Direct Instruction Curriculum Research Articles

The Effects of a Direct Instruction Curriculum Sequence on the Reading Comprehension Responses of Early Readers

Reading comprehension is critical for early learners’ academic success. Derived relations are an important feature of reading comprehension within the science of behavior because reading comprehension involves experientially acquired derived stimulus relations (Helou-Care, 2008; Neves in Behavioral Interventions 38:376–400, 2023, Park, 2005; da Silva in Experimental Analysis of Human Behavior Bulletin 24:1–8, 2006). That is, derived relations pertain to a learner demonstrating comprehension by making untrained connections to previously trained stimuli (e.g., words). For example, a learner who is trained that “kitten” is a type of “cat” and that all “cats meow” should then be able to demonstrate the untrained connection that “kittens meow.” The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the Corrective Reading Comprehension (CR) curriculum, which employs an instructional sequence involving derived relations, on reading comprehension responses entailing derived relations. Four typically developing first-grade students were the participants in this study and the students were divided into two dyads. The principal researcher instructed each dyad on each of the five lessons of CR until mastery was obtained and then conducted postprobes on the dependent measures that were metaphors, derived relations from sentences, derived relations from letters/numbers, and implicit/explicit comprehension questions. The researchers used a delayed multiple probe design across 1st-grade dyads to assess the effect of five CR lessons on derived relations and reading comprehension responses of the participants. Posttest assessments showed gains for all four participants. The article concludes with a discussion of the main findings, implications for future research, and the limitations of this study.

Measuring Explicit Instruction Using Classroom Observations of Student-Teacher Interactions (COSTI).

This article describes the development and technical adequacy of the Classroom Observations of Student Teacher Interactions (COSTI) instrument, a tool for measuring the frequency and rate of explicit instructional interactions, such as those used in Direct Instruction curricula, for teaching children basic reading and math skills. COSTI was originally developed to provide teachers with coaching feedback to improve their explicit reading instructional practices, and has been shown in multiple studies to be a reliable and valid predictor of student gains in beginning reading and math skills. This article discusses potential uses of the instrument for training and coaching across curricula with varying instructional design features, and lays out a future research agenda to further improve COSTI and related observation tools for studying explicit instructional practices and their contribution to student learning.

Pre-service Teachers Identify Connections between Teaching-learning and Literacy Strategies

This study explores the transformation of pre-service teachers in their attainment of effective teaching skills. Pre-service teachers learn about the learning-to-read process and implementations of component skills of teaching reading within the practicum. More importantly, pre-service teachers achieve a meaningful understanding of the declarative, procedural and strategic knowledge of working with struggling readers as well as the merits, utilities and appropriate applications of important literacy skills. Through reflecting, rehearsing, and revising teaching/learning practices, pre-service teachers are able to augment scripted Direct Instruction curriculum to improve student reading performance, and further generate meaningful learning gains that promote sustainability for themselves and their students.

Explicitly teaching English through the air to students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The effects of the Language for Learning curriculum (Engelmann & Osborne, 1999) on through-the-air (i.e., signed and/or spoken) English skills for students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) were examined by means of a single-subject, concurrent-multiple-probes-across-participants design. Four 11-year-old participants varied in auditory access, IQ, and age at amplification and/or cochlear implantation. All students showed increased accuracy of through-the-air English skills after the intervention (i.e., 15-20 lessons) and maintained these skills when assessed 1 week and 1 month later. The findings yielded some promising results indicating that a Direct Instruction curriculum may be an efficacious way to teach morphology and syntax to DHH students.

Effects of Direct Instruction Plus Procedural Facilitation on the Expository Writing of Adolescents with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities in Residential Schools

This study investigated the effects of the Expressive Writing (EW) direct instruction curriculum on the expository writing skills of secondary grade students with serious emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD). The EW program targets writing mechanics, sentence writing, and editing but does not include pre-writing writing instruction. Thus, we investigated the effects of adding a pre-writing procedural facilitator (PF) with EW . Using a repeated-measures quasi-experimental design, we matched and randomly assigned twenty-nine secondary grade students with EBD to one of two treatment groups (1) EW alone or (2) EW plus PF. Students received 11 consecutive weeks of daily 50-min instruction. We employed hierarchical growth modeling to analyze nearly 1500 permanent products. Results indicated statistically significant intra-individual writing growth regardless of treatment group. Moreover, the EW plus PF group exhibited faster linear growth ( p = .055) across the duration of the intervention.

