Research on Direct Instruction: 25 Years beyond DISTAR

Description

This book presents a description of Direct Instruction and a meta-analysis of research on Direct Instruction. The term "Direct Instruction" as used in the book refers to instructional programs developed by Siegfried Englemann and his colleagues, including DISTAR (Direct instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading) and DISTAR Language (Direct Instruction System for Teaching and Remediation). After an introduction, chapters in the book are: (1) "Teaching: The Roots of Direct Instruction"; (2) "Features of DI Instructional Programs"; (3) "Myths about Direct Instruction"; (4) "Background for the DI Meta-Analysis"; (5) "Results of the DI Meta-Analysis"; (6) "Project Follow Through" (a federally funded program to evaluate different approaches to educating economically disadvantaged K-3 students); and (7) "Additional Documentation." The book notes that the commercial Direct Instruction programs were successful with the full range of teacher and student populations. Contains 86 references and numerous tables of data. Appendixes contain a list of Direct Instruction Programs and a list of Direct Instruction articles by category. (RS)