direct instruction and indigenous education (version 5)

I've published an annotated contents page of my research outline at the learning evolves wiki. This has chewed up a lot of thought and time since I had hundreds of bits of paper with rough notes that had to be organised into something coherent. Well, sort of coherent. With this version I think I'm ready to look for a supervisor, to bounce ideas off, and it will provide a more focused guide to future reading / study.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL (version 5)
DIRECT INSTRUCTION AND INDIGENOUS EDUCATION: FROM THE INSIDE OUT

ambiguity is deeply writ

AMBIGUITY IS WRITTEN DEEPLY INTO KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES

What puzzles me most about Direct Instruction is that it is good practice but poor theory. Part of what I mean follows.

Zig Engelmann starts with the great idea that instruction should be tidied up and made very clear but then takes that too far into the claim that in general instruction can be made unambiguous, “I didn't realise how radical the single interpretation principle was ...” (Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System, p. 3)

We can strive for clearer instruction, that is a worthy goal, but it is not possible to achieve unambiguous instruction.

For example, when teaching the subtraction sixty two minus fifty seven (62 – 57), the DI teacher asks the students “Can we subtract 7 from 2” and the students are taught to say “No”. They then go onto rearrange 62 into 50 + 12 so as to be able solve the problem. This is good teaching, but there are other ways to solve it as well. Two take seven equals -5. Sixty take fifty equals 10. Ten – five = 5.

My aim here is not to improve DI by making it more complicated. DI works, in part, because it simplifies things. I don't deny that. But the complexity and multiple pathways are written deep into the knowledge domain of mathematics. The claim of unambiguous instruction fails. We can subtract 7 from 2. The answer is not "No". Many more examples of such oversights in DI scripts can be cited.

This is not against DI as such (which in certain contexts works better than anything else in my experience) but against the over simplified arguments often presented by advocates of DI. The idea that data provides the ultimate scientific certainty is mistaken because it is impossible to separate out data from concepts developed internally in the mind. Ambiguity is written into educational theory as well as practice.

These observations are presented here as a stepping stone towards developing a better theory of why DI often works than the unsatisfactory theory (uncritical acceptance of JS Mill's Logic) developed by Zig Engelmann and Doug Carnine.

I speculate further that this seems to tie into a critique of JS Mill, initiated by John Dewey and further developed by Hilary Putnam. JS Mill thought that a perfected science of individual psychology would be able to deliver social laws to solve social problems. This reminds me of the Zig Engelmann cult, which promotes him as the one true educational visionary amongst a sea of deceivers:

"Like Copernicus, who proofs were rejected by the church for 300 years, Engelmann remains a scorned revolutionary, anathema or simply unknown to most people in the field"
- Barbash, p. 8

I can't go along with the way that Piaget, Bruner and Dewey are rubbished in this cult war. I think they have all made valuable contributions to educational theory. Some positives, some negatives, some ambiguities. There is not one true way.

These thoughts were crystallised in thinking about these comments from Hilary Putnam about empiricism:

“Empiricism … thinks that the general form of scientific data, indeed of all empirical data, can be known a priori – even if it doesn't say so in so many words! From Locke, Berkeley, and Hume down to Ernst Mach, empiricists held that all empirical data consists of “sensations”, conceived of as an unconceptualised given against which putative knowledge claims can be checked. Against this view William James had already insisted that while all perceptual experience has both conceptual and non conceptual aspects, the attempt to divide any experience which is a recognition of something into parts is futile: “Sensations and apperceptive idea fuse here so intimately [in a 'presented and recognised material object'] that you can no more tell where one begins and the other ends, than you can tell, in those cunning circular panoramas that have lately been exhibited, where the real foreground and the painted canvas join together” (quoted in Dewey's Ethics, p. 273). Dewey continued the line of thought that James had begun, insists that by creating new observation concepts we “institute” new data. Modern physics (and of course not only physics) has richly born him out. A scientist may speak of observing a proton colliding with a nucleus, or of observing a virus with the aid of an electron microscope, or of observing genes or black holes, and so forth. Neither the form of possible explanation nor the form of possible data can be fixed in advance, once and for all...

Among the classic empiricist thinkers, the most famous ones to call before John Dewey did for the application of scientific research to the problems of society were Mill and Comte. But Comte reverted to meritocracy. He visualised handling social problems over to savants, social scientific intellectuals, a move which falls under Dewey's criticism of the idea of a 'benevolent despot'.

It might seem that this same criticism cannot be voiced against Mill, who, as much as Dewey was to do, valued active participation in all aspects of the democratic process. But as far as the application of social scientific knowledge to social problems is concerned, what Mill called for was the development of a perfected science of individual psychology, from which he thought … we would be able to derive social laws (via the hoped for reduction of sociology to psychology) which could then be applied to particular social problems. This entire program, as most would concede today, is a misguided fantasy
- Ethics without Ontology, pp. 98-100

Further reading will be required to get the bottom of this: Barbash, Shepard. Clear Teaching: With Direct Instruction, Siegrried Engelmann Discovered a Better Way of Teaching (2012)
Dewey Logic
Dewey Ethics
Dewey The Quest for Certainty
Engelmann, Zig. Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System: 42 Years of Trying (2007)
Engelmann, Zig and Carnine, Douglas. Could John Stuart Mill have saved our schools? (2011)
Jame, William. Radical Empiricism?
Mill JS A System of Logic
Putnam, Hilary. Ethics without Ontology
Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

natural selection and Direct Instruction

Now for a pithy one liner which also happens to support Direct Instruction:

"Before there can be comprehension, there has to be competence without comprehension"
Dan Dennett, Intuition Pumps and other tools for thinking (2013), p. 105

Comprehension is a latecomer to the evolutionary process.

"Bacteria have all sorts of remarkable competences that they need not understand at all; their competences serve them well, but they themselves are clueless. Trees have competences whose exercise provides benefits to them, but they don't need to know why. The process of natural selection itself is famously competent, a generator of designs of outstanding ingenuity and efficacy, without a shred of comprehension.

Comprehension of the kind we human adults enjoy is a very recent phenomenon on the evolutionary scene, and it has to be composed of structures whose competence is accompanied by, enabled by, a minimal sort of semi-comprehension, or pseudo-comprehension - the kind of (hemi-semi-demi-) comprehension enjoyed by fish or worms. These structures are designed to behave appropriately most of the time, without having to know why their behaviour is appropriate."
- p. 105

Compare with my pithy one liner which critiques Direct Instruction:

"In Direct Instruction there is no script for those who depart from the script or who desire to write their own script"
- fork in the road options and Direct Instruction

You can't begin to write your own script until you have achieved at least a basic competence in whatever domain you are attempting to master.

The genuine refutation

"The genuine refutation must penetrate the opponent's stronghold and meet him on his own ground; no advantage is gained by attacking him somewhere else and defeating him where he is not"
- GWF Hegel, Science of Logic: Subjective Logic or The Doctrine of the Notion

Both the critics and supporters of Direct Instruction do not refute from within the others respective strongholds. That is why this quote has been playing on my mind for sometime.

fork in the road options and Direct Instruction

An attempt at a pithy critique of Direct Instruction:

In Direct Instruction there is no script for those who depart from the script or who desire to write their own script.

I'd rather be a Robert or a Lauren, than an Alice.

Alice in Wonderland

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.”
- Lewis Carroll

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

Is Diane Ravitch missing something?

Diane Ravitch is a highly respected education commentator and historian in the USA. She initially supported "No Child Left Behind" but later reversed her position.

High-stakes testing, "utopian" goals, "draconian" penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn't work, she concluded. "The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers." (Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform)

I noticed a couple of books she has written which are very relevant to my research (research update here). I have just ordered her most recent book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. It contains chapters on test scores (both local to the USA and international comparisons such as PISA), the achievement gap, poverty, merit pay, teacher tenure, Teach for America and Michelle Rhee. The gloves are off, it's education war in the USA.

This made me curious about her attitude to Direct Instruction, so I did an advanced search of her blog using that phrase, "Direct Instruction" site:http://dianeravitch.net/. It appears that Diane doesn't write much about Direct Instruction but she does publish opponents of DI, such as Stephen Krashen, on her blog.

