instructional psychology

Question 1

how can psych help us support more effective teaching & learning environments?

what questions are we asking to answer this

Answer 1

• how effective is teacher’s method & approach for all students
• how might learning env influence students learning

Question 2

role of the environment

further reading

Answer 2

• those interested in raising achievement in schools attend to many environmental factors, including leadership, organisation, grouping, curriculum, and school culture (Muijs et al., 2004)
• have been high levels of debate regarding instructional methods and processes in schools, often focusing upon lesson planning and structures, or upon features of the learning environment
• towards features of pupils’ immediate learning environment that can be manipulated in order to attain appropriate responses by the learner (De Corte, 2000)

Question 3

underachievement & attainment levels

further reading

Answer 3

• implicit in the term underachievement is notion of potential: a learner ‘ought’ to be achieving better in some way, based upon expectations of them as individuals or as representatives of a particular population (Goodman & Gregg, 2010)
• the extent to which a YP might be considered as underachieving can be stated in terms of academic delay or the probability of this
• discrepancy models effectively discredited (Frederickson & Reason, 1995)
• reminds us attainment in one area of skill may not be reliably predictive of another, bringing some fragility to notion of underachievement
• SES and ethnicity were not found to be key factors relating to attainment (Gillborn et al., 2021)

Question 4

roots in behavioural psychology

instructional

Answer 4

• key factors in a YP learning env that influence achievement
• most effective teaching styles & methods - pictures, repetition, modelling

Question 5

what is instructional psychology

Answer 5

• early - Engelmann and colleagues e.g. Engelmann & Carnine (1982)
• set out to identify features of quality instruction & effective learning
• failure to learn = failure of instruction (Ward et al., 2016)
• theory of instruction

Question 6

theory of instruction

engelmann & carnine (1982)

Answer 6

• 3 core aspects of cog learning:
• learner
• what is taught
• how it is taught
• less emphasis on learner, more on the second bits

Question 7

key principles of instructional psych

solity (2008)

Answer 7

• teach one skill at a time
• teach to high levels of fluency
• separate teaching for skills that are readily confused
• teach most useful skills first
• distributed practice (spacing)
• interleaved learning (mix learning it up)
• contextual diversity
• teach new skills directly and explicitly
• teach meta-cog strategies (understanding how we learn)

Question 8

teaching learning approaches informed by instructional psych

Answer 8

• task analysis & behavioural objectives - planning of and setting targets for learning
• direct instruction - a teaching approach
• precision teaching - the assessment of a teaching approach

Question 9

task analysis & behavioural objectives

Answer 9

• TA: breaks a ‘task’ into a series of the discrete skills & steps required to complete a task - informs behavioural target
• BO: task analysis is used by the teacher to structure teaching
• student learns each discrete skill in turn, moving on to the next skill only when they have achieved the pre-requisite skills
• 2 main characteristics: contain an action, observable
• teachers are better able to plan their teaching activities with an explicit goal for the learner in mind (Ainscow & Tweddle, 1979)

Question 10

evaluating task analysis & behavioural objectives

Answer 10

• -ve: if spread across a pupil’s whole curriculum, a behavioural objectives approach would deliver an extremely restricted & excessively dull educational experience. challenge with resources available
• +ve: regular approach for a small part of every-day can produce considerable & valuable gains in essential skills. key early foundational skills

Question 11

ainscow & tweddle (1979) on TA&BO

further reading

Answer 11

• 2 main characteristics - contain an action & are observable
• allows teachers to plan their teaching activities with an explicit goal for the learner in mind
• attention should be paid to aspects of task analysis such as the ‘step size’ between objectives, the correct ordering of objectives, and the links with overall teaching goals
• critics: if spread across whole curriculum it is extremely restricted

Question 12

instructional hierarchy

haring & eaton (1978)

Answer 12

1. acquisition
2. fluency
3. mastery & maintenance
4. generalisation
5. adaptation

• reflects amount of time and effort whilst learning
• using skill creatively - adaptation

Question 13

direct instruction

Answer 13

• highly teacher-directed & prescribed approach to teaching - Bereiter & Englemann (1966)
• Carnine et al. (2004): “an approach to teaching… that emphasises the use of small group, face to face instruction by teachers and aides using carefully articulated lessons in which cognitive skills are broken down into small units, sequences deliberately and taught explicitly”
• teaching method

Question 14

aims of direct instruction

Answer 14

• teach more in less time
• teach an explicit and specific target
• ensure mastery in a pupils learning by allowing them time to practise their skills

Question 15

principles of direct instruction

Answer 15

• all children can be taught
• all children can improve academically
• low performers and disadvantaged learners must be taught at a faster rate than typically occurs if they are to catch up to their higher-performing peers
• all details of instruction must be controlled to minimise the chance of student’s misinterpreting the info being taught & to maximise the reinforcing effect of instruction
• motivation and relationship

Question 16

haywood’s model of learning (2010)

Answer 16

expressed ability is impacted by motivation, domain knowlede and EF

Question 17

direction instruction & instructional hierarchy

Answer 17

• acquistion - direct teaching, children are introduced to new skills, knowledge & concepts
• fluency - practice, children become fluent in their new skills
• maintenance - children can maintain their performance levels without further direct teaching
• generalisation - children can apply their skills into diff contexts, further teaching may be needed here
• application - children apply their skills to a wider range of contexts

