is resistance from educators and teachers' unions to scripted instruction, which is often viewed as eroding professional autonomy and creativity. This opposition has historically impeded DI adoption, with critics arguing that rigid scripting limits teacher judgment, despite evidence that it standardizes high-quality delivery for at-risk students.^[70]^[71] Such resistance contributes to causal failures in implementation, as partial adherence undermines the program's empirical foundation in controlled, error-corrected teaching sequences.^[52]

Adoption in Policy and Schools

In the United States, Direct Instruction (DI) has experienced targeted adoption through mandates in certain urban districts during the 1990s, often as part of broader efforts to address low-performing schools, though implementation varied widely due to local resistance and training demands.^[72] Charter school networks have more consistently embraced DI, with examples including the Advantage Schools system, which reported measurable student achievement gains in reading and math following its rollout across multiple sites in the late 1990s and early 2000s.^[73] Similarly, the IDEA Public Schools network, operating in Texas and other states, integrated DI to reduce special education referrals by enhancing core instruction, attributing improved outcomes to its structured approach amid scalable fidelity.^[74] Federal policy under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), enacted in 2015, prioritized evidence-based interventions for school improvement, creating opportunities for DI's inclusion in state and district plans where programs could demonstrate prior rigorous evaluation, such as through longitudinal studies.^[75]^[76] This shift encouraged alignment with methods backed by experimental data, yet DI's uptake remained uneven, as many districts favored less prescriptive alternatives influenced by prevailing pedagogical norms favoring discovery-based learning over explicit scripting.^[77] Internationally, DI has found footing in Australia via commercial programs distributed by publishers, supporting explicit skill-building in literacy and numeracy despite debates over its fit within broader curriculum frameworks.^[78] In New Zealand, government policy from 2025 mandates structured literacy instruction in state schools, incorporating DI-like explicit teaching of phonics and decoding to counter prior whole-language emphases, reflecting a data-driven pivot amid declining reading scores.^[79] The 2020s have seen renewed advocacy for DI principles within the ongoing "reading wars," where science-of-reading initiatives highlight explicit instruction's role in foundational skills, prompting state-level adoptions and curriculum reviews in places like California and Ohio to prioritize phonics over balanced literacy.^[80] This contrasts with persistent cultural preferences in teacher training and unions for flexible, student-led methods, underscoring how evidentiary support competes with entrenched ideologies in limiting DI's mainstream penetration.^[81]

Causal Factors in Educational Outcomes

Direct Instruction (DI) establishes causation in educational outcomes by prioritizing the sequential mastery of foundational skills, which empirically precedes and enables higher-order cognitive development rather than assuming innate or emergent abilities. Research demonstrates that explicit teaching of prerequisites—such as phonics in reading or arithmetic facts in mathematics—builds automaticity, reducing cognitive load and allowing subsequent application to novel problems.^[1] This contrasts with constructivist approaches, where unguided exploration often fails to instill basics, leading to persistent deficits that hinder advanced reasoning. Meta-analyses confirm DI's effect sizes (e.g., 0.96 for reading) outperform alternatives by ensuring skill hierarchies are addressed directly, with randomized trials showing sustained gains unattributable to selection bias.^[1]^[82] DI's causal impact is most pronounced among disadvantaged and minority students, where achievement gaps stem from uneven prior knowledge rather than inherent disparities. In targeted interventions, explicit phonics and math instruction yielded effect sizes up to 1.0 for low-income and African American learners, closing gaps by 20-30% in early grades through mastery-based progression rather than equity-focused narratives emphasizing systemic barriers alone.^[83]^[84] Programs in high-poverty settings, like those evaluated in Project Follow Through follow-ups, showed minority students outperforming peers in non-DI models by mastering basics that enable self-regulated learning, with gains persisting into adolescence.^[85] This causal chain—skills to comprehension—holds across demographics, as evidenced by Australian Indigenous communities where DI reduced reading lags from two years to near parity within 18 months.^[86] Approaches prioritizing "joyful" or student-led discovery causally undermine outcomes by delaying skill acquisition, particularly for novices lacking scaffolds. Experimental comparisons reveal explicit instruction yields 80-90% success rates in concept mastery versus 20-30% for pure discovery, as the latter fosters misconceptions from incomplete feedback and attribution errors.^[87]^[88] In science tasks, unassisted exploration increased errors by 50%, while DI's modeling and practice ensured transfer, countering assumptions that motivation trumps structure; instead, early failures erode engagement, perpetuating cycles of underachievement.^[89] Long-term effects trace causally from early skill gains to reduced remediation needs and societal costs. DI participants required 40-50% less postsecondary remediation, correlating with higher graduation rates (e.g., 15-20% uplift) and employability, as foundational literacy predicts economic productivity.^[5] Broader ROI estimates, derived from achievement-linked models, project $5-7 returns per dollar invested via lowered crime (e.g., 10-15% delinquency drops from reading proficiency) and welfare dependency, though direct DI-crime links remain inferred from skill-crime gradients in longitudinal data.^[90] These outcomes underscore that instructional fidelity, not inputs like funding, drives variance, with biases in progressive pedagogy—often amplified in academia—obscuring explicit methods' efficacy despite replicated evidence.^[91]

References

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[9]
In His Own Words: Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann Talks about What's ...
Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann devoted his life to developing and refining Direct Instruction (DI), a powerful teaching system that combines logical analysis of the ...Teach More In Less Time · Child Centered Learning · Kids Are Lawful
[10]
Operant Conditioning In Psychology: B.F. Skinner Theory
Oct 17, 2025 · Operant conditioning is a learning process that changes behavior through reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement and punishment: ...
[11]
Engelmann's Theory of Instruction - Psychology Web Server
Engelmann and Carnine argue that a theory of instruction ought to be based upon a scientific analysis.
[12]
[PDF] theory of instruction: principles and applications - ResearchGate
The Engelmann and Carnine theory possesses the most critical attributes of natural science theories: (1) it is exhaustive in that it covers everything from the.
[13]
[PDF] Putting Students on the Path to Learning: The Case for Fully Guided ...
Decades of research clearly demonstrate that for novices(comprising virtu- ally all students), direct, explicit instruction is more effective and more ...
[14]
Introduction to the Special Section on Direct Instruction - NIH
Aug 30, 2021 · Stockard reexamines a recent large meta-analysis of research showing that DI is not only more effective than other educational approaches, but ...
[15]
Education's Disregard for At-Risk Students - Zigsite
Direct Instruction. The equal-opportunity plan had addressed instructional issues principally through Head Start. Title 1 provided additional funds for schools ...
[16]
Timeline of DI Events - National Institute for Direct Instruction
1960s. 1960–1964: Siegfried Engelmann worked in different advertising agencies and began analyzing techniques for marketing to children in order to determine ...
[17]
DI vs. di - National Institute for Direct Instruction
In the 1960's, Zig Engelmann created this explicit, carefully sequenced and scripted model of instruction. Published Direct Instruction programs are based on a ...
[18]
[PDF] Wesley C. Becker, Esquire* - National Institute for Direct Instruction
The ensuing material tries to characterize some of the contributions Wes Becker made to the field of Applied Behavior Analysis and more broadly to the processes ...
[19]
Sage Reference - Becker, Wesley
Becker's contribution to the field of applied behavioral analysis comes in two sizes—what he is recognized for and what he accomplished.
[20]
Project Follow Through - National Institute for Direct Instruction
Over 200,000 children in 178 communities were included in the study, and 22 different models of instruction were compared. ... Siegfried Engelmann, Senior ...Missing: 180 | Show results with:180
[21]
[PDF] Project Follow Through: - Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies |
The results indicated that the Direct Instruction model and, to a lesser degree, the Behavior. Analysis model provided viable solutions to the problem of ...
[22]
Direct Instruction: Reading | Special Connections
This program teaches students learning to read (phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency) and reading to learn (vocabulary and comprehension) skills.
[23]
DISTAR Arithmetic - National Institute for Direct Instruction
The DISTAR Arithmetic programs teach the fundamental skills and concepts of math that are critical for students' success later in school.Missing: phonemic | Show results with:phonemic
[24]
Programs - Firefly Education
Reading Mastery helps students develop into fluent, independent, and highly skilled readers. The program features a highly explicit, systematic instructional ...
[25]
Connecting Math Concepts - National Institute for Direct Instruction
Connecting Math Concepts: Comprehensive Edition is a six-level program (Levels A-F) designed to accelerate the math learning performance of students in grades ...Missing: features | Show results with:features
[26]
[PDF] Special Education and Direct Instruction: An Effective Combination
Studies show Direct Instruction is effective with special education, with over 90% of 45 studies noting positive effects. It is also well-supported by research.