But what I found most interesting was that a supporter of DI, with the moniker Eded, challenged Stephen Krashen and IMO Prof Krashen did not provide an adequate response. Here is the exchange, including the original Stephen Krashen material initially posted by Diane Ravitch, A Literacy Expert Opposes the Common Core Standards

Stephen Krashen is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, where he taught linguistics.

He comments here in response to an earlier post about the Common Core standards:

What this excessive detail also does is
(1) dictate the order of presentation of aspects of literacy
(2) encourage a direct teaching, skill-building approach to teaching.

Both of these consequences run counter to a massive amount of research and experience.

There is very good evidence from both first and second language acquisition that aspects of language and literacy are naturally acquired in a specific order that cannot be altered by instruction (C. Chomsky, 1969, The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10. Cambridge: MIT Press; Krashen, S. 1981, Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, Pergamon Press, available at http://www.sdkrashen.com).

There is also very good evidence that we acquire language and literacy best not through direct instruction but via “comprehensible input” – for literacy, this means reading, especially reading that the reader finds truly interesting, or “compelling.” (Krashen, S. 2010.The Goodman/Smith Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, the Comprehension Hypothesis, and the (Even Stronger) Case for Free Voluntary Reading. In: Defying Convention, Inventing the Future in Literacy Research and Practice: Essays in Tribute to Ken and Yetta Goodman. P. Anders (Ed.) New York: Routledge. 2010. pp. 46-60. Available at http://www.sdkrashen.com)

Now here is the exchange between Eded and Prof. Krashen in the comments:

Eded
December 27, 2012 at 12:24 am
Regarding the second point, I’m not aware of any research to suggest that direct instruction is counter to research.

skrashen
Please have a look at papers at http://www.sdkrashen.com, my books, as well as the work of Frank Smith, Kenneth Goodman and others.

EdEd
Dr. Krashen – thanks very much for posting the link to your website in response to my comment earlier. I have reviewed a few of your articles, and unfortunately I’m not seeing any research demonstrating that direct instruction is ineffective. I do see arguments presented, with some research, that motivation is important when learning to read, along with opportunities to meaningfully engage with reading. However, I haven’t seen any studies which contradict the massive body of evidence supporting direct instruction in the “Big 5″ areas of reading (see http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/ for a good list of research).

Could you perhaps provide a reference to a research article which specifically examines direct instruction vs. non-direct instruction instructional methods, and shows a greater impact of non-direct instruction methods on general reading outcomes (e.g., measures of reading fluency, comprehension)? It may be more helpful to evaluate your claims more specifically, rather than talk in broad generalities.

To the general public reading, I would highly encourage you to view the research link above and draw your own conclusions regarding direct instruction, as Dr. Krashen (and apparently Dr. Ravitch) are in the extreme minority when it comes to perceptions regarding the literature base of direct instruction.

skrashen
Please keep looking. Many of us have published research showing the extreme limitations of direct instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, grammar, in direct response to the claims of the big 5 and National Reading Panel, and supporting the hypothesis that PA,phonics, vocabulary, grammar and competence in text structure are the result of reading (especially self-selected reading). Much of it is summarized in one place: Please see Comments on the LEARN Act, http://www.sdkrashen.com/index.php?cat=4. (A lot of it has been published in major journals, eg Phi Delta Kappan, Reading Research Quarterly, Garan’s papers in Language Arts, Kappan.)

EdEd
Thanks for your response Dr. Krashen. Certainly one of the difficult aspects of this discussion is that it’s so broad. It’s not very easy to making sweeping generalizations about broad categories of interventions, as any particular side can start pointing at particular niches in the research, or studies within those niches, to prove points.

As such, I’ll respond to your comments on the LEARN Act specifically related to Phonemic Awareness (PA). Your main citation is a review of studies cited by the NRP about phonemic awareness, where you cite an insignificant effect of PA training on reading comprehension. In response, I’d direct you to this meta-analysis which shows a moderate effect size for PA on reading skills, and a large effect size for PA training on phonemic awareness skills:

http://nichcy.org/research/summaries/abstract53

I’d also point out a limitation of the parameters of your meta-analysis:

You only examine the effect of PA training on reading comprehension, as opposed to more component skills such as decoding, word reading, and reading fluency. It is entirely possible that PA training would have little or no direct impact on reading comprehension in later years of a child’s educational career, but have a more significant impact on more basic, foundational skills such as decoding. As such, it may be that phonemic awareness training is not sufficient in producing effects related to reading comprehension, and perhaps not even necessary with some (or many) kids, but it may nevertheless be a necessary component for some struggling readers in terms of acquiring beginning reading skills. As such, citing evidence that PA instruction fails to single-handedly produce long-term reading gains is not evidence that PA training is unnecessary.

Consider this analogy: a beginning swimmer receives instruction on how to breathe properly, but receives no additional swimming instruction. Is breathing instruction sufficient to producing good swimmers? No. Do all good swimmers breathe well? Mostly. Did all good swimmers learn, through explicit instruction, to breathe properly? No. Is any of this evidence that explicit instruction related to breathing properly is unnecessary or unhelpful to beginning swimmers, particularly those who struggle with breathing? Absolutely not. In fact, instruction on breathing may be absolutely critical to swimming, but may show little if any effect on a swimmer’s ability to swim a 500 meter butterfly stroke fluently, as beginning breathing is not sufficient to produce those gains.

As I mentioned before, it’s very difficult to discuss in blog comments a topic so wide as “direct instruction.” As such, my main point here is not to debunk your entire statement that there is no support for direct instruction as such a discussion would have to be much larger. Rather, my point is to highlight to other readers that your assertions (and Diane’s assertions) about direct instruction are not “givens” in research, that most folks do support the use of direct instruction, and that your research links/comments are not without challenge.

I’d also like to add a note of thanks for your willingness to engage in discussion on this blog – too often there is a gap between research and practice, and your willingness to engage in discussion with the “average reader” is a testament to your desire for research to be actually used rather than simply created. I’d also welcome follow-up comments and challenges, as I think those reading this blog post would be most informed by a more specific discussion of the research, as opposed to general statements about broad categories of interventions.

skrashen
The failure to find a clear relationship between PA training and reading (reading comprehension) is consistent with the meta-analysis you cited. Also, there are other arguments, eg: some people learn to read quite well with very little PA, PA develops without instruction, adult illiterates have low PA, then their PA improves after they learn to read. Also we have to ask how millions of people learned to read before experts “discovered” PA. (We have made similar arguments for PA in second language development,Krashen, S. and Hastings, A. 2011. Is Phonemic Awareness Training Necessary in Second Language Literacy Development? Is it Even Useful? International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 7(1). Available at ijflt.com)

EdEd
Again, PA training may not have a significant, direct impact on the general outcome of reading comprehension, but may have an impact on component, foundation skills such as word reading. Simply because an intervention is not sufficient in producing a general outcome does not mean that it isn’t a helpful component. There has been a causal link established between PA training and development of word reading skills, between word reading skills and reading fluency, and between reading fluency and reading comprehension. As such, it appears that PA training is mediated by variables such as word reading and reading fluency, and thus does have an impact on reading comprehension, if only indirectly.

With your “other route” concept – that some people learn to read quite well without PA training, consider mapping directions from your house to the mall. There are likely multiple routes, and the existence of one route does not imply the lack of existence of all others. You might take the highway, or the back roads. Those supporting PA training are not claiming that PA training is the only way to become a proficient reader, but that it is one route, particularly for struggling readers. In fact, it’s a common assertion that MANY readers do not require direct, explicit instruction in PA, phonics, etc., and that other, informal processes are at play.

In terms of PA developing without instruction, consider the case of a diabetic not producing insulin. The fact that many healthy people produce sufficient insulin is not evidence that diabetics do not. Similarly, that some children develop PA in a healthy manner is not evidence that other children do not.

In terms of PA developing as a result of other reading processes developing, I agree that there is not necessarily a unidirectional influence of PA (or many reading variables). For example, phonics instruction contributes to PA. However, that phonics instruction contributes to PA is not evidence that PA training does NOT contribute to phonics skills.