Question 18

basic teaching procedure

direct instruction

Answer 18

1. model - teacher demonstrates
2. lead - the teacher guides or leads
3. test - teacher requires the pupil(s) to perform the skills independently
4. review - teacher retests pupil(s) after varying lengths of time

• this sequence is easy in a one-to-one situation
• but it needs to be adapted to diff formats when teaching groups, to ensure that all pupils are attending & all are equally engaged in learning
• most often achieved through use of unison responding

Question 19

project follow through

research for DI

Answer 19

• ‘largest educational experiment ever’ 1960s
• over 9 yrs the effects of a range of diff educational interventions carried out during the first 3 yrs of schooling were compared (Carnine, 1979)
• 75,000 children across 139 sites
• 9 diff interventions, ranging from highly teacher-directed approaches (SI), to child-centred & discovery-learning approaches were considered
• approaches based on DI were the only interventions to produce +ve outcomes in basic skills, cog skills & affective measures

Question 20

klahr & nigram (2004)

research on DI

Answer 20

• pointed to the effectiveness of DI approaches compared with discovery learning in the area of science education, both in terms of learning basic procedures for designing & interpreting simple experiments & with subsequent transfer & application of this basic skill to the context of scientific reasoning
• Dean & Kuhn (2006) challenged this with a finding that over a longer period of time there were no superior effects of DI

Question 21

evaluating direct instruction

further reading

Answer 21

• overly reductionist - appears to leave little room for learner’s own motivations (Kuhn, 2007)
• but it highlights the way in which teaching a skill directly, concisely, and without environmental distractions, offers the learner a robust and effective opportunity to learn what needs to be learned (Solity, 2020)

Question 22

swanson (2000) - DI

further reading

Answer 22

• examined effects of DI in a large meta-analysis of studies
• combined program of DI and strategy instruction yielded higher effect sizes than DI or strategy alone
• confirmed in a further meta-analysis (Stockard et al., 2018)

Question 23

precision teaching

Answer 23

• teachers of young children, especially those with learning difficulties, will often point out that these pupils have considerable difficulty retaining their learning
• aimed at fluency
• developed by Lindsley (1971) in US as a method for improving learners’ fluency
• involves making daily assessments of progress & providing immediate feedback to both learners & teachers
• enthusiastic take up in UK by a number of educational psychologists in West Midlands in early 1980s

Question 24

key features of precision teaching

Answer 24

• brief structured teaching (of the teacher’s choice) of around 5 mins
• followed by a 1 min probe with random presentation of the target items being learned, to assess progress towards success criteria
• ‘charting’ and sharing of data
• daily

Question 25

when to use precision teaching

children who may:

Answer 25

• struggle to retain new learning
• have gaps in their learning
• are behind in their learning and need to catch up
• require a more structured approach to their learning
• need to work on a specific area of difficulty
• pupils who benefit from practice that is little and often

Question 26

probing/testing

precision teaching

Answer 26

• encourage fluency and accuracy
• timed assessment of performance
• directly related and customised to the skill you are teaching
• measures performance in terms of a rate e.g. responses/min
• teach –> test –> record –> feedback & praise

probe is a list of words

Question 27

research for precision teaching

Answer 27

• continues to be recognised as a potentially powerful & ev based tool (Downer, 2007; Hope, 2013)
• Roberts & Norwich (2010) describe precision teaching successfully employed across groups identified in secondary schools to support reading skills
• more typical accounts in UK illustrate its value as a targeted intervention to teach specific skills for small numbers of underachieving children
• maths (Chiesa & Robertson, 2000; Gallagher, 2006)
• literacy (Reason & Morfidi, 2001; Hughes et al., 2007)

Question 28

precision teaching - lindsley (1971)

further reading

Answer 28

• method for improving learners’ fluency, through daily assessments
• key features of method (Kubina, 2020): pinpointing on specific targets, measurement of behaviours in a manner that involves precision, the recording or graphing of those measures, clear processes that allow for review of the data by the learner and instructor, and for adjustments, accordingly
• perhaps less take-up in wider UK education system (Gallagher, 2006)
• Ramey et al. (2016) also identify PT as an ‘emerging’ approach with young people with learning delays or associated difficulties e.g. ASD

Question 29

implementing instructional psychology

Answer 29

• approaches have tended to be employed in the context of ind or targeted small group work
• in UK context - in line with common practice
• very relevant to EP ind case work in this area
• but can raise the attainment of all children - through application of principles from instructional psych to teaching, learning & curriculum design across a whole school
• DI - particularly in the form of literacy & numeracy instruction, has been widely utilised in the dev of whole class instruction
• others have developed whole school approaches drawing on findings from instructional psych

Question 30

early reading research

solity et al. (2000)

Answer 30

• 6 experimental & 6 comparison schools across reception & year 1
• teachers trained in distinctive instructional principles
• after 2 school years in experimental school children outperformed comparison school on all measures of literacy
• sig impact on learning outcomes of both lower and higher achieving pupils
• Shapiro & Solity (2008) consolidated this ev with an intervention focusing on the phonological skills of children: sig reading gains made by all but particularly in lower (not lowest) achievers in a class group, those who benefitted most were identified as ‘under-achievers’

Question 31

ward et al. (2017) - larger scale applications of instructional psych

further reading

Answer 31

holistic, whole-school approaches are pivotal to raising achievement and closing the disadvantage gap