Effects Of Direct Instruction Research Articles

Effects of Direct Instruction and Strategy Modeling on Upper-Primary Students' Writing Development.

Strategy-focused instruction is one of the most effective approaches to improve writing skills. It aims to teach developing writers strategies that give them executive control over their writing processes. Programs under this kind of instruction tend to have multiple components that include direct instruction, modeling and scaffolded practice. This multi-component nature has two drawbacks: it makes implementation challenging due to the amount of time and training required to perform each stage, and it is difficult to determine the underlying mechanisms that contribute to its effectiveness. To unpack why strategy-focused instruction is effective, we explored the specific effects of two key components: direct teaching of writing strategies and modeling of strategy use. Six classes (133 students) of upper-primary education were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, in which students received instruction aimed at developing effective strategies for planning and drafting, or control group with no strategy instruction: Direct Instruction (N = 46), Modeling (N = 45), and Control (N = 42). Writing performance was assessed before the intervention and immediately after the intervention with two tasks, one collaborative and the other one individual to explore whether differential effects resulted from students writing alone or in pairs. Writing performance was assessed through reader-based and text-based measures of text quality. Results at post-test showed similar improvement in both intervention conditions, relatively to controls, in all measures and in both the collaborative and the individual task. No statistically significant differences were observed between experimental conditions. These findings suggest that both components, direct teaching and modeling, are equally effective in improving writing skills in upper primary students, and these effects are present even after a short training.

The Effectiveness of Direct Instruction in Teaching Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder to Answer "Wh-" Questions.

Research on the effects of Direct Instruction (DI) among students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has only recently emerged. A benefit of DI is that it can be implemented with groups of students, which makes it potentially a cost effective method of instruction for some skills. In this study, we examined the effects of DI on teaching secondary students with ASD to answer three "wh-" questions. Using a multiple probe design across behaviors, results indicated the participants mastered two of the three "wh-" question types and made progress with the remaining question type. These results are discussed along with implications for educators instructing students with ASD.

The Effects of Direct Instruction Based on Response to Intervention (RTI) on Improving the Computational Abilities of Students with Mathematical Difficulties and Disabilities (MLD)

The Effects of Direct Instruction Based on Response to Intervention (RTI) on Improving the Computational Abilities of Students with Mathematical Difficulties and Disabilities (MLD)

The need for effective writing instruction

Many students with writing difficulties have negligible editing skills at best. Existing research supports that a strategy approach to teaching writing conventions to students with learning disabilities is effective, particularly when the strategies involve mnemonics. Recognizing that classroom teachers are increasingly overburdened, our study offers an alternative setting for academic intervention – the after-school program – and focuses on an intervention utilizing a mnemonic designed to increase the efficacy of the time spent on editing in the writing process. This study investigates the impact of two instructional conditions on participants' editing skills: (1) the effects of direct instruction regarding writing conventions to a combination of direct instruction and (2) a mnemonic writing strategy from Step up to writing. Both approaches produced significant gains (p < .05). However, the combined approach exhibited a larger effect size of d = .77-.84 at post-test, as measured by TOWL-3 Contrived Composite scores.

Effects of Direct Instruction on Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition for Students with Nonverbal Cerebral Palsy

Effects of Direct Instruction on Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition for Students with Nonverbal Cerebral Palsy

Moral Reasoning of Education Students: The Effects of Direct Instruction in Moral Development Theory and Participation in Moral Dilemma Discussion

