Reply #8: I've heard a number of lectures on it. [View All]

[Igel]

I don't trust anybody who has a panacea for all the world's problems in a bottle. That's how the PBL and "21st century skill" people tend to be. Zealots. Zealots tend to engage in advocacy-based research. It's one thing to argue a position because you think it's superior; it's another to argue a position with the fervency of fundamentalist faith. Science is built on the former; it's not built on the latter, at least not until the last decade or so (but that's another rant).

The lectures also nearly all dealt with charter schools, where the kids who went in really wanted to be there and the teachers were trained and mentored. Direct instruction gets great results, when the kids want to be there and the teachers are trained and mentored. The students know that they matter and they muster the discipline to do what's needed.

It helps that the controls tend to be wimpy and the students tend to be underperforming. It also helps that the students may improve a lot, but still don't tend to fall very much in the top 10%. Every new educational fad that comes along has great achievement results in the early stages--always for the same reasons. (There's probably a really good monograph there, but it'd never get published.)

One example--in Cleveland, I believe--had students doing the project during class hours but taking *additional* time to learn what was needed, and pretty much only what was needed, for their projects. Takeaway for the true believers: PBL works. Takeaway for the sceptics: Who knew that additional class time produced additional results? However even the sceptics, like me, have to admit that motivation and no discipline is a lot better than no motivation and no discipline (where "discipline" doesn't involve class management but personal determination and commitment). But the zealots don't say it's the motivation that's at work: They insist it's their *method*. Why? Because you can teach the method. If it's based on the motivation of a self-selected cohort or specially recruited teachers, it's not sufficiently generalizable. What the zealots don't want, really, is for theirs to become just another tool. (Which is what it becomes in any event.)

Of great note is the stawman: Nobody uses just "direct instruction" any more. It's usually part and parcel of what's done, but, again--that requires maturity and discipline that used to be provided by parents. It's not now, so instead time has to be taken to lure kids to learn (because, after all, "teach" is a causative verb in the meaning that really counts).