Explicit Instruction

The original explicit instruction approach was pioneered by Siegfried Engelmann and was later documented by Barak Rosenshine in his Principles of Instruction: Research strategies that all teachers should know.

Engelmann combined knowledge from educational psychology and cognitive science to understand how students learn and used this understanding to design and implement explicit instructional strategies.

Explicit instruction is also based on the application of cognitive science to education, to maximise learning efficiency.

In their study, Teaching the Science of Learning, Weinstein, Madan and Sumeracki highlighted the contribution of cognitive science to our understanding of effective teaching and various learning strategies, including explicit instruction.

One of the most widely known educational research articles is the 2012 meta-analysis of nearly 1200 research studies on education conducted by Professor John Hattie.

Hattie found that a key feature of explicit instruction – teacher clarity, meaning using explicit, clear and unambiguous language – has higher than average effects on student progress.

The science of reading is a comprehensive body of research from the fields of education, special education, literacy, psychology and neurology.

The evidence informs how students learn to read, what skills are involved, how they work together and which parts of the brain are responsible for reading development.

This research has enabled the development of evidence-based structured literacy lessons using explicit instruction for systematically teaching foundational literacy skills.

The five essential components of structured literacy lessons are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) refers to the gap between the actual level of a student’s development and the level of potential development or defined learning goals in knowledge and skills they are attempting to reach.

Locating a student’s ZPD can help teachers plan instruction and deliver instructional scaffolding that enhances the delivery of explicit instruction.

Surface understanding refers to the learning of one or multiple ideas. Deep understanding reflects the creation of relationships between ideas and the extension of ideas into abstract thinking.

Students can then develop a conceptual understanding and ideas that link knowledge, shaping the acquisition of further surface and deep knowledge.

Engelmann’s direct instruction programs remain the best example of an explicit instructional design approach that responds to the acquisition and transfer of knowledge from a surface to a deep level.

These programs follow a pattern in which teachers use examples (deep knowledge), then explain rules and finally allow students to progress to making generalisations (transfer of knowledge).

Automaticity occurs when an activity or process is experienced repeatedly and becomes more automatic, so less attention is required, and attention can then be given to other processes or tasks.

Promoting automaticity in learning allows students to process information quickly and accurately, resulting in more efficient performance.

Automaticity is an inherent component of fluency and is achieved through learning that emphasises practice and repetition. It involves students being able to identify letters, letter patterns and isolated words accurately and quickly.

Students achieve mastery when they can provide an answer as quickly as they can say their name.

The Reading League (2022) demonstrate that a student’s automatic word recognition and comprehension skills can be increased through the effective connection of word pronunciation, letter sequencing and the meaning of a word.

Spaced practice refers to the teaching of a skill over incremental points in time.

Students form connections between concepts during practice as they retrieve information from their long-term memory and combine it with information from their short-term memory, ultimately building their knowledge base.

Explicit teaching uses logical analysis and testing of the content students are to learn as well as appropriate selection and sequencing of instructional examples.

Lessons with multiple learning intentions and several short exercises are more likely to help students achieve knowledge mastery.

The English language is complex and ambiguous, which allows for multiple interpretations and all learners are idiosyncratically capable of interpreting information differently.

In explicit teaching, teachers communicate to reduce errors and misinterpretations. Lessons structure instruction seamlessly through faultless communication of only one logical interpretation by the student so that concepts are learned perfectly.

This technique is fundamental to explicit instruction. Engelmann and Carnine’s Theory of Instruction (1982) prioritises faultless and clear communication between student and teacher, which enables all other aspects of instruction to work.

Mastery learning is based on the premise that all students can learn the content and places the responsibility for learning on the teaching delivered.

Lessons are designed so that the student group learns the information together and achieves the same level of mastery.

Mastery learning complements the practice of grouping students by their ZPD levels rather than year levels. Each lesson includes a limited amount of new information taught explicitly that builds on skills from the previous lesson.