Background/Context Results of the few studies that have investigated moral reasoning in education students suggest that such reasoning may be less advanced for them than for college students with non–education majors and that education students do not appear to advance in moral reasoning from freshman to senior year. Purpose The purpose of the present study was to test an educational intervention designed to advance moral reasoning scores of undergraduate elementary and secondary education students. Setting The study was conducted in undergraduate classrooms at the University of Nevada, Reno, a Western Land Grant institution. Participants Participants were undergraduate elementary (n = 94) and secondary education majors (n = 98) and undergraduate students majoring in English literature and philosophy (n = 42). Research Design The study was a quasi-experimental design. Data Collection and Analysis Undergraduate education students enrolled in four sections of an introduction to educational psychology course received interventions designed to advance moral reasoning. English and philosophy courses were chosen as control groups. Over a period of 5 weeks, students in the intervention groups were taught moral development theories and participated in online dilemma discussion. An additional 3 weeks were devoted to pretesting and posttesting activities. Results A 2 x 5 mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA; time by group) with repeated measures on time was conducted to analyze pre- and posttest2 DIT P-scores for all five subgroups. Significant increases in mean DIT P-scores were found for the elementary and secondary intervention groups but not for the control groups. Gains in both the elementary and secondary groups were maintained at posttest2 at the end of the semester, but there were no significant differences from posttest1 to posttest2. To determine the effectiveness of hypothetical versus real-life dilemma discussion on moral reasoning, a 2 x 3 mixed ANOVA (time by group) was conducted. The ANOVA main effect for time and the interaction were significant, whereas the main effect for group was not significant. Conclusions/Recommendations Results of the present study support findings of previous studies providing evidence that principled moral reasoning can be advanced by deliberate educational interventions. Future studies should investigate whether gains will be maintained over longer periods of time than a single semester and whether mere gains in moral reasoning scores translate to a broader range of moral behaviors.

Developing elementary science skills: Instructional effectiveness and path independence

We explore the immediate and longer term consequences of different types of instruction about a central topic in middle school science: the “Control of Variables Strategy” (CVS). CVS represents the procedural and conceptual basis for designing simple, unconfounded experiments, such that unambiguous causal inferences can be made. CVS appears to be what has been called a “developmentally-secondary” process, because even though infants and pre-schoolers can make simple causal inferences from data, middle school children do poorly at CVS unless they receive instruction on this important topic in the science curriculum. In this study, 72 third, fourth, and fifth-grade students were taught CVS via two instructional methods located at extreme points on the direct-to-discovery spectrum with respect to the amount of guidance, information, support, teacher control, and feedback provided during training. Our design included near- and far-transfer measures (at 1 week, 3 months and 3 years). There were two primary outcomes, both of which replicated and partially extended earlier work by Klahr and Nigam (2004) [Klahr, D., & Nigam, M. (2004). The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15, 661–667] First, at each of the three grade levels, many more children learned CVS in the explicit condition than in the exploration condition. Second, but equally important, what students learned was a better predictor of far transfer than the way that they learned.

Effects of direct instruction in Spanish phonology on the native-language skills and foreign-language aptitude of at-risk foreign-language learners.

This study examined the effect of an academic year of direct instruction in the phonology/orthography of Spanish on the native-language skills and foreign-language aptitude of high school women identified as at risk (n = 14) and not at risk (n = 19) for experiencing problems with learning a foreign language. At-risk students received a specialized teaching approach; not-at-risk students received traditional foreign-language instruction. Pre- and posttest results showed that both groups improved significantly on a foreign-language aptitude test, and the at-risk group made significant gains on native-language phonology/orthography measures. Pretest comparisons showed significant between-group differences on several phonological/orthographic measures and the foreign-language aptitude test. Posttest comparisons showed that the not-at-risk subjects still scored significantly higher than at-risk subjects on the foreign-language aptitude measure; no differences were noted on two native-language phonological/orthographic measures. Pre- and posttest comparisons between groups showed that the at-risk group made significantly greater gains than the not-at-risk group on phonological/orthographic measures. Implications for instruction are presented.

Effects of Direct Instruction on Ninth Graders' Understanding of Unreliable Narrators

Abstract This study examined the effects of direct instruction in understanding unreliable narrators (narrators whose moral and intellectual qualities call into question their reporting of or judgments on the details of a story) on the think-aloud protocols of 5 successful and 5 less successful ninth-grade readers. The students were selected from the classes of two teachers who provided direct instruction to each of two ninth-grade classes. One successful student and one less successful student who did not receive the instruction also participated in the study. The students made think-aloud protocols, verbal records of everything they thought while reading, on each of two stories both before and after the instruction. The instruction began by having the students generate criteria for evaluating the reliability of narrators and consider how they reconstructed the meaning of a story when a narrator was unreliable. The instructions then asked the students to evaluate the reliability of narrators in a series ...

