BLOG #2

Direct instruction is a simple, powerful, and effective instructional approach that increases student engagement rates. This instructional approach originated from the 1960s and is utilized to teach students who are “at-risk” at the Bereiter-Engelmann Preschool, at the University of Illinois (Heward & Twyman, 2021).  According to William L. Heward, “direct instruction (DI) is a combination of logical analysis and testing of the content students are to learn, thoughtful selection and sequencing of instructional examples, clear communication between teacher and student, reinforcement and corrective feedback, judicious review, and practice to mastery” (Heward & Twyman, 2021). These characteristics of direct instruction are important to achieve student’s success and to maximize what the students are learning by relying on these characteristics to create a thorough and structured instructional approach. 

Direct Instruction and Differentiated Instruction in Diverse Classrooms has alignments depending on how it is implemented with learners. To better understand, Differentiated Instruction in Diverse Classroom is a teacher educator’s strategy to understand learning preferences and styles of each student. This strategy may involve teaching the same material to all students using a variety of instructional methods, or it may require the teacher to teach content at varying levels of difficulty based on the readiness, interests and ability of each student (Thakur, 2014). According to the article Leaving the Traditional Classroom: A Look at Direct Instruction versus Differentiated Instruction by Robert D. Dunham researched two classes who were taught the same content for one unit, where one class was taught Direct Instruction and the other Differentiated Instruction (Dunham, 2008). This study resulted in a success where they determined that no matter which method was implemented, both classes were successful in learning, but there was still a difference between both DI’s (Dunham, 2008).

From my understanding by reading the articles and extra research from group project #1, I realized that Differentiated Instruction is reliant on the school’s full support, its resources, and the amount of training the educators receive to develop a classroom curriculum for a successful learning for the students. In addition, differentiated instruction boosts student engagement, learning outcomes, and character development that contributes to independence (Koimah et al., 2024). However, Direct Instruction can be an impactful method for some learning styles of each student which can impact their success in learning because Differentiated Instruction offers flexibility for the students to make their own choices and be independent with their learning. Whereas Direct Instruction can be a bit frustrating to some students because of specific instructions ordered by the educator.