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You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink
More than 20 years ago when I was struggling with the wacky teaching methods at my children’s elementary school, I spent hundreds of hours at the local university pouring through the research in an effort to find evidence in favour of things like direct instruction and drill. In my naïveté, I thought that, if I could find research proof, the school would switch to more sensible methods. But there was precious little research being done on teaching methods at the time.
What a difference 20 years makes! Now there is a mountain of research on teaching methods, almost all of it supporting direct instruction and drill. A case in point is this recent Harvard study which found that grade 8 students learn more math and science when their teachers allocate more time to lecturing and less to group problem-solving activities.
Sadly, however, I was wrong in my belief that education leaders would endorse things like direct instruction and drill if they were presented with research about their merits. Obviously, something more galvanizing is needed.