Again, bringing this discussion back to a point of relevance to this blog post, my hope is that those reading this discussion will not take for granted Diane’s comment that direct instruction “run[s] counter to a massive amount of research and experience.”

skrashen
Credit/blame where credit/blame is due: the comment that direct instruction “run[s] counter to a massive amount of research and experience” comes from me, not Diane Ravitch.

Eded
Ah, I apologize – I was reading what I thought was her interpretation. Again, I’ve enjoyed the discussion. Looking forward to more exchanged in the future hopefully…

skrashen
RE: PA, may have an impact on component, foundation skills such as word reading. Maybe word reading is not foundation skill but also a result of reading experience. (The comprehension hypothesis).

Eded
I think I understand you theoretically, but how do you make sense of evidence that phonics instruction improves word reading, that better word reading results in better fluency with connected text, and that fluency with connected text is what (in part) enables comprehension?

skrashen
Complex phonics, word reading, fluency are all the RESULT of real reading for comprehension.

EdEd
Dr. Krashen, in response to your last comment in our discussion above about phonics, word reading, and fluency being the result of comprehension as opposed to building toward comprehension, I’d again return to my “multiple pathways” comment: Some if not many children do not require explicit phonics (or other) instruction to read fluently and comprehend – they may independently acquire those skills, facilitated in part by being provided motivational and engaging reading contexts. However, with struggling readers (and others as well), research has suggested that explicit instruction in foundational reading skill areas (e.g., phonics) can lead to acquisition of more advanced skills such as reading fluency.

In other words, we both seem to be right, in that kids seem to be able to learn to read with both direct instruction and non-direct instruction. The question then becomes which modality to use in different situations, which would be directly answerable by research investigating the differential effects of DI vs. non-DI approaches in different instructional contexts. I am familiar with a variety of studies which support DI in across contexts, and am not familiar with any studies which examine DI and non-DI approaches side-by-side, and find greater effects for non-DI approaches. Could you provide any links to studies that would suggest favorable results for non-DI approaches over DI approaches?

Stephen Krashen
December 27, 2012 at 9:09 pm EdEd to avoid clogging up Diane’s blog, please write me off line and I will send you some sources and papers. My email: skrashen@yahoo.com.

Reading wars morph into research wars and it's hard to keep track of it all. But I thought that Eded had the better of this exchange, with Stephen copping out at the end. From my reading of the evidence it does favour Direct Instruction over the Whole Language views of Stephen Krashen. For instance see Kerry Hempenstall's essay, Literacy assessment based upon the National Reading Panel’s Big Five components (long, 46pp), for a very thorough review of the evidence.

Diane Ravitch's position is that poverty trumps teaching methodology. That is a powerful argument but we can't put on hold better education until the poverty question is solved. The education establishment and teacher unions have a duty to study the evidence and deliver the best possible education to poor students in the here and now.

Direct Instruction may spread throughout disadvantaged Australian schools

It's happening. The Direct Instruction educational methodology initiated by Noel Pearson in some Cape York indigenous schools will be spread to other disadvantaged schools throughout Australia by the Abbott government.

Some extracts from the article in today's Australian, (the link is behind a pay wall), Noel Pearson's Cape plan can help all disadvantaged kids by Patricia Karvelas, with some questioning footnotes by me.

THE radical direct instruction teaching model has transformed education in Cape York communities and could benefit disadvantaged children across the country, says the parliamentary secretary charged with helping Tony Abbott deliver his indigenous affairs agenda.

Victorian MP Alan Tudge, who has just completed a trip to the Cape York community of Aurukun, where direct instruction is operating, says although formal data is inconclusive (1), he was overwhelmed by the difference he saw at the schools.

The Prime Minister has approached Cape York indigenous leader Noel Pearson to review the education of all disadvantaged and impoverished children and explore rolling out the direct instruction teaching model in schools across the nation...

"School attendance has improved markedly and kids are clearly engaged and learning," Mr Tudge said. "While the formal evaluation, released two months ago, was inconclusive due to lack of data (1), there is certainly great optimism by many about the direct instruction method coupled with strong attendance measures." ...

Mr Tudge said the government would commit $22 million to support "proven explicit teaching methods" into other schools. "We are also absolutely determined to ensure that school attendance is improved," he said. "We need to do things differently because there are systemic breakdowns in many places where kids are years behind or functionally illiterate when finishing primary school.

"It starts with attendance; no child will keep up if they are only attending half the time. In the Northern Territory, only 13 per cent of remote indigenous kids are attending 80 per cent of the time (2)"

Mr Tudge said research suggested explicit, phonics-based teaching methods were necessary for children who were behind or struggling. "The strength of the direct instruction model is that it appears to be a system that can be replicated and is not reliant on a single brilliant individual or team to make it work (3)," he said.

Mr Pearson said that when the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy was set up in 2010, the three schools involved were among Queensland's most disadvantaged "but one of them, Aurukun, was undoubtedly the worst school in Queensland".

"Our goal was to turn these poor schools into fair schools," Mr Pearson said. "And then we want to turn fair schools into good schools. And after than we want good schools to become great schools (4). I am very confident after three years that Aurukun is now a fair school. That means if you send your child to that school, your child will receive the education he or she deserves.

(1) If formal data is inconclusive then that is a big worry. Alan Tudge's feeling about being overwhelmed at the differences he has seen is unfortunately not good enough. The history of educational reform is that new methods have been used, sometimes for decades without clear evidence that they work. The research base for effective teaching does need to be clear.

(2) Getting kids to attend remote indigenous schools is a major problem. As well as having good schools that are worth attending (the pull factor) the problem of having parents being committed to send their kids to school is just as important (the push factor). The way this is being tackled in Cape York is through the Family Responsibility Commission. See Catherine Ford's brilliant Great Expectations essay for more details about how problematic this issue is.

(3) I agree strongly with this point. Other methods might work but they don't scale to mass delivery because of their complexity and / or reliance on a brilliant or inspirational teacher.

(4) While agreeing that Direct Instruction (and MULTILIT) is great teaching the basics I'm wondering if Noel Pearson is thinking that other methodologies may be also required to make the transition from fair to good to great. This would be consistent with the dialectical "radical centre" thinking articulated in some of his essays.

Update (13th November): Evaluation of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy Initiative for Department of Education Training and Employment Queensland. Prepared by Australian Council for Educational Research, June 2013 (pdf, 93pp)

Direct Instruction criticised by Chris Sarra

DEFYING EXPECTATIONS (Adelaide Festival of Ideas, October 20th)

I attended the presentation by Chris Sarra, Principal Cherbourg State School, 1998-2005 and Andrew Plastow, Principal Alberton Primary School. I knew of Chris Sarra as a successful Principal of Cherbourg School (3 hours drive from Brisbane) as well as an indigenous opponent of Noel Pearson. They have clashed in print a few times.

Chris explained his Strong and Smart philosophy. Be proud to be indigenous. Don't collude with negative stereotypes of what it means to be aboriginal. Reject the flawed notion that being educated means you will lose your identity.

During my time as Principal at Cherbourg State School, from 1998-2005, the attendance improved from 65% to 95%.

He then launched into an attack on Noel Pearson's approach, without naming him.

We didn't cut welfare payments to make that happen. I'll repeat that, we didn't cut welfare payments to make that happen.

(audience applause)

Direct Instruction (DI) was written off 40 years ago by expert educators. It was developed by some old guy in America. The pedagogy takes us back to the 1940s and 50s.

Andrew Plastow intervened:

DI is back to the basics. As someone said to me wise people have now developed robots to do the basics. It's not appropriate for our modern times.

Back to Chris Sarra:

It's claimed that older aboriginal people did achieve literacy (through basic Mission education. And that's true. But it was literacy of the type used by farm hands and domestics. It wasn't powerful literacy.

Chris Sarra was nuanced and articulate on his broader reflections on indigenous identity, NAPLAN and aboriginal culture. By contrast his unprovoked attack on Direct Instruction was ill informed, intemperate and predjudicial ("developed by some old guy in America"). I gained the strong impression that it wasn't something that either speaker had looked into closely. It confirmed my general thesis (DI indigenous memes) that people reject Direct Instruction because of their general world view, not because they have looked at it in any detail. Their general world view prevents them from doing that.