[27]
[PDF] Slavin, Robert E.; Madden, Nancy A. Success for All - ERIC
The primary tool used in SFA for professional development is the JHU consultant/trainer who provides on-site visits to help school-site facilitators refine ...
[28]
Taking Success for All to scale - Kappan Online
A program with a history of raising achievement of at-risk children builds capacity, provides support, and encourages networking.
[29]
Success for All and the Science of Reading
Success for All was developed with the goal of using the best science available to ensure that students have excellent instruction and other essential supports.
[30]
[PDF] Slavin, Robert E.; Madden, Nancy A. Success for All - ERIC
The preschool and kindergarten programs in Success for All emphasize language development, readiness, and self-concept. Preschools and kindergartens use ...
[31]
[PDF] AN INSIDE LOOK AT SUCCESS FOR ALL A Qualitative Study of ...
This section was used to record the extent to which different teaching and learning approaches (e.g., cooperative learning, direct instruction, seatwork, use of.
[32]
Success for All gets kids reading. Why don't more schools use it?
Jul 24, 2025 · A key feature of Success for All's reading instruction, known as cross-grade-level grouping, is also a reason some districts stop using it.
[33]
Effects of Success for All on Reading Achievement - Sage Journals
Oct 27, 2016 · This study examined the effects of the Success for All (SFA) whole-school reform approach on student reading achievement.Missing: criticism fidelity
[34]
Success for All is a Failure - ResearchGate
Aug 6, 2025 · In our observations of SFA in four urban schools, we noted that challenges affected the fidelity with which schools and teachers implemented the ...
[35]
[PDF] DID THE SUCCESS FOR ALL (SFA) MODEL HAVE A POSITIVE ...
The SFA model had a statistically significant positive impact on phonics skills, but not on letter-word identification, fluency, or comprehension. Students ...Missing: modest | Show results with:modest
[36]
Success for All: A Quantitative Synthesis of U.S. Evaluations
Success for All (SFA) is a comprehensive whole-school approach designed to help high-poverty elementary schools increase the reading success of their students.Missing: criticism fidelity
[37]
[PDF] Success for All - Institute of Education Sciences
Success for All (SFA)® is a whole-school reform model that includes a reading, writing, and oral language development program.
[38]
The National Evaluation of Follow Through - Wesley C. Becker, 1978
The Direct Instruction Model is described as the only 'generally effective" model in the areas of basic skills, cognitive skills, and affective outcomes.
[39]
[PDF] THE DIRECT INSTRUCTION FOLLOW THROUGH MODEL
Procedures for teachers, supervisors, administrators, and parents are detailed in implementation and parent coordinator manuals. Components of the Direct ...
[40]
[PDF] Direct Instruction and School Attendance
Jun 30, 2015 · The most extensive evidence comes from the very large Follow Through study, conducted in the 1970s in the United States in a wide range of low ...
[41]
A META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF DIRECT INSTRUCTION ...
A meta-analysis showed that 53% of outcomes significantly favored Direct Instruction, with an average effect of .84 standard deviation units.Missing: needs | Show results with:needs
[42]
[PDF] Evaluating the Efficacy of an English Language Development ... - ERIC
Mar 2, 2022 · This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of. Direct Instruction Spoken English (DISE), an English language curriculum.
[43]
LONGITUDINAL STUDIES OF FOLLOW THROUGH STUDENTS - jstor
This paper presents the results of two studies of the long-term effects of the Direct Instruction ... Outcome data such as graduation/dropout rates, attendance, ...
[44]
Examining the What Works Clearinghouse and Its Reviews of Direct ...
This report provides an analysis of why the conclusions of the WWC regarding DI differ so markedly from the extant scholarly literature.
[45]
[PDF] Direct instruction - ACER Research Repository
According to Hattie's latest research, direct instruction has an effect size of 0.59. Many teachers and teacher educators hold the view that facilitatory ...
[46]
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based ...
[47]
[PDF] Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work
The worked-example effect, which is based on cognitive load theory, occurs when learners required to solve problems perform worse on subsequent test problems.
[48]
Can guidance during play enhance children's learning and ...
