Students need more of it

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As a progressive educator in New York City for 30 years, I thought I had all the answers. The best teaching had to do with inquiry, with “higher-level thinking,” with “student-centered” project-based learning. I still believe in all of that, but I now understand that these are just part of the picture.

What students–especially struggling students–also need is teacher-directed explicit instruction.

By explicit instruction, I am speaking of the “I-do, we-do, you-do” strategy, where the teacher models a concept or skill, engages students in targeted practice, checks and corrects understanding, and then gives students more independent practice, with more checking for understanding and corrective feedback.

As an assistant principal in a public school in Manhattan, I have begun to use explicit instruction more in my own teaching and have focused on explicit instruction in my professional development with the history and physical education teachers I supervise.

When I taught ninth grade Global History to an integrated co-teaching, or ICT, class last year, I used explicit instruction in ways I had not done before. When I asked students, who were a mix of general education students and students with disabilities, to do Harvard’s Project Zero’s “see-think-wonder” protocol, where they look at an image and consider the ideas and questions it brings up for them, I realized that many students had trouble with thinking and wondering. They needed modeling, practice, and feedback.

There is ample evidence that explicit instruction works for everyone, especially struggling learners. This research dovetails with the “science of reading” practices that have been transforming reading instruction to favor a phonics-based approach.

Explicit instruction is also common sense.

If I need to learn something I don’t know anything about–tie a specific fishing knot, say–any amount of “productive struggle” would not be so productive. I would need someone to show me what to do, multiple times, and give me plenty of practice and feedback as I attempted it myself.

My daughter in high school needs explicit instruction. She has severe dyslexia and dysgraphia. She goes to a small, progressive public school in New York City, similar to one that I taught in for 10 years, that is focused on project-based learning. This is the type of school that I believe in, but this school does not prioritize explicit instruction, and my daughter is struggling.

Small, progressive schools in New York City often create project-based curriculums that focus on issues of social justice, both for educational and political reasons. But if you are not effectively teaching the students who struggle most, you are perpetuating educational inequity.

In my history and physical education department meetings last year and this year, I have focused our work together on explicit instruction — a shift from the project-based learning strategies I had favored in years past. Many of these explicit instruction strategies do not take much time to learn or use, and some of the teachers I supervise are already starting to use them.

Some of these same teachers have told me that they have been wary of using explicit instruction because they were told previously that instruction needs to be “student-centered.” But learning does not have to be student-driven in order for it to be student-centered.

While it’s true that explicit instruction is teacher-directed, it offers opportunities for student participation as well as the teacher to call on students to check and correct understanding. It is also true that explicit instruction is not mentioned in the Danielson framework, the rubric that New York State uses for teacher ratings.

Student-centered learning is often conflated with the idea of “productive struggle,” when students figure things out on their own, such as the meaning of a text or the rule for a set of problems. Productive struggle may work for some students who have the background knowledge, skills, and desire to figure things out on their own. But productive struggle does not work for my daughter. As she said one night at dinner, “I can’t learn if I have no idea what to do.”

Explicit instruction, done well, is not a return to traditional teacher lectures. It is a deliberate progression of modeling, guided practice, and independent practice of a skill or a concept.

Explicit instruction is not contrary to project-based learning — they are complementary. Students do need to be engaged with authentic tasks and real-world problems, such as writing letters to elected officials about current issues of the world. But along the way, they also need explicit instruction on topics such as how to identify a policy goal and structure an email.

Project-based learning helps ensure that learning is meaningful and long-lasting for students. Explicit instruction helps ensure that students learn at all.

As New York State transitions to a Regents-optional high school graduation regime, I hope that project-based learning expands to become the dominant curricular model. And I hope that explicit instruction expands along with it.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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