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Intervention: Direct Instruction

Overview

This report focuses on a family of interventions that includes all Direct Instruction products (DISTAR and Language for Learning). We use Direct Instruction to refer to this family of interventions, as well as to all versions past and present. Direct Instruction includes teaching techniques that are fast-paced, teacher-directed, and explicit with opportunities for student response and teacher reinforcement or correction. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) English Language Learners topic also reviewed the effects of a Direct Instruction program called Reading Mastery (SRA/McGraw-Hill) on the skills of children in elementary school; the findings are reported in the WWC English Language Learners intervention report Reading Mastery/SRA/McGraw-Hill.

Research

One study of Direct Instruction met the WWC evidence standards with reservations. This study included 164 special education preschool and kindergarten children from a Child Development and Mental Retardation Center at the University of Washington in Washington state.1 This report focuses on immediate posttest findings to determine the effectiveness of the intervention.2 The WWC considers the extent of evidence for Direct Instruction to be small for oral language, small for print knowledge, small for cognition, and small for math. No studies that met the WWC evidence standards with or without reservations addressed phonological processing or early reading/writing.

Effectiveness

Direct Instruction was found to have no discernible effects on the oral language, print knowledge, cognition, and math skills of special education students.

  Oral language Print knowledge Phonological processing Early reading/ writing Cognition Math
Rating of effectiveness No discernible effects No discernible effects na na No discernible effects No discernible effects
Improvement index3 Average: +1 percentile point
Range: -7 to +6 percentile points		 Average: -3 percentile points na na Average: -1 percentile point Average: +8
na = not applicable
1 The ECE topic includes studies with preschool and kindergarten children when the majority (60% or more) of children in the sample are in preschool. In this study, there were six preschool classes and two kindergarten classes and the mean age of the children was under five, indicating that the study meets this criterion for inclusion. The WWC was unable to obtain the exact sample sizes separated by age; however, the ratio of preschool to kindergarten classrooms meets the criterion described above. For further details on inclusion criteria please see the Early Childhood Education Protocol.
2 The evidence presented in this report is based on available research. Findings and conclusions may change as new research becomes available.
3 These numbers show the average and range of student-level improvement indices for all findings across the study.