Update (21st October):

Here are some of the memes which were warmly supported by the audience:

Harmonious progress meme ("We didn't cut welfare payments to make that happen"). This appeals to the non punitive, non confrontational method of achieving progress. Tough love without being too tough. I don't believe that Chris Sarra would avert his eyes from the ugliness of alcohol fuelled violence, child neglect and child abuse. In fact, he referred to it towards the end of his presentation. Nevertheless, many in the audience want to avert their eyes from it. To understand the work and problems facing the Noel Pearson inspired Family Responsibility Commission read this wonderful article by Catherine Ford: Great Expectations (The Monthly, November 2012)

White guilt meme. Most of the audience were white "progressives" who like the idea that this issue can be dealt with adequately by competent indigenous people like Chris Sarra in a way that is not disruptive to their own comfortable life style or thinking patterns. There is a below the surface trade off in play here. Chris Sarra gains authority; the progressive white audience has their white guilt assuaged about this national tragedy. For a white person to stand up and critically assess Chris Sarra's contribution in front of this "progressive" audience would be like spitting in church.

Anti American meme (Direct Instruction was ... "developed by some old guy in America"). Progressives respond instinctively and positively to this reflexive anti Americanism.

Progress meme. Direct Instruction was developed by an "old guy" and is "robotic". Something as old as Skinner type behaviourism can't be a progressive thing. In the modern world there must be a more progressive way to educate. Reality check: "DI works", see Direct Instruction: observations at Djarragun college

Footnotes:

Three extracts from my delicious Chris Sarra links:
Noel Pearson (2009):

"The problem with Chris' thinking is he thinks it (truancy) is all a question of child choice," he said. ... "Many children want to be in school but their parents haven't fulfilled their part of the bargain, which is a good night's sleep for the kid, a safe house for the kid, breakfast and uniforms for the kid

Chris Sarra stretches the gap on credibility by Janet Albrechtsen (2012)
Chris Sarra: all motherhood but no data, a damning analysis comparing SSI with DI (full article behind a paywall)

Relevant (2011):

"I'm not interested in stories about how well your education plans are going. I want to see your data that shows how effectively you have advanced the children's learning. The first thing you should show at a meeting like this is the evidence that shows the effect of what you're doing. If your effect size is less than 0.4 then you should pack up because you're not having a worthwhile impact on the children's learning."
- John Hattie

Direct Instruction Indigenous Meme Warfare

I've uploaded the outline of this research proposal at the learning evolves wiki: DI_indigenous_memes

DIRECT INSTRUCTION FOR INDIGENOUS STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY IN MEME WARFARE (RESEARCH PROPOSAL)

CONTEXT: appalling basic literacy and numeracy rates amongst indigenous Australians, especially those who live in remote regions.

PERCEPTION: We literally see the world according to the memes in our minds

The Direct Instruction (DI) approach is a good attempt to solve a number of practical problems that arise for teachers of severely disadvantaged students who have poor skills at reading, writing and comprehending English and Maths.

HYPOTHESIS: Many can't see the value of DI because of the synergistic influence of a plethora of mind memes which act as blinkers and filters to influence their perception. The rejection of DI is not based on research or science as is claimed but results from a deep, internally coherent world view. ie. the rejection of DI is more part of a cultural, psychological, philosophical and political world view and not scientific as is usually claimed.

The memes are grouped under various subheadings: (1) culture, (2) rights, morality, compassion, justice (3) social class, (4) "real learning", (5) creativity, (6) philosophy, (7) institutionalised inertia and (8) computer lib. The identified memes are often associated with a "progressive" world view / education and form a large part of the cultural background of "progressives". It will be argued that some of these memes are refutable, some of them are valid in a more general sense but not in the particular context being discussed (basic education of severely at risk students) and some are more or less correct and should contribute to the educational environment that ought to be developed. However, when combined together synergistically these memes are likely to evoke a critical response to DI in any context and act to block its possible implementation. The critical response is often emotionally charged, that is, part of a culture war.

WHERE IS THE ARGUMENT HEADING?

Try to imagine the process involved in changing from the anti DI mindset to a pro DI mindset, or vice versa for that matter.

Discussion points arising -

Self awareness and self examination of one's own deeply held biases or beliefs is a difficult process

When people argue that science or evidence supports their viewpoint what does this mean? This requires not only looking at the evidence but also looking at the model of science that is being evoked here

In a few of his essays Noel Pearson outlines the dialectical concept of the radical centre where the best elements from both sides of the political divide are combined into a coherent policy. Yet it could be argued that his currently favoured educational policy, Direct Instruction, is going too far to one side of such a centre.

Direct Instruction (full immersion) is an educational framework that can transform a community of poor learners to become fair learners. Naturalist approaches such as unguided constructivism have failed. Nevertheless, there are limits to Direct Instruction and a framework of guided discovery to promote higher learning is outlined (based on the educational ideas Montessori, Bruner and Vygotsky).

reinventing myself

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction
- Otto Neurath

I love the practice of Zig Engelmann's Direct Instruction but am not happy with his philosophical underpinnings as expressed in sections of Could John Stuart Mill Have Saved Our Schools? Engelmann and Carnine just seem to take extracts from a variety of philosophers and throw them together in a grab bag: some James, JS Mill, Peirce, Plato, Skinner, etc. In other places serious thinkers such as Dewey and Piaget are dismissed without a full consideration of their contribution.

Nevertheless, the practice of Direct Instruction is very impressive, for disadvantaged learners, and I have to embrace it.

Since I like to think of myself as a philosophical person this creates a dilemma. I think of Direct Instruction as excellent in practice but insufficiently theorised.

It has led me to study philosophy again. I have some general background knowledge in the works of Karl Marx, Seymour Papert, the evolution debate between Stephen J Gould and Richard Dawkins, Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett, Marvin Minsky, Alan Kay and Noel Pearson. These thinkers have seriously influenced my thinking.

But they haven't yet provided me with the comprehensive thinking tools I need to evaluate Direct Instruction.

So, I've began a review of the history of the philosophy of science. Since Engelmann has at times described his method as "Logico-Empirical" (p. 125 of the JS Mill book mentioned above) then I needed to understand why logical empiricism as well as logical positivism had been decisively rejected by modern philosophers. A reasonable introduction (but it's only an overview with good references) to this question is provided by Peter Godfrey-Smith in Theory and Reality.

Arising from this study I've now discovered a seriously profound contemporary philosopher, Hilary Putnam, who forces me to think in new ways, who challenges my ideas in ways which I can't ignore. What this means is developing a toolkit of philosophical ideas which inform my world outlook and current practice in trying to help indigenous kids, who are behind in their learning, to learn more effectively.

Perhaps I'll write a few blogs outlining some of these new thoughts in the near future. Thinking aloud and having a conversation or debate on these issues does help.

Direct Instruction success at Coen

On the weekend, The Australian published a discouraging article titled "Noel Pearson's Cape schools lose funding", which informed us that:

A senior federal government source said Direct Instruction had been championed and imported into the Cape school with the "very clear and strong assumption that results will be automatically improved".

"This has shown to be wrong and raises questions about the deployment of that method in these schools," the source said.

Noel Pearson hasn't wasted any time in replying today with "Spin doctors turn Cape success story into failure"

He points out that Direct Instruction has achieved outstanding results in Coen:

Buried in Saturday's story of alleged Cape York failure was this reference to NAPLAN results: "The only school to show dramatic improvement in the past five years is at Coen, a school of only about 50 students, where 100 per cent of students met the minimum standard in 10 out of the 15 areas."

In our alternative universe this is the Olympic equivalent of winning a qualifying place in a heat. Not time to play the Australian anthem yet, but jeez, all the kids meeting the minimum standard across 10 of 15 categories in Years 3, 5 and 7 is surely something approaching a heroic feat.

No other Queensland indigenous school comes near Coen's results (and frankly, nor do many mainstream schools). Schools in Cherbourg, Palm Island, Kowanyama, Weipa, Bamaga and Yarrabah all failed to achieve 100 per cent in any category. Only Mapoon (in one out of 15 categories) and Bloomfield (in two out of 15 categories) achieved 100 per cent national minimum standards.

