Teacher creativity is over-rated, writes Education Gadfly’s Liam Julian. If teachers are more effective following a script, such as Direct Instruction’s formula, why not require the script?
. . . when doctors use specific, scripted methods, nobody suggests they are “jumping through hoops” or despairs because surgeons can’t be “creative” in the OR. It’s worth asking: Why do we want our public-school teachers to be “creative”?
Medical training is scientifically-based and prizes results over creativity. Would that this were so in education. A 2006 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality found that, out of 72 randomly selected education schools, only 11 taught all elements of the science of reading. The report’s authors wrote, “The decision about how best to teach reading is repeatedly cast as a personal one, to be decided by the aspiring teacher.”
. . . It is foolish to believe that big-hearted 22-year-olds will know, intrinsically, the best way to teach reading to a class of second graders, just as it is foolish to think that newly minted doctors can on their own derive the best way for treating a particular pathology.
Even veteran teachers may benefit from following a protocol, writes Julian, again citing medical precedents.
Does the analogy fit?
Actually, doctors complained bitterly about following protocols at first. But there is now overwhelming evidence that patient care is much improved when medicine is practiced this way and physicians are much more likely to be on board with the idea.
Without protocols of some kind, at some level of specificity, teachers will never successfully make the argument that they should be treated like professionals. Obviously there is artistry in surgery, as in trying a trial, flying an airplane, or whatever else. The science of WHAT to do and HOW to do it is regulated, but the artistry is left up to the individual. In our profession, we ignore the science and spend all of our time in conferences on the art.
Andrew, says, “In our profession, we ignore the science and spend all of our time in conferences on the art.”
Amen, Andrew. But, that’s one reason teaching is not a profession.
In math teaching, even amongst professors who know they’re subject well, they like to have a good textbook that has the topics arranged in a logical sequential order with explanations that they can use. A good textbook or program with script provides the basis for explanations. With experience teachers can embellish the explanation.
My mom mentioned that she didn’t understand the value of abstract art; after all, a child could do it. One can create garbage and rearrange trash in creative ways, but building a skyscraper requires patterned discipline and strict adherence to a script. Teachers who show students how to make costumes out of newspaper work in the same place and earn the same pay as teachers who teach journalism. One group is making the other group look bad. Until the value of the subject taught is prorated, the best we can do is choose a side, stay on our side of the fence, and bark. My mom, by the way, was real good at making paper hats, but reading the paper was a challenge for her.
I’m in my first year teaching calculus and physics at a small private high school on Kauai. Barry’s comment about the value of textbooks gibes nicely with my experience. I have a degree in physics, and 25 years experience as an engineer, but it would be a daunting amount of work to create a logical curriculum from scratch. I could just show up and teach something useful most every day – but I don’t think an impressionistic, my-mood-of-the-day grab bag would be in my students’ best interest.
For me, the textbooks are the only script I have.
As an additional piece of info, I don’t have any teacher training. My experience in the engineering world has given me the mindset that if I know the basics of some area, and I’m ruthless in judging the results of my work, I can get competent in about a year to 18 months.
I can make use of my student’s AP calculus scores at the end of the year to have a metric for how well I covered what they’ll need for college and adjust what I cover for next year’s students.
Truly creative people in any profession are those who have mastered the fundamentals and so know what they are “departing” from.
Maybe architecture or engineering is a better analogy than medicine. Architects can be astoundingly creative, but the structure still has to stand.
I’ve been trained to work with Direct Instruction. DI with scripts assumes well-behaved, cooperative students who can be easily involved. Such is not always the case. I grew up in the Eugene, Oregon, area where Sig Englemann created DI, and it’s not exactly typical of the nation socioeconomically. For that matter, my mother had some exposure to DI as a teacher in the late 60s/early 70s and she wasn’t that fond of the scripted portion of it–and yes, she’d even been a one-room schoolteacher before WWII and was considered to be an excellent teacher.
DI provides a baseline, but slavish following of the script leads to tedium both on the part of the students and on the part of the teacher. It provides a useful framework and guide for what I consider to be the *meat* of the DI process (which, dear God, is NOT the script and has NEVER been the script).
DI is based on a “model, prompt, check” methodology–or, in another phrasing, “I do, we do, you do.” The teacher models the task to be done. Then teacher and students work through the task together. The teacher slowly fades involvement until the students can perform the task independently. That’s best described in the latest DI math guide (which is at work, not here at home but I believe it’s by Englemann, Kame’enui, Carnine, et al). It is based on a theory of “scaffolded learning” developed by Vygotsky–further explanation here–http://www.vtaide.com/png/ERIC/Scaffolding.htm
Note that many of the sources include the leaders in Direct Instruction such as Kame’enui and Carnine.
Too many popular sources conflate the script with the method. The script is simply a way to make it easier for teachers unfamiliar with the principles to apply scaffolding principles. Once you know what you are doing, you can pace the script appropriately based on your observations on how the students are handling the material, and speed up or slow down appropriately. Unfortunately, often administrators who don’t have a clue may devise pacing guides which bear no reality to what a class and teacher are going through. Fortunately I’ve never had to deal with that.