Further Evidence of the Effectiveness of Phonological Instruction with Oral-Deaf Readers

The effectiveness of phonological instruction with 6 deaf students in an oral program was investigated. In a previous investigation (Syverud, Guardino, & Selznick, 2009), promising results had been obtained in a case study in which the Direct Instruction curriculum titled Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Engelmann, Haddox, & Bruner, 1983) was used with an oral-deaf child. Given these results, Syverud and Guardino were asked to replicate the procedures with additional struggling readers. A multiple case study design was implemented for a period of 10 weeks. Tests of nonsense words were administered to monitor weekly progress in phonological decoding. Intervention journals were completed for each tutoring session to provide qualitative information. Although the results were mixed, all 6 participants showed gains in phonological decoding skills. Suggestions for both practitioners and researchers are offered.

Teaching Phonological Skills to a Deaf First Grader: A Promising Strategy

The researchers analyzed the effectiveness of teaching phonological skills to a deaf child using the Direct Instruction curriculum titled Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Engelmann, Haddox, & Bruner, 1983). There are few studies that support the use of phonological interventions with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The present study extends this research base. The study participant was a 7-year-old male first grader with moderate-to-severe mixed bilateral progressive hearing loss. A case study design was implemented for a period of 8 weeks. Detailed journal entries and tests of nonsense words were used to track participant progress. Results indicate that the participant's phonological decoding skills improved. Implications for practitioners and future research are addressed.

Effects of a Reading Intervention for Kindergarten Students at Risk for Emotional Disturbance and Reading Deficits

Although students with or at risk for emotional disturbance present significant academic challenges, few researchers have studied the outcomes of interventions designed to improve the reading skills of this population. In this study we assessed the outcomes of a supplemental daily Direct Instruction reading curriculum, Reading Mastery I., and fluency building program, Great Leaps, on the reading skills of students at risk for emotional disturbance and reading deficits. Over a period of 7 months, 6 students received a supplementary reading intervention and 12 students (6 control at-risk and 6 norm-referencing students without disabilities) received their regular classroom instruction. Curriculum-based measures assessing early phonemic awareness and basic reading skills (i.e., letter sounds, blends, and high-frequency sight words) were collected biweekly to assess student performance. The results of this study revealed that at-risk students receiving the Direct Instruction curriculum intervention met or outperformed their control at-risk and norm-referencing peers in all three reading measures. Implications of these findings and areas of future research are discussed.

The high/scope preschool curriculum comparison study through age 23

This study assesses the relative effects through age 23 on young participants born in poverty of the High/Scope, Direct Instruction, and traditional Nursery School preschool curriculum models. At ages 3 and 4, 68 children were randomly assigned to the models, which were implemented independently and to high standards, in 2 1 2 -hour classes 5 days a week and biweekly 1 1 2 -hour home visits. For a decade, virtually no curriculum group differences in intellectual and academic performance were found. In many areas, no statistically significant differences were found at age 15 or at age 23; however, a pattern of group differences in community behavior did emerge at age 15 and became more pronounced at age 23. At age 15 the Direct Instruction group reported committing 2 1 2 times as many acts of misconduct as the High/Scope group. At age 23, compared to the other curriculum groups, the Direct Instruction group had three times as many felony arrests per person, especially those involving property crimes; 47% of the Direct Instruction group was treated for emotional impairment or disturbance during their schooling, as compared to only 6% of either of the other curriculum groups. These results are attributed to the emphasis on planning, social reasoning, and other social objectives in the High/Scope curriculum and the Nursery School curriculum, but not in the Direct Instruction curriculum. The results of this study do not consistently distinguish between the long-term effectiveness of the High/Scope and traditional Nursery School currculums, but the High/Scope curriculum model is more readily replicated because of its more precise definition. These findings argue against using Direct Instruction in preschool programs and for using a well-defined curriculum model based on child-initiated learning activities.

Teaching Complex Content to Learning Disabled Students: The Role of Technology

A program of research has combined the effectiveness of Direct Instruction curriculum design and mastery learning with the efficiency of technology to teach more cognitively complex skills. This article explains one example of this comprehensive intervention in detail. Findings from several studies are briefly reviewed. The purpose of this article is to document how such a comprehensive intervention reduces performance differences between students with learning disabilities and their peers, while using technology to minimize, or even reduce, the demands placed on the teacher.