Frankly, I do not know any indigenous school in the country whose NAPLAN results are comparable to Coen's. Coen will no doubt ebb and flow, but in the next few years it will reach or be within 90 per cent of national minimum standards across all 15 categories.

I know the issues associated with NAPLAN testing and reporting but the spin doctoring by opponents of the Cape York Academy that has turned such exciting progress into a miserable story of failure is an injustice to the kids and parents and teachers. Depressingly, those shopping the academy's NAPLAN results to media outlets include a former senior bureaucrat in indigenous education.

In our alternative universe, if you were minister for education, genuine about indigenous education solutions, you would be interested in Coen and see past the spin and keep this thought in mind: from little things, big thing grow. Then you would find the time go and see for yourself.

Zig Engelmann recommends

I wrote to Zig Engelmann earlier this year after my observations of Direct Instruction at Djarragun College.

The Direct Instruction teacher manuals are fairly expensive (details here if you click through) and I was hoping that Zig would put some free samples on line so that the true extent of the scripting in DI would be readily available to anyone interested in checking it out. I had learnt at Djarragun that the teacher's instructions manuals (the script) played an absolutely central role in the whole process.

Here is an extract from Zig's reply. Although he didn't agree to my idea of publishing a sample on line he did point me towards 2 articles and a video that explain the principles of Direct Instruction in some detail. These are good links for those who want to understand the theory and practice of DI:

It’s true that teachers and administrators don’t understand the details of the program and the basis for much of what we do in designing programs. Zigsite has several works that go into detail, provide examples of the wrong way and right way, and explain the process that we follow in developing programs. The most detailed work is Rubric for Identifying Authentic Direct Instruction Programs. A shorter paper focuses on the key notion of presenting examples that lead to one and only one generalization: “The Curriculum Is the Cause of Failure.”

I wouldn’t recommend the book Theory of Instruction by Carnine and me, because the reader probably would have serious problems following it. However, one of the addresses on Zigsite.com hits the high points of theory as it relates to constructing sets of examples that lead to one and only one possible interpretation. The video is: Theory of Direct Instruction.

Reform program closes learning gap for indigenous kids

This article from today's Australian is invaluable and magnificent. It provides the hard data which shows that Direct Instruction works but also there is a lot of hard work still to be done. In particular, it is very hard for those who have been left behind from failed education to catch up.

Reform program closes learning gap for indigenous kids
BY: DANIELLE TOON
From: The Australian September 22, 2012

 SCHOOL reform is a journey that takes rigour, tenacity and consistency. You must first get the reform ideas right. Then you have to get the implementation right. It's a longer, harder journey if you have a poor starting point.

We began working on a school reform program in 2010 with the establishment of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy. By the time students in two of our schools sat for the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy benchmarking tests in May this year, they were in our program for two years and four months. A third school has been with us for one year and four months. So we are in the early stages of our journey.

Historically, our schools have been at the lower end of the Queensland schools system. In fact one would have been a contender for bottom position.

The release this week of this year's NAPLAN results gives us an opportunity to reflect where we are on our journey.

Let's focus on two fictionally named but typical students.

First is Joe, who was in Year 3 in Aurukun in January 2010. When tested at kindergarten level in literacy and numeracy, Joe was far below the Year 3 national benchmarks. However, with our Direct Instruction reform program, Joe started learning at a rate of about one year level a year. By May, Joe was in Year 5 and progressed to be at a Grade 2 level.

Joe is making progress at good speed. Given where he was in 2010, Joe could not be expected to reach the Year 5 national benchmark in 2.4 years. Joe has two more years of primary schooling and will be functionally literate and numerate in Year 7. However, he is unlikely to match his Year 7 peers in the mainstream in the 2014 NAPLAN tests.

Second is Mary, who was in Prep in January 2010. Prep is not compulsory but Mary's parents ensured she attended regularly. She has been taught effectively from the start using Direct Instruction. Like her other Prep peers at Aurukun and Coen, Mary can hold her own with Prep students around Australia. Mary is now in Year 2 and will sit the NAPLAN test next year. Provided her attendance is maintained, she will meet the Year 3 national benchmarks and continue to do so in future.

One cannot sensibly appreciate NAPLAN results without understanding what is involved when school reform is undertaken for students such as Joe and Mary. In schools that have failed historically, even the best reform programs will have limited results with older students who have a wider learning gap to close. The best results will be evidenced by those students who have had the benefit of the reforms from the beginning of their schooling.

There is a need to increase public, media and governmental literacy in relation to school reform. Schools in a system as large as Queensland's range from failing to average to good. The reform challenge is different across this spectrum.

Whatever is needed to improve the performance of the middle and top schools, those at the lowest end require comprehensive reform. This is what we are doing with our academy. In Coen, average scores improved in 12 out of the 15 categories since 2010. All of our Year 3 students met national minimum benchmarks in every NAPLAN category.

In Aurukun, average scores improved in eight out of the 15 categories since 2010. On average, one-quarter of our Year 3 students met national minimum benchmarks.

As part of Direct Instruction we administer other student assessments. This internal data tells us that out of 200 Aurukun students, 30 are at grade level in reading and 60 are at grade level in numeracy. No students were at grade level when we started. In Coen, out of the 50 students, 22 students are at grade level in reading and 25 in numeracy. Only one was at grade level in literacy and two in numeracy when we started. The NAPLAN results are quite consistent with our internal data; if anything our internal data is not as positive as NAPLAN.

How is the positive progress on grade levels to be understood against the large NAPLAN gaps? The answer is this: most students who are reaching grade level are in the earliest years. Like Mary, there are more students in the early years who are at grade level.

The limitation of NAPLAN is that it tells us only whether our schools are meeting national benchmarks. It does not tell us whether and at what rate our schools are closing the gap. Imagine Joe in a race against Billy from a good Queensland school. Joe is starting way behind and won't reach the milestones at the same time as Billy. But we can show he is closing the gap.

Mary, on the other hand, started the race at the same time as Sophie from that good Queensland school and has a good chance of keeping up with her, as long as her parents continue to send her to school.

How do you tell who is running fast enough or who is spinning their heels?

John Hattie, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute, uses the concept of effect size to answer this question: what effect has your school had on student progress across the past year? What is the size of the gain they made from where they were to where they are now?

NAPLAN should be supplemented by an effect size score using all available assessment data. Each school should be required to report on what effect they had on student learning. These should be confirmed by Education Department auditors as part of teaching and learning audits and published with the NAPLAN results.

For the first time, Joe is learning. We just need a national mechanism to demonstrate his success.

Danielle Toon is chief executive of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy and received a 2011 Winston Churchill Fellowship to study school systems in the US, Canada and Britain.

Tony Abbott's working bee at Aurukun

When you think about it this is a remarkable event in Australian politics

Tony Abbott strongly supports Noel Pearson's leadership in indigenous education reform (even though Tony oversimplifies by calling it traditional old fashioned education) and a bunch of billionaires support him in a very practical, sleeves rolled up, get your hands dirty way

Noel Pearson calls it sweat equity. Unfortunately, Noel Pearson has lymphatic cancer, but from one report it is in remission.

The Labour Party being all tied up with the Unions, the Greens with their trendy suburb support base is left totally flat footed. They are far more into symbolism than actually doing something. It represents a reversal of what labour is meant to stand for.

Here are some of the articles with extracts and some comments from me in italics

Bosses roll up for Tony Abbott's working bee by CAROLINE OVERINGTON From: The Australian August 11, 2012

Fortescue chief executive Neville Power, Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder, Westpac executive Elizabeth Henderson and ANZ's deputy chief, Graham Hodges, painted a library, planted trees and - most daunting of all - put flat-pack furniture together for 210 barefoot, indigenous children who attend the Cape York Aboriginal Academy in Aurukun ...

Pearson's Cape York Partnerships introduced the controversial Direct Instruction education program to the school two years ago - it's basically rote learning, with verve - in conjunction with a Welfare Reform Trial

Rote learning, with verve is not a correct description of Direct Instruction. Is it beyond the power of our daily media to describe the principals of logical empiricism?

Getting down to business BY: CAROLINE OVERINGTON From: The Australian August 13, 2012 12:00AM

Executive principal Cindy Hales worked in Aurukun 12 years ago, well before Pearson and his team moved in. She's now been back for a year.

