Talk:Direct Instruction

message: One's perspective of DI often depends on what question s/he is asking: "Does DI conform to my personal philosophy of public education?" or "Is DI effective?" People responding "no" to the former usually see DI as a betrayal of the humanistic, egalitarian  foundations of public education, or as a "canned" or "teacher proof" curriculum deliverable via unskilled teachers. 
Ayn Rand, of whom I am otherwise no big fan, has a useful comment on terms like "effective" or "practical": "The evaluation of an action as 'practical' depends on what it is that one wishes to practice."
Is DI "effective"?  That may well depend on what effect one desires.
These critics ignore the fact that DI achieves the goals of compensatory education...
I rather doubt it.  I expect that in fact they either disagree with the goals (which is not the same as ignoring them), or disagree that DI achieves them.  
For these reasons, I'm npov-tagging the article.
Also, this section needs cites, and I can't seem to google up any quickly.  
Novalis 19:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My judgement is that it went NPOV back in early 2006 and the DI partisans are just more invested than others. Good luck addressing this issue. Rorybowman 01:14, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have access to an academic library, it would be great if you could help find some balancing references.  I tried to do a bit of clean-up just now, but I don't really know much about education, and it's hard to find references on the web without paying Elsevier a zillion dollars.  Novalis 14:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't just now, but don't think it would matter if I did. The "think tank" purchased-religion and purchased-science model generally leads to a tiresome quarrel between religious/ideological/financially-motivated DI proponents and moderate academic claims, which get zotted. One article that made me appreciate how much this is the case was at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020128/metcalf . Trying to introduce NPOV into any of these politically-charged pedagogy topics is about as useful as trying the same with new religious movements in the face of "anti-cult" zealots. I personally find it tiresome. They tend to confuse science with war and believe that truth is a zero-sum game. Hence my "good luck." - Rorybowman 16:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  So far on WP, I've AGF'd and had good luck thereby.  I haven't done much to this article, but the few changes I've made have stuck, so I think there is hope that we can reach a neutral version of the article (even if I believe that DI sounds like some sort of creepy robot indoctrination protocol).  Novalis 17:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Neutrality

message: Anne Tweed appears to be discussing a study, "The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: effects of direct instruction
and discovery learning," that uses generic "direct instruction," not the DISTAR model; therefore, it would appear to have nothing to do with this branch of "direct instruction," but the other, more generic branch of direct instruction.
Derrida316 (talk) 00:42, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove Anne Tweed paragraph?