Sorry, yeah, I see what you mean now. The crunchy bits were meant to be a few studs of hard content holding down the rest until people filled in more of the whole hard structure of the subject with their own research, with the excitement serving as, well, yeah, a sales pitch. To study. It’s okay to try to talk people into studying, right? :P
But yeah, that turned out to be a serious miscalculation on my part. Do the notes added at the beginning as a replacement for the whole long thing help to start clearing stuff up any?
Your notes seem to mainly consist of a long-winded apology for being long-winded. So, no. However, the link to the correct DI article on la Wik was helpful. Suggest you move it to the top. You may also want to steal the one shining jewel of that Wiki article, the summarising sentence: “Direct Instruction (DI) is an instructional method that is focused on systematic curriculum design and skillful implementation of a prescribed behavioral script.” Thank you, anonymous Wiki editor, although “skillful implementation of” is superfluous.
...although “skillful implementation of” is superfluous.
Man, if you only knew how wrong that is. Just something like the timing of the teacher’s signal for the student to respond can be crucial. It’s not that complicated to train a teacher to do it right, but if you don’t, hoh-boy.
To explain, imagine you have a group of very young, very naive children, and you need to induce knowledge of the basic-form concept “getting wider” (a single-dimensional comparative [‘comparative’ meaning the value of each example is relative to the previous one rather than absolute]).
You have for this a logically unambiguous communication, made of a series of positive and negative examples that is sufficient to zero in on that concept in conceptspace by showing what it is and is not, with the ordering and juxtaposition of minimal differences (between negatives and positives, to show difference) and large differences (between positives, to show sameness) tightly controlled, and a consistent prompt for the learner to properly process each example, and a test that they have done so integrated right in to the sequence. (Again, guided induction.)
The teacher is presenting examples through continuous conversion (moving their hands farther apart and closer together, or leaving them the same), and saying “watch the space between my hands. I’ll tell you if it gets wider or doesn’t get wider.” and then “it got wider/didn’t get wider” (for the first maybe five examples, which are modeled) and then “did it get wider?” for the rest, to which the kids go “yes/no” (or any clear response they can reliably produce; it can be transformed later anyway).
This works great if done properly, but imagine if the teacher messes up just the timing by asking the question while their hand is still moving? The kids will be lost!
If you then still can’t find anything worthwhile in what I have to say, I’m sorry for wasting your time right now, and I’ll work with the people who are already at a closer inferential distance to the topic until I can drill back far enough to communicate clearly with people at a greater distance like you.
The point I’m making is that any method whatsoever requires some degree of skillful implementation; consequently, the phrase does not convey any information. All you’re doing is giving an example of what a skillful implementation looks like in this case, namely, attention to timing.
Okay. I was thinking ‘not superfluous’ as in a non-trivial detail in actually turning around a failed school serving a disadvantage population. But saying that it ‘conveys NO information’ is technically correct, by a very narrow definition. Although I think the wiki poster made the right choice in including it, since there are often logically implied things that none-the-less should be pointed out to the reader.
Anyway, did you find anything worthwhile in those two comments I linked? Or should I stop bothering you for now?
I like to think that I’m pretty good at taking things in the best way possible. I’m happy to have been told by one person in a private message, “good on ya for having a thick skin”, and I’m trying to live up to that, but I have never had the pleasure of dealing so extensively with people who are just like me in regards to this quality I’m vaguely gesturing towards right now.
I mean, I knew intellectually that the people on less wrong are unusually awesome in that way like you, but it had still never really been my personal experience before, so my emotional belief was much weaker, and I was starting to feel like, “Oh, maybe everyone really is offended that I had the gall to show them such a terrible mess and ask for feedback. Maybe I should have kept trying to work it over by myself until it was perfect rather than just making an attempt...”
Oh, and if you found my later comments to have more useful detail, am I doing a good job continuing that improvement with this (first half and second half) or is that a step in the wrong direction?
