Direct Instruction is an incredibly powerful approach to teaching with a robust and wide ranging evidence base. Although you can buy field tested ready to go teaching programmes that are based on DI theory, there is much that can be applied to the everyday classroom. DI theory can help answer two of the biggest pedagogical questions: what should we teach and how should we teach it. DI is the closest we have got to a complete, scientific framework for approaching teaching and learning.
Tom has been teaching for nearly twenty years, having worked in schools in South London, Bangkok, Penang and Lagos. He is currently an Assistant Head Teacher in Croydon. He is the author of Explicit English Teaching and has contributed chapters to The ResearchEd Guide to Explicit and Direct Instruction, The ResearchEd Guide to Literacy and Teaching WalkThrus. He has advised the DfE, Ofsted and some of the UK's biggest academy chains and provides CPD across the country on cognitive science, explicit instruction and curriculum design.