You can also apply DI principles to teaching a concept without a script once you have internalized scaffolding.
The script is not the magic. The process is. Scaffolding works.
As usual, I blame the colleges of education for setting up the idea that good teaching is measured by teacher creativity rather than by student outcome. And until NCLB, it might have made more sense since there wasn’t a systematic way to look at student achievement.
Without data on student achievement, it kind of made sense to measure good teaching as being high engagement, fun and creative. And good teaching may still be those things too, but without the kids having learned something, it’s all pointless.
That “Intuitive leap into the unknown” must be from a solid launching point.
I checked Liam’s bio on the Fordham Foundation and there’s no mention of teaching experience.
Engineers and architects would not give a crap what he has to say and neither do I.
In the medical world physicians must know a number of treatments in order to be able to effectively treat patients. A doctor must know about patient allergies, drug interactions and other variables before prescribing medications. Doctors must be well grounded in science but cannot become inflexible or rigid, because exceptions can become the rule very easily.
When one expands the metaphor to include this aspect of medical practice I think it is fair to compare physicians to teachers. I stay current on research, make sure that I have a thorough knowledge of my students and their strengths and needs, and then move forward with an appropriate educational approach. If I become too scripted and rigid, learning can become compromised.
One size does not fit all, although it might fit many. That doesn’t make the size (or the person it doesn’t fit) wrong or bad, but I’ve got to teach them ALL. No exceptions. So please let me have more than one size.
Mike’n'Taxes wrote:
“Engineers and architects would not give a crap what he has to say and neither do I.”
How would you know, Mike? I have degrees in both Physics and CS, and I do, so you’re trivially wrong. Walter Wallis was an engineer (I think!), as was Mike P., additional data points both.
What sayest thou, Mike?
Note also that Liam Julian’s resume says that he “attended” Florida State University, but no mention of a degree, much less what area the degree is in.
J-school grad? Sorry, credibility goes way down on that one. Most j-school undergrads don’t know squat about education, and it shows.
Even if he *did* work for the Hoover Institute.
Seriously, I’d like to line up every reporter who writes enthusiastically about Direct Instruction and quiz them as to their knowledge and understanding of the methodology–because, clearly, they’ve not a complete clue about it other than Sig Engelmann’s prose (well, okay, Kurt Engelmann these days…).
*Full* implementation of DI methodology, including the test probes and charting required, can be quite a challenge.
Hm, joycem, perhaps you’d care to start with Ken DeRosa?
Good questions. Good discussion.
Allow me to contribute the following.
After three decades teaching in the public schools, the best instructional materials I’ve ever seen are these:
*** The H & R block textbook for their tax class. It was broken into small steps and had self quizzes. If I failed a self quiz, I knew I had to reread the chapter.
*** The booklet I had to work through at traffic school.
*** The Radio Shack programmed learning book on how to pass the ham license test.
Give me a good script and I’d love to follow it, especially for basic grammar.
What teachers are given instead are textbooks written by committee, textbooks with lots of graphics, textbooks that are “aligned to standards” which means they’re cluttered with footnotes, and unless it’s a math book, they’re be something about the WWII Japanese internment.
I don’t want to be creative. I’m tired of it. But please, don’t give me anything adopted by the state. Give me something good — so that I can get results.
Robert, I’m afraid you’ve missed a number of vital points: “optimized for success”, “strategized towards a vision”, “creatively unconstructed thinking”, not to mention the essential DVD (soon to be replaced by Blu-Ray).
Not only was, but is an engineer.
There are several problems with research-driven methods.
First, who can decide what’s supposed to be taught in a course? There’s a course of study, but what about the specifics? I teach physics and AP Physics. In AP, the College Board decides. That’s taken a lot of the guess-work and teacher preference out, but my regular physics can be almost anything within the vast realm of physics. I’m sure other subjects are similar.
Second, how do you define success? Another teacher at my school teaches physics. I expect my students to think through a problem and be responsible for their own success. My peer, emphasizes following instructions and organization. Our students are learning important skills, but the nature of our classrooms are different.
Third, does anyone look at the educational research? I bet not. Education is, at best, a social science, so research has to be rigorously conducted to be valid. I’m skeptical.
In some cases, reading might be one, the educational goal actually be testable. In those cases, research should guide the teacher.
Truly creative people in any profession are those who have mastered the fundamentals and so know what they are “departing†from.
Charlie Parker said something very similar, like learn the scales, practice, practice, practice, and then you can finally play.
I agree with Mike Amtonucci. I think it’s imperative that good teachers master the fundamentals. In systems like the one in which I work, that’s not always the case. And frankly, even with a script, teachers like that will fail by any and every standard.
If teachers have indeed mastered the fundamentals, and can communicate them, scripts ought to be optional. I don’t know, for example, if you make kids love reading by following a script.