You seem to be moving in the right direction: In the comments you linked, you are laying out some jargon of the DI and explaining what it means in simpler words. If at all possible, you might also supply examples taken from actual teaching; for example, when you say
Or it could be that the learner is missing at least one logically necessary concept underlying the task, in which case the stim-loc tells you what to probe for, and the resp-loc tells you how.
it would be helpful if you could descend from the abstraction for a moment and say “For example, one time I was trying to teach trig using DI; the student was not getting why the double-angle formulas work, so the stim-loc told me I should look for a faulty understanding of [something], and I checked that by [something else]...” Failing real anecdotes, a fictional one (clearly marked, of course!) using a real DI locus schema could also be helpful. But at any rate you’re now explaining what sort of techniques are involved and what the ‘detailed curriculum’ is to consist of, and my desire for anecdotes is more about how to present it rather than what to say.
Sorry I promised I’d type that section out yesterday, but didn’t. Honestly, I’ve been juggling so many things I’d need to kage bunshin myself with my computer to handle them all.
(Yes that’s right, I just made a “Nartuto” reference. :P
Can you imagine what a “Naruto” equivalent of HPMOR would be like?
...I can’t. Other than “awesome”.)
Anyway, rather than typing out the section, I found a scanner and signed up at photobucket.
Here’s the page. The section I was referring to starts at Prescriptive Applications of Programs [“programs” meaning the task analysis], and ends at the Summary.
Okay, I’ll type out the section on “Prescriptive Applications of [Task Analysis]” from page 143 of Theory of Instruction and the accompanying figures tomorrow (been working on less than four hours a night of sleep for the past three days, so I’ma keep this short right now).
The concrete example there is based off:
We suspect that the students do not understand the explanation … “When the water-laden air rises over the mountains, it cools and can no longer hold all the water. The result is rain.”
And the two examples of probed items are both correlated-features concepts.
But yeah, if you could possibly find the time to check the online catalogs of any university libraries near you to see if they have the book… because if you could easily get your hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be too hard to just try skimming the section and chapter summaries.
I’ll also ask in the DI community for advice on good examples of places in programs that teach cognitive routines, and ask if they can give me the reference to the experimental evidence on the 1-20 vs 1-99 thing, and so on.
Sorry, yeah, I see what you mean now. The crunchy bits were meant to be a few studs of hard content holding down the rest until people filled in more of the whole hard structure of the subject with their own research, with the excitement serving as, well, yeah, a sales pitch. To study. It’s okay to try to talk people into studying, right? :P
But yeah, that turned out to be a serious miscalculation on my part. Do the notes added at the beginning as a replacement for the whole long thing help to start clearing stuff up any?
Your notes seem to mainly consist of a long-winded apology for being long-winded. So, no. However, the link to the correct DI article on la Wik was helpful. Suggest you move it to the top. You may also want to steal the one shining jewel of that Wiki article, the summarising sentence: “Direct Instruction (DI) is an instructional method that is focused on systematic curriculum design and skillful implementation of a prescribed behavioral script.” Thank you, anonymous Wiki editor, although “skillful implementation of” is superfluous.
Man, if you only knew how wrong that is. Just something like the timing of the teacher’s signal for the student to respond can be crucial. It’s not that complicated to train a teacher to do it right, but if you don’t, hoh-boy.
To explain, imagine you have a group of very young, very naive children, and you need to induce knowledge of the basic-form concept “getting wider” (a single-dimensional comparative [‘comparative’ meaning the value of each example is relative to the previous one rather than absolute]).
You have for this a logically unambiguous communication, made of a series of positive and negative examples that is sufficient to zero in on that concept in conceptspace by showing what it is and is not, with the ordering and juxtaposition of minimal differences (between negatives and positives, to show difference) and large differences (between positives, to show sameness) tightly controlled, and a consistent prompt for the learner to properly process each example, and a test that they have done so integrated right in to the sequence. (Again, guided induction.)
The teacher is presenting examples through continuous conversion (moving their hands farther apart and closer together, or leaving them the same), and saying “watch the space between my hands. I’ll tell you if it gets wider or doesn’t get wider.” and then “it got wider/didn’t get wider” (for the first maybe five examples, which are modeled) and then “did it get wider?” for the rest, to which the kids go “yes/no” (or any clear response they can reliably produce; it can be transformed later anyway).