"It used to be awful," she says. "When I was last here, there were no children reading at the level of a kindergartener. Today, there are 61 children reading at an age-appropriate level, and that's because of Direct Instruction."

The school's chief executive, Danielle Toon, also remembers the "bad old days" of kids getting regular "brain breaks".

"They'd read for 15 minutes and then they'd get a slice of bread with peanut butter," she says. "That was instead of a lesson."

Now, just two years in, and with only the barest of baby steps having been taken, there is tension over funding: the federal government recently agreed to extend funding to the tune of $11 million to get this school and three others in the Cape through to year's end, but there have been no promises after that; and Education Queensland hasn't yet signalled its intentions

I fervently hope that the new Campbell Newman government comes to support the DI initiative.

Remote school shifts gears for brighter future Date August 11, 2012 by Michael Gordon, from The Brisbane Times

School principal Patrick Mallett says school attendance is up from around 38 per cent in 2009 to be in the 70s and that a majority of students are either approaching or exceeding national benchmarks.

The key is not just an emphasis on scripted lessons and consistency, but being able to pinpoint where a child is in his or her literacy and numeracy development and make adjustments to maximise progress.

''To be at the coalface where daily we see children's lives transformed is an absolute privilege,'' says Mr Mallett, 48.

By quoting the Principal, The Brisbane Times, at least communicated one of the aspects of DI accurately.

Cape York’s real education revolution Miranda Devine Sunday, August 12, 2012

If atheists could pray:

"Pearson is in hospital having treatment for cancer. Let us pray for this great man’s speedy recovery, for he alone has brought indigenous Australia to a turning point, and his work is nowhere near complete."

After commenting on Abbott's "sweat equity". Miranda Devine includes some excellent old articles she has written.

Carving order out of the darkness By Miranda Devine, June 6, 2010

How intolerance can turn the tide, September 28, 2006

AND this is how it began, with Professor Kevin Wheldall and Robyn Beaman of Macquarie University:
Cape crusader shows how to empower
Noel Pearson’s push for better education is paying dividends for his people, writes Miranda Devine, November 17, 2005

theory of instruction confronts theory of mind

A research question arising from consideration of Direct Instruction

 My current research question:
Why is Zig Engelmann's Direct Instruction (DI), a comprehensively trialled educational theory of instruction based on logical inference with rigorous empirical checks on performance and curriculum design successful in practice given that our minds apparently develop through a process of fluid analogies, as argued by Artificial Intelligence researchers Marvin Minsky and Douglas Hofstadter?

There appears to be convincing evidence for the success of DI in practice. Zig  Engelmann has put Chapter 5: Follow Through Evaluation of his book, Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System, on line which provides a blow by blow account of how Project Follow Through findings were suppressed by "progressives" back in the 1970s

Here are some conflicting statements from the different schools of thought on logical thinking:

 Engelmann and Carnine. Could John Stuart Mill have saved our schools? (2011)

“If the examples presented to teach something are capable of generating only one inference or meaning, that is what all learners will learn, regardless of other differences among individual learners (9) … From our perspective, the most fundamental fact about the learner's mind is that it is totally logical in its learning operations. This is directly inferred from the learner's most elementary performance” (57)

Marvin Minsky, Society Of Mind (1987)

“Logical Thinking The popular but unsound theory that much of human reasoning proceeds in accord with clear-cut rules that lead to foolproof conclusions. In my view, we employ logical reasoning only in special forms of adult thought, which are used mainly to summarise what has already been discovered. Most of our ordinary mental work – that is, our commonsense reasoning – is based more on 'thinking by analogy' - that is, applying to our present circumstances our representations of seemingly similar previous experiences” (329)

I have been thinking about this question and discussing it with whoever is willing to discuss it. I can provide further reading references as an addition to this blog post for anyone who requests that. If anyone reading this feels they have an answer or relevant references then please post them in comments.

I'm not happy until I've theorised a learning approach and I become a little obsessive until I feel I've got to the bottom of it. From what I've read a theory of logical empiricism is incomplete when evaluated with a modern theory of mind. That doesn't mean that DI doesn't work - the evidence seems compelling - but it still worries me because there might be hidden implications for some aspects of learning.

government failure in indigenous education documented

Although this report falls short of recommending a Noel Pearson style full immersion Direct Instruction program it does thoroughly document the problem of education of indigenous Australians in remote communities and doesn't hesitate to blame the Government for it's failure in supporting separatist education philosophies and fudging the targets.

Indigenous Education 2012
Helen Hughes and Mark Hughes
The Centre for Independent Studies

from the Introduction:
We again give special attention to the estimated 20,000 (of a total 170,000) Indigenous students enrolled in Indigenous schools in ‘bush’ communities on Indigenous lands. These students have been the principal victims of separatist education philosophies for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. In Indigenous schools, 90% literacy and numeracy failure rates have been, and often still are, common. Another 40,000 Indigenous students attend underperforming mainstream schools with above-average failure rates, side by side with non-Indigenous students. However, the majority of Indigenous students—more than 110,000—attend quality mainstream schools where they are achieving national minimum literacy and numeracy standards; these students are therefore not the subject of this report. Unwillingness to recognise these Indigenous students’ high literacy and numeracy pass rates has fed low expectations of Indigenous students’ abilities.

from the Executive Summary:
The situation
In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reduced the Indigenous education target from fix the problem in four years to fix half the problem in 10 years. The first four year’s NAPLAN results show that only Queensland and Western Australia have made significant progress. All states and territories will struggle to reach the reduced target. On the education ministers’ timetable, Indigenous children will not have the same education as non-Indigenous children until 2028.

Most Indigenous Australians live and work in cities and towns. Their children—more than 110,000—attend mainstream schools and achieve minimum national literacy and numeracy standards like non-Indigenous students. Indigenous students have the same intellectual capabilities as non-Indigenous students. The education industry’s focus on ‘indigeneity’ is a politically driven distraction. If indigeneity was the problem, the majority of Indigenous students would not be passing.

School failure is the problem
Some 20,000 students attend Indigenous schools—those with 75% or more Indigenous students. But only a handful of these schools are delivering effective literacy and numeracy. Another 40,000 Indigenous students attend underperforming mainstream schools, side-by-side with many more non-Indigenous students. Poor education delivered by these underperforming schools is the principal cause of educational failure in Australia for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

Measuring literacy and numeracy 2008–12
The majority of Indigenous students pass NAPLAN tests, but there is also a significant poorly performing minority. Queensland and Western Australia have made the most progress. But other states and territories—and therefore Australia as a whole—are not on track to meet COAG targets. Even where COAG targets will be met by 2018, Indigenous student failure rates will still be above those of non-Indigenous students.

Causes of Indigenous education failure
Evidence shows that indigeneity, remoteness and a non-English speaking background are not the reasons for high Indigenous failure rates. Non-performing schools are the principal cause of Indigenous student failure. Welfare dependence, with entrenched low parental and student expectations, is a major contributing factor.

COAG and Indigenous education
By adopting politically correct rhetoric instead of numeracy and literacy solutions, COAG—the peak government body—contributes to the lack of progress.

Underperforming schools
About 200 Indigenous schools have the lowest NAPLAN results in Australia. A larger group of mainstream schools in cities and towns deliver below average education to their Indigenous and nonIndigenous students. Under existing policies, only a handful of these schools are being reformed.

Indigenous education expenditure
Indigenous education is well funded. Much of the $360 million per year of ‘Indigenous specific’ education expenditure is, however, wasted on counterproductive ‘feel-good,’ ‘culturally appropriate’ programs that take time and attention from classroom instruction.

Trapped by illiteracy on Indigenous lands
The lack of education for the 70,000 Australians living on Indigenous lands is compounded by a lack of job opportunities. In response, governments have created pretend jobs and training programs that lead nowhere.

from section 11: Conclusions and Recommendations
In 2008, Australian governments dropped the target of educational equality for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, replacing it with the soft target of ‘halving the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students by 2018.

NAPLAN results for the four years from 2008 to 2011 show only Queensland and Western Australia making significant progress towards that target; a target that will still see half the students in Indigenous schools in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia, and South Australia fail reading and numeracy tests in 2018.