Once introduced, these skills and knowledge recur throughout subsequent lessons.

Teachers present easier skills first so that students can experience initial success and gradually increase the difficulty of skills. This process results in students continually tackling more challenging content.

When students understand the learning intention at the start of a lesson, they are more informed as to what success looks like and how to get there. This dynamic motivates students and maximises their engagement in the lesson.

Black and Wiliam’s (1998) research on classroom assessment shows that clear learning objectives enable students to create a picture of the intended learning targets and self-assess where they are headed and how they will get there, resulting in more committed and effective learners.

Building a set structure for a lesson ensures consistency in students’ application of teaching information.

A set structure ensures high student engagement because they know how their learning is being set up, so they can devote all their attention to what is being taught.

Lessons have three distinct phases, opening, main and closing.

Rosenshine and Steven’s (1986) summary of several teacher effects studies concluded that well-structured lessons include a beginning that contains a short review of prior learning, visible learning intentions, explicit instruction delivered in small steps, guidance during initial practice, extensive practice for students and continuous feedback and corrections.

Student data refers to information gathered about individual students to form a complete picture of student learning and needs.

The most common use of data in schools measures student progress and mastery, as well as data that informs progress achievement such as attendance or student welfare data.

Teachers also use data to inform their instruction so they can adapt and refine their teaching practices and strategies to focus on what students need most.

Engagement refers to the interactivity students have with the lesson content, teacher and fellow students.

Teachers use engagement techniques to elicit frequent written, verbal or movement responses and actively engage the students in learning.

As students actively engage, they are focused, attentive and responsive to the task at hand, thereby minimising off-task behaviour and maximising learning time.

These presentation techniques include signalling, choral responses, individual turns, specific positive praise, pair/share, pronounce with me, track with me, read with me, gesture with me and picking non-volunteers.

Hollingsworth and Ybarra’s (2009) research concludes that when teachers design an objective well and present it to students, this improves students’ understanding of what they will be learning, increases student engagement in the lesson and leads to enhanced student outcomes.

Routines are an important part of an efficient classroom in which lessons run to schedule, learning time is maximised and students are focused on learning without unnecessary distractions.

Teachers communicate routines and expectations as well as their purpose to students to establish positive classroom routines.

As students understand the expectations regarding behaviour, they are empowered to take control of the personal learning behaviours that will lead to their success.

Clear instructions, visual references and opportunities to practise routines enable students to follow them effectively and efficiently.

Pedagogy refers to the principles and methods of instruction.

Effective teaching lessons have built-in mechanisms to challenge students, keep them engaged and on-task, provide feedback about their successes and specify rewards. There is also frequent interaction between teachers and students.

Fisher and Frey (2013) state that students are not ’empty vessels’ into which knowledge can be poured; they need to receive an appropriate level of challenge within a learning environment based on interactions.

They pointed out that according to several studies – including Jean Piaget’s work on cognitive structures and schema (1952), Lev Vygotsky’s work on zones of proximal development (1962, 1978), Albert Bandura’s work on attention, retention, reproduction and motivation (1965) and the work of David Wood, Jerome Bruner and Gail Ross on scaffolded instruction (1976) – learning occurs through interactions with others and specific learning occurs when these interactions are intentional.

Teachers who use published evidence-based lessons can maximise student results if they practise them before teaching.

The less familiar a teacher is with a lesson, the more time they will need to put into practising it before they deliver it.

Differentiation refers to tailoring instruction to the learning needs of individual students and is often known as a solution or a response to intervention for struggling learners.

It enables all students in a group to progress regardless of where they are on the learning continuum.

Questioning students to check for understanding ensures students have learned the content being taught and are acquiring a mastery of concepts and skills.

For example, asking students to respond to a question in unison or randomly picking a student to answer are ways to check if they have learned the content that was just taught to them.

Both approaches are more effective than always selecting a student who is volunteering an answer and then assuming that most of the class has learned the skill or concept.