The Best Description of Explicit Instruction I’ve Ever Heard

Effective explicit instruction is all about clarity, and breaking down information, and minimizing the load on working memory.

It’s episode 31 of Anna Stokke’s Chalk and Talk podcast: Exploring Evidence for Equitable Education with Nidhi Sachdeva and Jim Hewitt

The whole episode is fantastic with numerous insights and academic references, but I’d like to quote some snippets from a few minutes in particular that really had me at the edge of my seat:

(22:35) Jim: I think people sometimes have the wrong idea about explicit instruction. I’ve seen people refer to it as if it were the same thing as lecturing, or rote learning, or passive learning, or they think it’s just regular teaching. And I think those are misrepresentations and misunderstandings, because explicit instruction is something bigger than all those things.

Explicit instruction is about teaching in ways that support learning, and it generally involves a bunch of different things.

First, as a teacher, you have to be very aware that students have limited working memories, so this means you can’t teach them too much at once or they’ll get overwhelmed. You need to teach new concepts or skills by breaking down material into chunks that are easy to understand. You need to think about what students already know, and don’t know, and try to connect the new concepts in the lesson to ideas that are already familiar to them. And you need to be really precise in your language, and you need to be really sensitive to the vocabulary you’re using because unfamiliar words can easily confuse students.

… Another part of the process is showing students how to apply the new knowledge – provide them with some examples … and then you need a period of guided practice where students try to apply what they’ve learned with support from the teacher.

And then ultimately, with practice, and support, and feedback, students will be able to apply the new knowledge or skills independently. And at this point, the students own the new knowledge.

… One of the ways you know you’ve been successful in explicit instruction, is if you know you have a high success rate and students can grasp the new ideas quickly. If you can do this, then students will feel good about themselves, they’ll increase their confidence, and they’ll be more motivated – one of the best ways to motivate a student is to help them be successful at it.

All of these components together, that’s what makes up explicit instruction.

…

(25:57) Nidhi: Effective explicit instruction is all about clarity, and breaking down information, and minimizing the load on working memory. This is why we say … explicit instruction is inclusive instruction. If you’re teaching a class using explicit instruction, then a greater number of students can benefit from it.

…

(27:14) Jim: The point that Nidhi and I are making is not simply that explicit instruction is effective – the point we’re trying to make is that it’s both effective and it helps level the playing field. It prevents struggling students from being left farther and farther behind.

… In some ways it should be obvious why explicit instruction supports equity – because if you’re explicit to students about what they’re trying to learn, if you break it down for them, if you provide lots of guidance and feedback and practice, then students don’t have to guess what the teacher wants them to learn.

The problem we sometimes have with inquiry-based or discovery-based methods is that they tend to privilege students who have backgrounds like the teacher, you know, students who have a sense of what the teacher wants, or who have access to educational resources at home. And this can widen the achievement gap instead of narrowing it.

(29:00) Nidhi: … when a child, let’s say, does not receive explicit instruction in a topic like math – but then they have to do an assignment or some kind of task, and it was done in one of the more popular forms of teacher like inquiry-based or discovery – that child then goes home, and if they have access to support at home, then … their parents will probably be doing the job of doing explicit instruction.

If the parents are not available or not able to do that for some reason, and they have means, then they’ll send the child to a tutoring center or some kind of learning space where that specific requirement will be fulfilled so that the child can do the task.

This is the big problem: at the end, the task was achieved, but the explicit instruction was still missing, and that’s where the challenge with equity comes in that the ones who had these means available to them, they did it, and the task was completed. But the ones who didn’t will not be able to do that, and that just continues to widen this gap for the learners who do come from disadvantaged backgrounds.