Jan 12, 2022 · This systematic review and meta-analysis considered evidence of guided play compared to direct instruction or free play to support children's learning and ...Missing: retention | Show results with:retention
[49]
PROOF POINTS: Two groups of scholars revive the debate over ...
Jan 22, 2024 · Some studies show inquiry is better. Some studies show direct instruction is better. Many show that students learn the same amount either way.
[50]
[PDF] instructionism and constructivism - ERIC
Direct instruction reflects instructionist assumptions -- lessons are teacher-controlled, prescriptive, and focused on observable student achievement outcomes.
[51]
https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/clt/
[52]
Criticisms of Direct Instruction
Apr 24, 2025 · The criticisms have been based on a number of different grounds. Some are fanciful, some shallow, some purely emotional, and many result from ideologically ...
[53]
Direct Instruction Works. So Why Is It Controversial? - Quillette
May 14, 2022 · Direct Instruction offends the way they want education to be. Its effectiveness in raising literacy and numeracy levels for disadvantaged students is secondary.
[54]
The Dilemma of Scripted Instruction: Comparing Teacher Autonomy ...
Aug 9, 2025 · Today, scripted methods such as Direct Instruction and Success for All are condemned for limiting teachers' autonomy and narrowing students' ...
[55]
ERIC - EJ927083 - The Dilemma of Scripted Instruction
Direct Instruction and Success for All teachers express more mixed views of these scripts' effectiveness. Some say that the scripts "work" for their students ...Missing: rigidity | Show results with:rigidity
[56]
[PDF] Why is there so much resistance to Direct Instruction? - AWS
Dec 4, 2014 · Claims that students are taught not to think for themselves because they are so 'brainwashed' into responding only to the teacher's cue imply an ...Missing: overdependence | Show results with:overdependence
[57]
Attitudes toward Direct Instruction in Western Australian primary and ...
Teachers, steeped in a guide by the side approach, regard DI as “drill and kill, its high expectations as developmentally inappropriate, and its emphasis on ...
[58]
'Drill and kill'? English schools turn to scripted lessons to raise ...
Dec 5, 2017 · “Direct instruction is mischaracterised as 'drill and kill' – the idea that you lecture to passive students, that you don't give feedback and ...
[59]
Effective Education Squelched | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
Direct Instruction teachers drill students on lessons (a method education professors sneeringly call “drill and kill”). They reward right answers and ...Missing: criticism | Show results with:criticism
[60]
[PDF] Expertise Reversal Effect and Its Implications for Learner-Tailored ...
Sep 13, 2007 · This paper reviews recent empirical findings associated with the expertise reversal effect, their interpretation within cognitive load theory, ...
[61]
[PDF] The Effect of Direct Instruction Math Curriculum on Higher-Order ...
Jul 15, 2005 · This study attempted to determine the effects of the use of a direct instruction math curriculum on higher-order problem solving. Two groups.
[62]
Direct Instruction: A Half Century of Research Shows Superior Results
Feb 12, 2018 · Direct Instruction significantly raises achievement, is superior to other methods, and has consistently positive results across 50 years of ...
[63]
[PDF] The Role of Direct Instruction - University of Oregon
We identified 549 reports of DI's effectiveness published over a span of 50 years, no doubt the largest body of research about any single instructional program.Missing: RCTs | Show results with:RCTs
[64]
Why does Direct Instruction evoke such rancour?
These criticisms range from “focusing on teacher control” to the “deskilling of teachers” and an opposition to tracking—Direct Instruction programs often use ...<|separator|>
[65]
Implementation - National Institute for Direct Instruction
Many studies have examined the importance of implementing Direct Instruction programs in the ways that they were designed, or implementation fidelity.
[66]
[PDF] The Impact of Administrative Decisions on Implementation Fidelity of ...
This article examined the extent to which administrative decisions that affected the implementation fidelity of Direct. Instruction programs were related to ...
[67]
Training - National Institute for Direct Instruction
The National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI) is the world's foremost Direct Instruction (DI) support provider. This website provides information and ...
[68]
NIFDI's Mission
NIFDI began as the Accelerated Student Achievement Project (ASAP) in 1993. ASAP negotiated with the state of Utah's State Department of Education and the Utah ...
