Principles of Instruction
This review was carried out for The International Academy of Education (IAE), by Barak Rosenshine, University of Illinois. It is a not-for-profit scientific association that promotes educational research, based at the Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Arts in Brussels, Belgium.
They identify 10 principles:
1. Daily review
2. Present new material using small steps
3. Ask questions
4. Provide models
5. Guide student practice
6. Check for student understanding
7. Obtain a high success rate
8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
9. Independent practice
10. Weekly and monthly review
As you will see, these fit well with our ‘six-steps’ approach.
from the Introduction
This pamphlet presents ten research-based principles of instruction, and suggestions for classroom practice. These principles come from three sources: (a) research on how our brain acquires and uses new information; (b) research on the classroom practices of those teachers whose students show the highest gains; and (c) findings from studies that taught learning strategies to students.
The first source of these suggestions is research in cognitive science. This research focuses on how our brains acquire and use information. This cognitive research also provides suggestions on how we might overcome the limitations of our working memory when learning new material.
A second source of the instructional ideas in this pamphlet comes from observing the classroom practices of master teachers. Master teachers are those teachers whose classrooms made the highest gains on achievement tests.
A third source of suggestions for classroom practice came from the research of cognitive scientists who developed and tested cognitive supports and scaffolds that helped students learn complex tasks.
Each of these three sources has suggestions for classroom practice that are included in this pamphlet. An interesting finding is that there is no conflict at all between the instructional suggestions that come from each of these three sources. In other words, these three sources supplement and complement each other. And the fact that the instructional ideas from three different sources supplement and complement each other gives us faith in the validity of these findings.