I’ve followed pre-written lessons to teach math, and I did better with them, as I’m totally unqualified to teach math. But I’ve also seen pre-written lessons for novels that were total crap, and I’m fairly convinced the teacher I found using them hadn’t actually bothered to read the books he was teaching.
Scripts can vary in quality just as much as teachers. If administrators get good teachers, and stop making people like me teach math, we may not need scripts at all.
how do you define success?
In physics, it’s easy: If your students can answer a few basic questions, such as: How do I put a 100kg ball into orbit? What is the difference in power consumption between leaving a 100W incandescent build and 15W CF bulb on for 1 hour (in dollars)? How many light bulbs (of type X) does it take to overload a standard 15 amp circuit? How does an air-conditioner work? etc… The number of questions that a physics student should be able to answer is huge, but the number of basic principles is pretty small (18th century motion and optics, 19th century electricity and gas, iirc). Algebra is in. Calculus is out.
For a subject like English or American Literature, it’s a bit harder to agree on a standard. I’d go for a Great Books path, but I’m a reactionary who would never be hired as a teacher.
I have degrees in both Physics and CS, and I do, so you’re trivially wrong.
Sure you do Rags, I bet you’re just thrilled when someone gets on a physics forum, someone who has absolutely no experience or education in the matter, and tells you how to do your job.
I bet engineers solicit opinions all the time from non-engineers on how to construct bridges.
No, no, Mike, you can’t just scurry from one position to another!
You said, and I quote, “Engineers and architects would not give a crap what he has to say…”. Right?
And I disproved your statement (trivial, but fun nonetheless).
And just to be clear what we’re talking about, physics is a discipline; biology is a discipline; math is a discipline; and so on.
Ed research is not; it’s just pap for the weak-minded, the lame, the sick, the halt and the blind. Clear, Mike?
“I bet engineers solicit opinions all the time from non-engineers on how to construct bridges.”
No, they don’t. But I’d be willing to bet that Ed-schoolers would be happy to tell engineers to make sure the bridge has plenty of self-esteem.
Michelle – you say One size does not fit all, although it might fit many. That doesn’t make the size (or the person it doesn’t fit) wrong or bad, but I’ve got to teach them ALL. No exceptions. So please let me have more than one size.
No one disputes this.
The Direct Instruction developers were well aware that every student is different. The curriculum includes allowances for differentiation – each student is assessed based on initial knowledge and placed in the lesson sequence accordingly. Children’s placements are monitored and adjusted from then on, based on things like what sorts of practice they need.
Furthermore, the DI teacher is trained to adapt lessons on the fly based on feedback. During the scripted lessons, the students should be making responses on average 10 to 14 times a minute. The teacher listens to those responses for any signs of misunderstanding, and if those signs appear immediately adapts the lesson to correct those.
Sadly the Direct Instruction curriculum we are discussing here does not work with severely mentally-disabled children, but then “creative teaching” generally doesn’t either. Hopefully in the future various geniuses will mean we can teach literally every child, though I suspect that in many cases the breakthrough will be something like a medical ability to fix the brain, rather than anything teaching alone can accomplish, no matter how inspired.
> I bet engineers solicit opinions all the time from non-engineers on how to construct bridges.
But engineers are expected to know how to build bridges.
Rags,
Your “proof” amounts to nothing, as you have not presented one single fact to back it up.
Tell you what let’s do, you and I are both college educated with several degrees between the two of us. Let’s pick a subject neither of us has been educated on, write an an op-ed about it telling the professionals in that discipline how to do their job, and let’s see if anyone, much less a newspaper, gives a crap. Then let’s head over to some of their professional forums and see if any of them care.
Or if you prefer let’s stick to building bridges. We can write about how engineers are wasting money by spending too much on steel and tell them we know of a better way to calculate what they need, let’s see how many of them care.
Your problem, and Julian’s and host of others, is that you all believe education is a black and white issue. It isn’t. What works for you in physics isn’t going to work in education.
Allen,
Of course you assumed all teachers don’t know what they’re doing. As someone who spends 45 hours a week in a school I beg to differ.
how do you define success?
That seems to me the core of the problem – the wrong people are always defining success.
Physics is a special case in that it’s frequently a terminal science course at the HS level, and in that many of the students taking it have an above average personal motivation for doing so.
Most of the time, however, the correct answer should be “success is learning all of the skills and information required for subsequent education.” Ultimately, if the student doesn’t have the foundational resources to learn the material from their next course(s), then their prior education was not successful – no matter what they did or did not learn.
No, no, Mike, you can’t just scurry from one position to another!
You said, and I quote, “Engineers and architects would not give a crap what he has to say…â€. Right?
And I disproved your statement (trivial, but fun nonetheless).
You two are talking about different things. Mike was saying that engineers and architects wouldn’t accept criticism from someone who is unqualified in those fields; you’re saying that engineers and architects would accept criticism by such a person of someone or something in an entirely different field that you also know nothing about.
Mike hasn’t changed his position; neither have you. However, neither of you is actually communicating with the other.
Mike’n'Taxes said:
“As someone who spends 45 hours a week in a school I beg to differ.”
And still failing…