Theoretical foundation
Skinner
Information-processing
Gagne

Characteristics

Criticisms

Criticisms of Directed Instructional Model

Criticisms of directed methods. The greatest current criticisms of directed methods focus on their irrelevance to the need of today's students. Critics of directed instruction cites several problems:

1. Students cannot do problem solving. Many parents and educators feel that traditional methods have too narrow a focus. They feel these methods break topics into discrete skills and teach them in isolation from how they are applied, which diminishes learners' problem solving and reasoning skills.

2. Students cannot apply skills. Directed instruction also is blamed for resulting in what Whitehead called "inert knowledge". That is students can do skills when asked to do them, but they cannot recognize situations where the skills apply in real life. Knowledge is "inert" because students do not spontaneously transfer it to where it is useful.

3. Students find learning unmotivating and irrelevant. Some critics of directed methods feel that teaching skills as separate, discrete units tends to isolate students from each other and from the authentic situations students find motivating and relevant.

4. Students cannot work cooperatively. Observers of economic trends seem to feel that economic survival depends, in large part, on how well workers work together to solve problems of mutual concern. Directed instruction seems geared toward individual learning, so it had been accused of isolating learners from each other and neglecting much-needed social skills.