Direct Instruction -- time to rethink strategies?

I haven't been keeping up with all the latest buzz in the education field since I retired years ago, but I was aware of the trend in the past 20 years of "discovery learning" where kids were encouraged to explore and think on their own. This was something that I didn't have much of an opinion on, but seemed to be highly thought of by people who did a lot of home schooling. So I was surprised to find in a recently promoted National Science Teachers Association digest that kids learn better research skills if they're taught by "direct instruction" rather than "discovery learning."

Instruction versus exploration in science learning

http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/methods/models/direct/

With the ongoing screams about how schools are failing to teach children, some are advocating a return to this kind of instruction. But today's society isn't quite as accepting of this method as it was in the past. The argument is that it's "canned teaching" and it's "not personal" and may not appeal to what the child wants to do.

Now, as someone who grew up under the Really Old School method of teaching, I'll admit I'm rather uncomfortable with some of today's teaching practices. When I was in school (along with the dinosaurs), we didn't work in groups, we had to sit still and keep quiet (and were punished for not being on task) -- and we hated it because it stressed drills and homework, but my generation still ended up being one of the most well educated generations in America (highest number of college graduates, etc.) This is still the method used in totalitarian countries.

Further googling turned up a very interesting op-ed piece on this by Jeff Lindsay, which includes summaries of some of the studies. http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml

That's as far as I've gotten into this today and I need to go attend to other things -- but I want to go back into the material and review it and see if things in there can make me a better educator, both when speaking informally to the public as well as when I'm doing lessons for afterschool science.

 

 

--- Patricia Griffin