Where PD Ends and Real Training Begins – Education Rickshaw
Most professional development doesn’t develop teachers. No one checks whether you can do the thing that you were supposed to learn at the workshop. In fact, it’s rarely expected, beyond the occasional ice-breaker, that participants even participate.
This is why my experience this week at the National Direct Instruction (DI) Conference, and its emphasis on “Format Practice”, has been so refreshing.
Format Practice: Rehearsal that Works
Unlike what most teacher PD entails, Format Practice is grounded in performance. You take the program materials—scripts, signals, correction routines—and you rehearse them, live, with other educators. You’re expected to deliver instruction, not merely talk about it. There’s feedback. There’s repetition. And there’s a final Check Out form – because demonstrating competence in the skill you paid to learn is not optional.
This is a stark departure from the professional development model that dominates other conferences, where the “object of training” is often a concept or mindset, not a specific set of skills. Here, the object is a program – one built on decades of instructional engineering – and your job is to deliver it with fidelity and precision.
It’s not glamorous; it is training, in the same way that a pilot trains on a simulator or a violinist rehearses scales. It fits perfectly with the subtext of Just Tell Them: Teaching is not merely an act of intuition that is reserved for those who were “born doing it well.” It’s a trainable set of practiced routines.
The Embedded Science of Learning
At the conference, I presented on cognitive science frameworks like Cognitive Load Theory and Desirable Difficulties. But the more time I spend with DI theory and programs, the clearer it becomes: DI operationalizes the science.
- Cognitive Load Theory? The precise wording, carefully selected examples, and incremental introduction of new content manages working memory with efficiency—no unnecessary language, no drowning in the deep end of the swimming pool.
- Desirable Difficulties? Mastery is ensured through carefully calibrated review, frequent responses, and tightly controlled error correction. Retrieval Practice, Interleaving, and Spaced Repetition? Baked in.
What is, frankly, a little annoying, is how DI programs do the things my science of learning colleagues propagate, but few take the next step and mention this in their talks. Maybe they are afraid to get mixed up in the curriculum and publishing wars. Maybe they just don’t have the time or interest to open up one of the programs and see for themselves. This is when Direct Instruction programs are rare examples of the principles in action. Their structure and sequence are dictated by what we know about how learning happens.
The Unfashionable Virtue of Doing the Work
What’s struck me most at the DI Conference is the seriousness of the enterprise. There’s a recognition – largely absent in broader educational discourse – of the urgency that is required by all of us to get better.
In Format Practice sessions, teachers weren’t swapping philosophies. They were correcting each other’s pacing, refining their hand signals, tightening up their error corrections.
It’s all very… unromantic.
But it also reflects a view of teaching that is incredibly rare: one that assumes that effective teaching matters, and that it can be improved through rehearsal and feedback.
If we’re serious about improving education, it’s time to stop pretending that teachers are so old and crusty that the only way to get their buy-in is to use training techniques that we would never use with students. Instead, model to teachers what excellence looks like. Have them practice it. Give them feedback. Ask them to demonstrate proficiency.
The Direct Instruction community does all of that—and doesn’t apologize for it.
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