Direct Instruction

Description of the Strategy

Direct instruction (DI) was originally developed by Siegfried Engelmann in 1964, and refers to curricula that are based on the application of instructional design principles and instructional delivery techniques developed by Engelmann. The original DI curricula were developed under the title of the Direct Instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading (DIS-TAR). Later, when a language curriculum was created, the meaning of DISTAR changed to Direct Instruction System for Teaching and Remediation. Engelmann is the senior author of more than 70 DI curriculum programs. Each curriculum usually contains one half to a whole school year of lessons and is extensively field tested with students before publication. In particular, student errors are compiled and analyzed to improve wording, change sequences, ...