The Need for Research-Based Instructional Strategies in K–12?

Access to a great education is essential to every child’s success in life. Yet too often poorly researched and ineffective practices get in the way, becoming entrenched in our schools and doing great harm. It’s well past time we insisted on the use of research-based instructional strategies in the classroom.?

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The problem has gained some attention lately due to growing consensus around how we teach kids to read. The field has largely converged around the science of reading, a research-based instructional approach that outperforms other methods that, among other things, largely ignore phonics instruction and ask students to guess at words instead of sounding them out. ?

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Decades of research shows that is harmful. Children need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics and fluency practice to read with ease. They also need to listen to, and then read, great books on engaging topics to build their background knowledge and a rich vocabulary, which supports language comprehension.??

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New policies around the country are requiring schools to adopt resources aligned with the science of reading. But should it really require those kind of efforts to keep disproven, half-baked methods out of schools when the evidence wasn’t there in the first place??

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Research-Based Instruction: English Language Arts and Beyond?

The problem hasn’t been limited to reading. In math, kids endured years of learning "New Math," in which they sat through lessons on content previously reserved for much older students, like set theory—a branch of mathematics that investigates sets and their properties. Time magazine called it one of the worst ideas of the 20th century.??

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There also was a long period when, until recently, K–12 math education focused on rules and procedures and relied on teaching kids tricks to solve problems. It turned far too many students off the subject and kept them from pursuing math-related fields as adults. Thankfully, education leaders today have accepted what research has been telling us for a while; kids need numeracy skills and a clear understanding of how math works and how to apply it.??

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In science, common blunders have included promoting rote memorization of science facts and teaching and re-teaching the scientific method—a model aimed at teaching kids to think and act like scientists—instead of teaching strong content. Some textbooks have chapters devoted to the scientific method but are entirely free of the subject matter itself. Students should be doing science, not just learning the steps of a method. The writers of the Next Generation Science Standards used around the country have sought to correct that mistake, but it’s taking time to build better practices in classrooms. ?

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Look for The Evidence?

So how do we avoid falling into these traps and using poor practices going forward? Education leaders should use materials and practices grounded in research and should spend time, with teachers, carefully studying the research behind programs to ensure it is solid and widely accepted. They should also look to independent reviews of materials.??

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The responsibility to embrace rigorous research also falls on those of us developing textbooks and other curriculum materials for schools. When my colleagues and I created a math curriculum, first for New York schools and then others, we paired mathematicians from higher education and K–12 teachers to write classroom materials based on the strongest available research. Embracing existing research doesn’t mean you can’t innovate. We challenged the status quo by tapping classroom teachers as co-writers and embedding professional development in instructional materials. But following the research and evidence base was our North Star. Similarly, when developing English language arts materials, we studied research by ACT on the importance of complex texts and evidence that background knowledge was critical to reading. For more on that topic, check out a recorded webinar in which researchers discuss the relationship between background knowledge and reading comprehension.?

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Teachers are the most important in-school factor affecting student achievement, but it’s hard for them to do their job well without good classroom materials. I hope recent headlines around past mistakes will lead to change, especially given the harmful impact of the pandemic on student learning. With so many kids behind, we need to get serious about improving public education in America. Let’s keep unproven theories out of the classroom and open the door to evidence-based approaches that spur learning and help all students thrive—in school and in life.?