Some Effects of Direct Instruction in Comprehension Skills with Sixth Grade Students

The Direct Instruction Corrective Reading Program Comprehension B was taught to an experimental group of 31 Year 6 students at the rate of 2 or 3 lessons per week for 8 months. A comparison group of 26 Year 6 students at an associated school were involved in a variety of literacy activities for equivalent periods of time. The ACER Tests of Learning Ability for Year 6 students were administered to all participants as a pre-test and a post-test. Analyses of the post-test data indicated that the experimental group was superior to the comparison group on the three subtests and the total score. Norm-referenced comparisons showed that the experimental group attained above average levels of performance, which contrasted with the average achievements of the comparison group. This differential was interpreted as evidence that the experimental group made educationally significant gains as a result of undertaking Corrective Reading Comprehension B.

Teaching analogical reasoning processes

Abstract Analogical reasoning is a pervasive cognitive process that seeks to compare familiar and unfamiliar information. While available research supports the facilitative effects of analogical reasoning, little work has been done in using instruction to improve children's ability to reason analogically. Two classes of fourth‐ and sixth‐grade average readers participated in a study to examine the effects of direct instruction in analogical reasoning. An instructional procedure based on Sternberg's component processes underlying analogical reasoning was used where children were taught specific steps in working through analogy problems. Instruction was provided in three sequential class sessions utilizing a direct instruction model. The results indicate that the students who participated in the procedure significantly improved in their ability to solve analogies.

Neatness counts: Effects of direct instruction and self-monitoring on the transfer of neat-paper skills to nontraining settings

Abstract A multiple-baseline design across behaviors was used to evaluate the extent to which direct instruction alone and direct instruction plus a self-monitoring checklist are effective in promoting the transfer of “neat-paper” skills to written assignments produced in nontraining settings. Direct instruction on nine skills necessary to produce a neat paper was provided to 15 resource-room students over a period of six weeks. Results indicate that direct instruction alone was generally insufficient to promote the transfer of acquired neat-paper skills to students' written assignments in other academic periods of the day. Introduction of a self-monitoring checklist, however, facilitated this transfer, resulting in pronounced improvement in the neatness of students' papers.

A Comparison of the Effects of Direct Instruction and Remedial English Classes on the Spelling Skills of Secondary Students

Abstract A 2x2 factorial design using 72 Australian Year 7 students (aged 11.50 years to 12.75 years) was employed to determine the relative effects of exposure to Morphographic Spelling and attendance at remedial English classes on children's spelling scores as measured by three independent variables (Schonell Graded Word Spelling Test, Peters’ Dictation Test and Primary Revision Spelling Test). Analysis of covariance procedures were used and the results indicate a strong effect for exposure to the Morphographic Spelling Programme, but with a non‐significant effect for the attendance at remedial English classes.

Preschool Model in an Institutional Setting

AbstractThis paper describes the development over a three year period of a pre-school in an institution for the intellectually handicapped. Most of the children attending are residents, but some are day pupils. We discuss the progress of both in relation to the overall objectives: to create a happy, secure environment where learning can best occur, to develop each personality academically and socially, and to work towards integration into normal society.Against the well-known disadvantages of an institutionalized setting, the length of time available (six hours, five days a week) has allowed considerable extension of the model offered by a university research programme in early intervention. Within this framework we discuss techniques for the establishment of appropriate learning behaviours, and the introduction and effects of Direct Instruction Programmes.The pre-school provides both group and individual programmes through carefully structured classroom management involving teacher, aides, volunteers and where possible, parents. The rate of progress has already allowed the introduction of part-time integration and full time integration of our first two pupils will be achieved in 1982.