| Historically, teacher education practices have been shown to be based on “common sense” or tradition (Hudgins, 1974), rather than on what is known about effective teacher preparation (Campbell, 1971; Hinnrichs, 1976). The literature is mostly piecemeal and unsubstantiated, and fails to describe an overarching, intact, and empirically validated system of teacher education (Cruickshank & Metcalf, 1991). A central question, therefore, is whether or not the traditional structures that underlie teacher education efforts are sufficient to address the increasingly difficult challenge of preparing teachers to instruct effectively. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two ways in which preservice special educators can be taught to use direct instruction by empirically testing two formats for preservice teacher education: a direct format and a reading/discussion format. The content taught through both of these formats was the same. Preservice special educators teamed the importance of planning for implementation of three elements of direct instruction: pre-instructional set, preparing the knowledge base for instructional content, and instruction. In the direct format, direct instruction constituted both the curriculum taught to preservice teachers, and the model of teacher education. The reading/discussion format was similar to the Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA; Stauffer, 1969). In this group, students developed declarative knowledge about direct instruction through guided, active comprehension of expository material (Moore, Readence, & Rickelman, 1982). The effects of these formats on preservice special educators' knowledge of direct instruction, lesson planning for direct instruction, and implementation of direct instruction were investigated. No significant differences were found between the two treatment groups on all three measures. With respect to participants' knowledge of direct instruction, it may be concluded that the information presented was more important than either method of presentation. The finding of no difference on lesson planning for direct instruction may be attributed to differences in the pre-test and post-test lesson planning tasks. Confounding factors such as participants' grade level, cohort, and/or supervisor appear to have had an effect on post-test implementation scores. |