[69]
Using Coaching to Improve the Fidelity of Evidence-Based Practices
In general, coaching improved the extent to which teachers accurately implement evidence-based practices such as ClassWide Peer Tutoring, Direct Instruction, ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[70]
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/016146811111300305
[71]
[PDF] Precision Teaching and Direct Instruction: Measurably superior ...
Like Precision Teaching, Direct Instruction encounters resistance among mainstream educators, often because of its detailed scripting of teacher's behavior ...Missing: union | Show results with:union
[72]
[PDF] Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be ... - ERIC
In only one approach, the Direct Instruction. (DI) model, were participating ... During the 1980s and early 1990s, schools that attempted to use Direct ...
[73]
Student Gains in a Privately Managed Network of Charter Schools ...
This study examined the academic achievement effects of the privately managed network of charter schools, Advantage Schools. Advantage Schools employ Direct ...<|separator|>
[74]
IDEA Public Schools Witness Significant Drop in Special Education ...
The quality of instruction provided to students through the implementation of DI has significantly improved student outcomes and teacher performance. One IDEA ...
[75]
[PDF] EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT - Congress.gov
School improvement. Sec. 1004. Direct student services. Sec. 1005. State plans. Sec. 1006. Local educational agency plans.
[76]
[PDF] Evidence-Based Improvement: - U.S. Department of Education
The law specifies that states are to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of interventions carried out under several federal grant programs (e.g., ESSA,.
[77]
[PDF] Evidence-Based Interventions: A Guide for States Policy Brief
ESSA defines “evidence-based” as an activity, strategy, or intervention ... • focus on deepening teachers' content knowledge and instructional practices;4.
[78]
Direct Instruction | School Textbooks - McGraw Hill Australia
McGraw Hill Australia's Direct Instruction helps teachers to deliver a learning program shown to transform students at all levels into highly accomplished ...
[79]
Why Direct Instruction Works: Insights from Toni Hatten-Roberts
Sep 17, 2025 · From 2025, all state schools in New Zealand must teach reading using an explicit, structured literacy approach – backed by a government drive ...
[80]
Following the science to end the reading wars - Brookings Institution
Dec 7, 2023 · National policies are reflecting the science as they advance curricula and training that should help all children read at grade level.
[81]
Direct Instruction is not a solution for Australian schools
Jul 7, 2014 · It is also used in Australian genre-based approaches to writing that stress the value of “explicit” knowledge of grammar and all textual codes.
[82]
[PDF] Research Syntheses of Direct Instruction Outcomes:
Adams & Engelmann conducted a meta-analysis of the literature on the effectiveness of DI programs in 1996, and analyzed data from 34 research studies that ...
[83]
[PDF] The Effectiveness of Direct Instruction Reading on African American ...
Students who are educationally disadvantaged include those we might suspect: those in poverty, minority race groups, those with disabilities, and English ...
[84]
[PDF] The Impact of Direct Instruction on Reading Achievement in
Aug 9, 2010 · Our results indicate that students in schools with the DI curriculum had significantly greater gains in both reading vocabulary and ...<|separator|>
[85]
Direct Instruction: Its Contributions to High School Achievement - Gale
Instructivist educators were among the first to create programs to improve education for disadvantaged children and their families (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966); ...
[86]
Noel Pearson reveals Direct Instruction's power to close the ...
Jul 5, 2024 · Pearson passionately advocated that DI is the solution to equip children, particularly from disadvantage, with the education necessary to thrive ...
[87]
Instruction versus exploration in science learning
Jun 1, 2004 · Klahr saw three main reasons to challenge discovery learning. First ... direct instruction were able to critically evaluate experiments.
[88]
[PDF] Does Discovery-Based Instruction Enhance Learning?
Nov 15, 2010 · Random effects analyses of 580 compar- isons revealed that outcomes were favorable for explicit instruction when compared with unassisted.
[89]
Preschool Children's Science Learning: Instructional Approaches ...
Based on prior sinking and floating interventions, we hypothesized that children would learn more in the Explicit Instruction condition than in the Discovery ...
[90]
[PDF] Cost-Effectiveness Analysis as a Decision Tool in Selecting and ...
A Note from the Authors: The following report summarizes the results of our investigation into the economic analyses of instructional interventions in literacy.
[91]
Building a More Effective, Equitable, and Compassionate ... - NIH
This article asserts that a strong educational system needs to be part of this transformation and that widespread use of Direct Instruction (DI) could be key ...