Targets are easy to set and change when they get too hard. Governments and education departments refuse to face the evidence that school ethos and classroom instruction are at the heart of education problems. The failure to reform welfare also contributes to high failure rates through low expectations and attendance rates.

Indigenous students have the same intellectual capabilities as non-Indigenous students. The children of working Indigenous parents achieve the same NAPLAN results as the children of non-Indigenous parents. The education industry’s focus on indigeneity is a politically driven distraction. So is remoteness and English as a second language. Non-Indigenous remote schools have high NAPLAN achievement rates. Migrant children are taught English successfully.

About 200 Indigenous schools are at the extreme of failing Indigenous performance. The Northern Territory’s more than 40 Homeland Learning Centres, where students do not even have full-time qualified teachers, are at the bottom of Australia’s more than 9,000 schools. Only 200 out of 2,000 students starting in Indigenous schools in 2012 are on a path to mainstream education. Each year, Indigenous schools add 2,000 non-literate and non-numerate teenagers to existing welfare-dependent communities on Indigenous lands.

Underperforming mainstream schools in cities and towns betray both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The NAPLAN performance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in these schools cannot be fixed without improving the performance of the non-Aboriginal students sitting next to them.

Indigenous education is well funded. Most of the more than $300 million Indigenous-specific expenditure, however, is spent on programs for which there is no evidence of positive impact. These programs are counterproductive because they take time and energy away from classroom teaching.

COAG Council of Australian Governments
NAPLAN National Assessment Plan—Literacy and Numeracy

You may not believe in Direct Instruction because your memes won't allow it

What we approve of and what we deride or ignore depends on which memes we have assimilated most from our culture and upbringing.

 Hence, Direct Instruction is often not considered seriously by educational "progressives". It is not that the education establishment has thought deeply about it, considered the evidence and developed good arguments against DI. It is more that Direct Instruction falls outside the framework of the established Piagetian or developmental educational culture, built over decades. From such a framework a "mere" theory of instruction has less weight than the "more important" theories of development or learning or mind. A theory of instruction by its very nature appears to be "conservative" since, from a distance, it is a variation of the traditional teacher centred framework, whereas the other theories (development, learning and mind) allow far more scope to be child or learner centred and hence would appear to be more enlightened, progressive and modern. Note the vague fuzziness of the language.

I have been part of this process. For example, in 1997 I wrote an article, Invitation to Immersion, in which I outlined one version of the "thoughtful", "progressive" and "ground breaking" principles on which education ought to be based. In brief they included:

• Play is OK ...
• The emotional precedes the cognitive ...
• Our knowledge is like our relationships with other people, full of subtle nuances and never ending contradictions ...
• Trust your intuition. Frankly, logic is over-rated ...
• Take risks! ...
• Take your time ...
• A good discussion promotes learning ...

These principles arose out of what I still consider to be a successful application of Seymour Papert's (just to name the best known proponent) logo based computers in education initiative. I am still fondly attached to these principles. I believe I can go through each one and argue a strong case of sorts in favour.

However, the principles of Direct Instruction are quite different, and sometimes contrary, to the above principles. Direct Instruction is based on a different set of memes. Logic rates very highly; intuition is unscientific. Time is precious, instruction proceeds at a brisk pace. Cognition precedes emotion; positive emotions arise through success in learning. As well there are other important elements that are not considered in the list above, such as a strong emphasis on continual and rigorous monitoring, through testing, that learning is happening. As Zig Engelmann says, "Give me the data".

If you are wearing the "progressive" education set of blinkers and / or filters you are probably not even going to look hard at Direct Instruction because that requires putting on a contrary set of blinkers / filters.

There is one cloud of memes which predispose their possessor to supporting "progressive education" and a different cloud of memes which pushes their host in the direction of Direct Instruction. Moreover, some of these memes have been acquired during the formative childhood years and it is more than likely that we have forgotten how we acquired them or what they were in their primitive, childhood form. Childhood amnesia of our learning processes is a well established belief. As our minds build complexity we forget the original building blocks. This may result in mutual incomprehension of the apparent perversity of the "other side" in the education culture wars.

Compare my thoughts here about education with Douglas Hofstadter's thoughts about some current memes and further reflections leading him to change his mind about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:

Since a sizable fraction of one’s personal repertoire of perceptual chunks is provided from without, by one’s language and culture, this means that inevitably language and culture exert powerful, even irresistible, channeling influences on how one frames events. (This position is related to the “meme’s-eye view” of the nature of thought, as put forth in numerous venues, most recently in Blackmore 1999.)

Consider, for instance, such words as “backlog,” “burnout,” “micromanaging,” and “underachiever,” all of which are commonplace in today’s America. I chose these particular words because I suspect that what they designate can be found not only here and now, but as well in distant cultures and epochs, quite in contrast to such culturally and temporally bound terms as “soap opera,” “mini-series,” “couch potato,” “news anchor,” “hit-and-run driver,” and so forth, which owe their existence to recent technological developments. So consider the first set of words. We Americans living at the millennium’s cusp perceive backlogs of all sorts permeating our lives — but we do so because the word is there, warmly inviting us to see them. But back in, say, Johann Sebastian Bach’s day, were there backlogs — or more precisely, were backlogs perceived? For that matter, did Bach ever experience burnout? Well, most likely he did — but did he know that he did? Or did some of his Latin pupils strike him as being underachievers? Could he see this quality without being given the label? Or, moving further afield, do Australian aborigines resent it when their relatives micromanage their lives? Of course, I could have chosen hundreds of other terms that have arisen only recently in our century, yet that designate aspects of life that were always around to be perceived but, for one reason or another, aroused little interest, and hence were neglected or overlooked.

My point is simple: we are prepared to see, and we see easily, things for which our language and culture hand us ready-made labels. When those labels are lacking, even though the phenomena may be all around us, we may quite easily fail to see them at all. The perceptual attractors that we each possess (some coming from without, some coming from within, some on the scale of mere words, some on a much grander scale) are the filters through which we scan and sort reality, and thereby they determine what we perceive on high and low levels.

Although this sounds like an obvious tautology, that part of it that concerns words is in fact a nontrivial proposition, which, under the controversial banner of “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,” has been heatedly debated, and to a large extent rejected, over the course of the twentieth century. I myself was once most disdainful of this hypothesis, but over time came to realize how deeply human thought — even my own! — is channeled by habit and thus, in the last accounting, by the repertoire of mental chunks (i.e., perceptual attractors) that are available to the thinker. I now think that it is high time for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis to be reinstated, at least in its milder forms.
- Analogy as the Core of Cognition

Direct Instruction: observations at Djarragun college

I've just returned from a 4 day observation at Djarragun College near Cairns during their first week of Term 2.

Their programme is directed by NIFDI (National Institute For Direct Instruction), an American group set up by Zig Engelmann. The initiative to implement this in Australia originated with indigenous leader Noel Pearson, as outlined in his essay Radical Hope.

In the following I describe some of the characteristics of the NIFDI programme.

Without fail, every school day, from 9am to 1pm there are 3 hours of English language instruction (broken up into decoding, comprehension, writing) and 1 hour of Maths instruction

The lessons are  heavily scripted. The various teachers manuals are thick books with precise instructions about how lessons must be delivered. So all the teachers are pulling consistently in the same direction. Robotic yes, but they are good robots.

This aspect of the program has major, major implications. Scripting lessons takes away from teacher creativity or autonomy. All teachers are delivering in quite similar ways. Does the lack of diversity in this respect matter? For instance, in education a methods war between the relative virtues of constructivism (which emphasises the value of children exploring) and behavourism (which emphasises formal transmission of knowledge from teacher to student) has been  going on in various guises for years. NIFDI is as behaviourist as you can get so there is bound to be substantial opposition from constructivists or from those who advocate some sort of even balance between the two apparent extremes.