This works great if done properly, but imagine if the teacher messes up just the timing by asking the question while their hand is still moving? The kids will be lost!
Also see this and this
If you then still can’t find anything worthwhile in what I have to say, I’m sorry for wasting your time right now, and I’ll work with the people who are already at a closer inferential distance to the topic until I can drill back far enough to communicate clearly with people at a greater distance like you.
Thanks.
The point I’m making is that any method whatsoever requires some degree of skillful implementation; consequently, the phrase does not convey any information. All you’re doing is giving an example of what a skillful implementation looks like in this case, namely, attention to timing.
Okay. I was thinking ‘not superfluous’ as in a non-trivial detail in actually turning around a failed school serving a disadvantage population. But saying that it ‘conveys NO information’ is technically correct, by a very narrow definition. Although I think the wiki poster made the right choice in including it, since there are often logically implied things that none-the-less should be pointed out to the reader.
Anyway, did you find anything worthwhile in those two comments I linked? Or should I stop bothering you for now?
Ok, ok, I didn’t mean to be quite that harsh. Your later comments did give a bit more useful detail. :)
I… thank you =]
I like to think that I’m pretty good at taking things in the best way possible. I’m happy to have been told by one person in a private message, “good on ya for having a thick skin”, and I’m trying to live up to that, but I have never had the pleasure of dealing so extensively with people who are just like me in regards to this quality I’m vaguely gesturing towards right now.
I mean, I knew intellectually that the people on less wrong are unusually awesome in that way like you, but it had still never really been my personal experience before, so my emotional belief was much weaker, and I was starting to feel like, “Oh, maybe everyone really is offended that I had the gall to show them such a terrible mess and ask for feedback. Maybe I should have kept trying to work it over by myself until it was perfect rather than just making an attempt...”
Oh, and if you found my later comments to have more useful detail, am I doing a good job continuing that improvement with this (first half and second half) or is that a step in the wrong direction?
You seem to be moving in the right direction: In the comments you linked, you are laying out some jargon of the DI and explaining what it means in simpler words. If at all possible, you might also supply examples taken from actual teaching; for example, when you say
it would be helpful if you could descend from the abstraction for a moment and say “For example, one time I was trying to teach trig using DI; the student was not getting why the double-angle formulas work, so the stim-loc told me I should look for a faulty understanding of [something], and I checked that by [something else]...” Failing real anecdotes, a fictional one (clearly marked, of course!) using a real DI locus schema could also be helpful. But at any rate you’re now explaining what sort of techniques are involved and what the ‘detailed curriculum’ is to consist of, and my desire for anecdotes is more about how to present it rather than what to say.
Sorry I promised I’d type that section out yesterday, but didn’t. Honestly, I’ve been juggling so many things I’d need to kage bunshin myself with my computer to handle them all.
(Yes that’s right, I just made a “Nartuto” reference. :P
Can you imagine what a “Naruto” equivalent of HPMOR would be like?
...I can’t. Other than “awesome”.)
Anyway, rather than typing out the section, I found a scanner and signed up at photobucket.
Here’s the page. The section I was referring to starts at Prescriptive Applications of Programs [“programs” meaning the task analysis], and ends at the Summary.
Okay, I’ll type out the section on “Prescriptive Applications of [Task Analysis]” from page 143 of Theory of Instruction and the accompanying figures tomorrow (been working on less than four hours a night of sleep for the past three days, so I’ma keep this short right now).
The concrete example there is based off:
And the two examples of probed items are both correlated-features concepts.
But yeah, if you could possibly find the time to check the online catalogs of any university libraries near you to see if they have the book… because if you could easily get your hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be too hard to just try skimming the section and chapter summaries.
I’ll also ask in the DI community for advice on good examples of places in programs that teach cognitive routines, and ask if they can give me the reference to the experimental evidence on the 1-20 vs 1-99 thing, and so on.