Engelmann Glossary
- Affective models: One of
the three general approaches to compensatory
education used within Project Follow
Through. The affective models (Bank Street, Responsive Education,
and Open Education) shared the assumption that the best way to
improve a child's school performance was to focus upon experiences
that fostered higher self-esteem. Proponents of this approach
maintain that higher self-esteem energizes learning of basic skills
and higher order problem solving. This approach has widespread
support within schools of education.
- Basic Skills models: One of three general approaches to compensatory
education used within Project Follow
Through. The basic skills models (Southwest Labs, Behavior
Analysis, and Direct Instruction) shared the assumption that the
best way to improve a child's school performance was to focus upon
the lower order skills. Proponents of this approach maintain that
higher order skills of thinking and problem-solving, and heightened
self-esteem, result from mastery of the lower skills. This approach
is not popular in most schools of education, but is consistent with
specialized instructional methods that have demonstrated dramatic
achievement (e.g., Johnson & Layng,
1992).
- Behavioral
analysis: The study of the relationship between an individual's
behavior and the environmental conditions that affect the behavior.
Within Engelmann's system of instruction, a behavioral analysis is
used to discover deficiencies in the learner's repertoire of
knowledge and skills, and to provide remedial instruction.
- Cognitive
models: One of three general approaches to compensatory
education used within Project Follow
Through. The cognitive models (Parent Education, TEEM, and
Cognitively Oriented Curriculum) shared the assumption that the best
way to improve a child's school performance was to focus upon the
higher order skills of thinking and problem-solving. Proponents of
this approach maintain that lower order basic skills and self-esteem
follow from the mastery of higher skills. This approach is very
popular in most schools of education.
- Direct Instruction: A method of instruction initially developed by
Siegfried Engelmann while teaching his own children in the 1960s,
and refined and field-tested with thousands of learners. A primary
feature setting Direct Instruction apart from most other curriculum
packages is that the Direct Instruction curriculum is field-tested
with children and modified to ensure effectiveness. The teacher is
in face to face contact with the students, often in small groups in
a semi-circle. The teacher is in control of the interaction,
telling, showing, modeling, demonstrating and prompting rapid active
responding of the learners. Teachers follow carefully constructed
scripts that have been designed to maximize learning and minimize
confusion through faultless instruction.
Implementation involves frequent systematic assessment. For example,
a teacher is required to ask 300 or more questions each day, and to
check to ensure that children are at 100 percent mastery in reading
every five or ten lessons (American Federation of Teachers, 1998).
- Empirical:
Depending upon observation (experience) via the senses. In
behavioral sciences the term is often times contrasted with
statements based upon theory or conjecture rather than observations.
- Examples:
Within Direct Instruction, examples refer to stimuli that exemplify
the quality or qualities of the concept. Examples are often
presented by the teacher who accompanies the example with a specific
signal that indicates the stimulus
is a member of the class of stimuli that have the requisite quality
or qualities (Compare with Non-examples.)
- Faultless
Communication (Faultless Instruction): A sequence of
instruction, frequently involving examples and non-examples in a
well-crafted order, which logically leads to an accurate
communication of the concept and eliminates the possibility of
confusion. The determination of "faultless" is structural
rather than behavioral. That is, it is possible to analyze a
communication to assess if it is faultless without reference to the
behavior of the learner.
- Interpolation:
The process of "inserting" between other things. As used
within Direct Instruction, interpolation refers to the process, by
which a learner might include novel items within the range of
previous examples. For example, if the previous examples of a
concept ranged in size from 1 meter to 3 meters, we might expect a
learner to "interpolate" new items larger than 1 meter and
smaller than 3 meters. Compare with extrapolation
- when the learner generalizes outside
the range of examples.
- Learning
Mechanism: The hypothetical construct used metaphorically by
Engelmann and Carnine to situate the learning process of the
learner. The mechanism is assumed to have two properties: (1) to
have the capacity to learn qualities from examples, and (2) to have
the capacity to generalize on the basis of sameness of quality. If
one prefers to avoid the use of a hypothetical construct, one can
substitute "the learner" for "learning mechanism"
in Engelmann's writing.
- Logical
Analysis: Within Engelmann's system of instruction, a logical
analysis refers to the careful and systematic construction of
instructional stimuli so that they can communicate without
misunderstanding. Logical analysis leads to
faultless instruction.
- Non-examples:
Within Direct Instruction, non-examples or negative examples refer
to stimuli that do not possess the quality or qualities of the
concept. Non-examples are often presented by the teacher who
accompanies the non-example with a specific signal
signal that indicates the stimulus is not a member of the
class of stimuli that have the requisite quality or qualities
(Compare with Examples.)
- Parsimonious:
Requiring relatively fewer or less extreme assumptions. The Law of
Parsimony suggests that when one is faced with two competing
theories that both explain a phenomenon, that one select the theory
that requires the fewest or less extreme assumptions.
- Planned
Variation: A methodology used to assess the effects of multiple
treatments. In Project Follow Through various models, each a
composite of theoretical, curricular and procedural components, were
compared in terms of outcomes on selected dependent variables.
Since the comparisons were among treatment packages that differ in
terms of many independent variables, the design was only able to
assess the relative impact of the composite treatments and not the
particular components that comprised each model.
-
Project Follow Through: A massive program designed to follow through on
the gains of Project Head Start, Project Follow Through was a
significant part of President Johnson's War on Poverty. According
to the Association of American Educators
(1998) the project involved approximately 700,000 disadvantaged
students living in 170 communities. Parents were offered a variety
of educational models from which to select the program for their
children. The Office of Education and the Office of Economic
Opportunity provided funding. Designed as an experiment using a
planned variation design, various
approaches and models of teaching children were compared on more
than 9,000 Follow Through and 6,500 Non-Follow Through (control)
elementary school students. The nine education models evaluated
could be divided into three categories: Basic Skills, which focused
on teaching basic component cognitive skills; Cognitive, which
focused on the child's discovery and construction of higher levels
of knowledge; and Affective, which focused on boosting the child's
self-esteem as a means to induce achievement.
- Quality: As used by Engelmann, this refers to any irreducible feature of an
example. Qualities include all physical properties of stimuli that
are capable of being detected by a person.
- Stipulation:
The process of specifying by agreement. In Direction Instruction,
the term stipulation refers to the situation where a prior sequence
of examples "agree" in the sense of being highly similar.
Once many highly similar examples of a concept have been presented,
there is a tendency for the presentation of a dissimilar item to be
labeled as a non-example by the learner.