With NIFDI, student participation is close to 100%. Quite often this takes the form of chanting in unison in response to a signalling system from the teacher (finger click or tap on a book). Students are  trained to not answer until the teacher signals so the "smart" students don't dominate and the "slow" students don't hold back. Everyone participates. I observed this being consistently implemented in a variety of primary and middle school classes

The curriculum, from what I observed, is very purposeful. Engelmann claims to have developed curriculum design to the level of a precise science. There is a strong emphasis on logical elements in the comprehension part of the curriculum such as deductions, inference etc. (and of course much more). For example, in one lesson about the skeletal and muscular body systems these elements of curriculum design were included in rapid succession: Deductions, Evidence, Classification, Definitions, Parts of Speech, Inference, Definitions and Following Directions.

Some of the features of the programme that struck me as unusual and / or interesting were:
(a) Strong emphasis on logical elements such as deduction, evidence and inference
(b) Continual verbal participation (chanting) from students. The chanting was not only copying what the teacher said but also performing logical operations independently, after initial preparation for this by the teacher
(c) Expectation and achievement of participation in all tasks by all students (not 100% in all cases but close to it in nearly all of the classes I observed)
(d) Lessons proceeded briskly, some tasks were strictly timed and the message that time was precious was both explicit and implicit.
(e) A system of student points and teacher points was present in all classes. Students obtained points for doing the right thing, teachers obtained points when students did the wrong thing (eg. not waiting for the signal before answering). The class receives a reward when a specified target of points is achieved.
(f) Virtually no misuse of mobile phones. Students who misuse phones may lose them for a week or even the whole term.
(g) Self checks and peer assessment in various contexts. For example, I gathered that reading was assessed every day in paired groups with one of the pair recording words read in, say, 2 minutes and the errors. This was then followed by a reversal of roles. I asked one of the students who recorded 2 errors for her partner what they were and she could tell me.

All class groups are based on current ability level and not year or age level. So you might see year 8, 9 and 10 students in the same class. Decoding and comprehension occurs before recess; Writing and Maths after recess. The class groups are resorted at recess since abilities in these subjects will vary.

The goal is always mastery learning (85%-90%) for each and every student.

The data collection process is both arduous on the teacher and awesome in its scope. A copious amounts of data is collected each week by each teacher. Marking for each day must be completed by the next day. Students are reassessed each day for items they have not achieved mastery learning in the day before. If there are 3 strikes on an assessment item then the student is dropped to a lower ability group.

Much of the work from the previous day is repeated in slightly different form next day. There might be only 10 or 20% of new material taught each day. Hence continual repetition is built into the program.

The biggest problem is poor attendance. Hence the need for Noel Pearson's other community based initiatives to get students to attend regularly. See How do miserable people progress in the world?

The data is faxed to a  Direct Instruction expert in Canada once a week and this is followed by a conference call to discuss progress. So, there is an external expert continually advising and also checking that no one is drifting off from full implementation of the package.

In other schools teachers deviate all over the place, this is the first school I have seen where that is strictly not allowed. I observed some minor deviations but no serious deviations.

So, one outcome from the Engelmann approach is the ability to scale. For this to happen you need both the broad scope of a well designed and scripted curriculum (coverage of all aspects of literacy and maths) and the rigour of copious data collection and checkups. Without those elements scaling could not be achieved. That is what Engelmann provides which no one else does. Teachers do become like robots (in some, not all, ways). But through the rigour of the scripting they are purposeful robots and so on the mass scale much more is being achieved than would be achieved in the normal course of events, with teachers pulling and pushing in a variety of different directions (even with some of those directions being educationally sound ones and justified in isolation from each other)

There is a huge potential for spottiness and teachers not implementing the NIFDI approach properly. From what I saw in various classes there were subtle differences of implementation creeping in. But they were subtle, not serious deviations. Of course these would deviate further if there wasn't a rigorous way to prevent it. This explains why NIFDI have put in place such rigorous checkups through their data collection process. Part of me still doesn't like that side of it (the restriction on teachers ability innovate in their own, sometimes creative ways) but certainly I can see the necessity for it.

Hence other methods can and do work in isolation (good teachers in isolated classrooms) but the NIFDI approach seems to be the only one to provide all the elements necessary for scaling whereas other methods out of respect for teachers independence do not scale. And scale is everything since we have a large percentage of indigenous Australians who can't read, write or do basic maths. Other methods have failed.

 I'll also mention that I'm a big fan of Seymour Papert's constructionist approach to teaching with computers and have employed that approach successfully in both middle class and disadvantaged schools in Adelaide (1, 2). But when working in a disadvantaged school in Adelaide's northern suburbs I realised I had to incorporate much more behaviourist type approaches in my teaching due to the low starting point of many of the students there. See my 1998 article The place of behaviourism in schools which advocated a mixture of methodologies and I still think provides a valid critique of some aspects of behaviourism. (See footnotes 1, 2 and 3 in particular. These issues still need further research IMO) - edit 27th April.

Noel Pearson has also significantly influenced my thinking after I heard him speak in Adelaide about 10 years ago. Subsequently I have read most of his writings. When I read "Radical Hope" I thought interesting but education isn't really his primary area of expertise so he's being one sided here and going overboard in his support for Engelmann. I then read some Engelmann and thought interesting but he's too angry and criticising all forms of constructivism and I know that some forms of it are good, since I have been a successful practitioner. But then I couldn't get away from Engelmann's proven success in Project Follow Through and so gradually came to the view that I should look more closely at his DI approach and what still seemed to me to be exaggerated claims. I've now come to the belief that for disadvantaged students in particular who haven't grasped the fundamentals of language and maths that Direct Instruction is the best method developed that I am aware of.

Many thanks to Don Anderson (Principal) and the teachers and administrators of Djarragun College for permission to observe and for discussion about their implementation of Direct Instruction

Reference:
Ending the groundhog day of educational reform (Noel Pearson speech, 2011)

Footnote: A shorter version of this article was published in The Australian on May 3rd, 2012: Noel Pearson's Aboriginal college gets top results

Rhonda Farkota's educational philosophy explained in five paragraphs

 The student-directed versus teacher-directed learning debate is an ancient one; indeed, the polemic goes back to Plato. In her doctoral research (The Effects of a 15-minute Direct Instruction Intervention in the Regular Mathematics Class on Students’ Mathematical Self-efficacy and Achievement) the author carried out a comprehensive review of the relevant research and literature, and reached the inescapable conclusion that some skills were better acquired through one approach and some through the other. When it came to the employment and cultivation of higher order skills where reasoning and reflection were required it was clear that a student-directed approach to learning was better suited. But when it came to the acquisition of basic skills the empirical evidence unequivocally showed that a teacher-directed approach was best suited.

It is well accepted that problem solving skills operate from a knowledge base that has been acquired through practice; in fact, genuine competence in both problem solving and basic skills only comes with practice. Significantly though, it is actually when the base knowledge in a discipline is being acquired that the foundations for effective problem solving are being laid. Because the essential knowledge required for automaticity is stored in students' long term memory, it is best retained when explicitly taught and practiced repeatedly. This automaticity originating from practice empowers students to maximise their mental capacity by concentrating exclusively on the more complex task of problem solving.

It is also well accepted that to perform a task competently one requires not only the requisite skills, but also the self-belief in one's ability to implement performance. In the learning process this is termed self-efficacy, and when laying the foundational skills in mathematics, or for that matter any academic discipline, it is important that student self-efficacy be accomodated. Students with low self-efficacy in a particular skill area are reluctant to engage in tasks where those skills are required, and if they do, they are more likely to quit when encountering difficulty.

Students engaged in the learning process automatically monitor their progress, and for this reason the capacity to self-evaluate progress is an integral and ongoing component of the JEMM program. Because JEMM tasks gradually increase in difficulty, students have clear criteria by which they can independently assess their performance and gauge their progress. As they progress they acquire more  skills and become more proficient at the self-evaluation process.

JEMM lessons were deliberately designed not to be seen as tests, but this is precisely what is happening on a daily basis; without being conscious of it, students are willingly engaging in ongoing assessment. As such the lessons serve as a powerful diagnostic tool clearly mapping students' progress, identifying precisely where and when they are experiencing difficulty. The students' responses provide teachers with reliable diagnostic information similar to that which could only be acquired from a formal test situation. Because students receive daily feedback on their performance they are acutely and immediately aware of their progress, which strengthens their self-efficacy, sustains their motivation and enhances their academic achievement.

source:  JEMM = Junior Elementary Maths Mastery, page x