I caught up with Pam Kastner at the NIFDI National Conference on Direct Instruction in Eugene for a conversation about what she’s taking away from the week and what she sees in the schools she supports. We talked about why high quality explicit teaching only works when leadership and systems are in place too, the role of common language across a school, and why the science of reading needs the science of learning underneath it.
In this Interview:
- Why implementation, leadership, and systems matter as much as the programs themselves
- How common language and common instructional practices give at-risk students the sameness they need across tiers
- Why DI principles like immediate error correction and frequent responses belong in every subject, not just reading
- What the science of reading misses without the science of learning, from massed vs. spaced practice to moving to fluency before mastery
Read the full transcript
[00:04] Zach: Hello everyone, welcome back to the NIFDI Conference 2026 in Eugene, Oregon. I’m here with Pam Kastner. How are you doing, Pam?
[00:13] Pam: I’m doing well. It’s been a great week.
[00:15] Zach: I wanted to ask you a few questions, because I know that you’re learning about Direct Instruction and you’ve been to all sorts of different sessions. What have you learned so far since you’ve been here?
[00:26] Pam: Well, I think what has happened this week is that my knowledge and practice around Direct Instruction have been reinforced and augmented. The sessions I’ve gone to have reaffirmed the tenets and principles of Direct Instruction — how it is the most effective manner in which to teach students if we want them to learn. And the sessions I’ve attended have also been bridging theory and practice, which I think is really important. Of course, we need to be resting on the research, but we certainly want to know how to apply that in the classroom. So the sessions have really been grounding us in both the knowledge — the research — and the practices of Direct Instruction.
[01:07] Zach: You can’t ask for more than that when you’re a teacher, right? I know you and I overlap in a lot of ways. We’ve worked with adults in many different settings. What do you think is the role of implementation — and training, I suppose — when it comes to getting these practices into place? I say that because I feel like we’re in a world where a lot of folks have a lot of knowledge, but it’s the follow-through, or closing that knowing–doing gap, that’s often the problem. What are your thoughts on that?
[01:40] Pam: I like how you said “follow-through,” because it makes me think of Project Follow Through. I think leadership plays a key role in that. Teachers can come to the conference, learn these practices, and engage in them in their own classroom. However, if you want sustainability and equity for all students, leadership and systems really need to be in place too. So the wonderful thing about the conference has been that there are sessions that support leadership, that support systems integration of Direct Instruction. And I think that’s really critical to ensuring that it’s a systems approach, so that all teachers have the opportunity to teach in a way that’s going to be the most effective for their students.
[02:18] Zach: It has to be a package thing. You have to deal with the whole elephant, not one bite at a time, as Doug Carnine says in a recent post he did, which I love. I’ll link it, because it’s awesome. With Direct Instruction — capital DI, that tradition, Engelmann’s tradition — I think a lot of people are missing out on that. They see the programs, or they just see the teacher’s moves, and they forget about the implementation support. They forget about the role of leaders. They forget about the role of systems, even parents, at every level. How do we create the conditions so that we control all the variables we can control, so that kids learn? You often talk about reading, and I’m curious if you have any insights into the next phases of the science of reading and where we need to go next.
[03:12] Pam: Well, you mentioned Doug Carnine, and Doug has done a number of Substacks recently — one on our profession as a trusted profession, and the components we need for that. He also recently did one with Reid Lyon, another giant in the field, and some webinars with him. They’ve been talking about common language and common instructional practices. So at the school level and the district level, we need to be speaking the same language. When I say “direct instruction,” whether it’s big DI or little di, do we all know what that means, and do we understand the research? Do we understand how it’s implemented in the classroom? So I think common language, and then common instructional practices — and that’s a strength of Direct Instruction.
For example, with many of the schools I have the honor of working with over the long term, whether it’s state departments of education or school districts themselves, one of the places to start — which Reid and Dr. Carnine have also recommended — is that common language and those common instructional practices. All our students deserve structures that are consistent and cohesive across a school system, but especially our students who are at risk. They need the most sameness and often have the least sameness. It’s being done one way in Tier 1, another way in Tier 2, and another way in Tier 3, with different instructional programs and practices.
So that’s where Direct Instruction comes in, big DI and little di. Anita Archer was here, and she says explicit instruction is the little di — I think you recently had a podcast with her where she stated that — where we want cohesiveness among all our practices. So I think that’s such a value of this conference: teachers understanding the tenets and principles of Direct Instruction and how they can be applied, big DI and little di, to create systems that are equitable and sustainable for all students and for teachers.
I think teachers are craving high-quality instructional materials that truly result in student learning and student acceleration. And that’s Direct Instruction, and the programs that were developed by Zig Engelmann and those who have followed in his steps — for example, the recent new edition, Reading Mastery Transformations, and coming out pretty soon, Corrective Reading 2027. So when students are very much at risk, in a lot of the schools I work with, I recommend Direct Instruction. It’s a curriculum that supports teachers as well as students — it’s educative, teaching teachers how to teach while they’re teaching the program.
In the schools I’ve had the honor to work with, whether it’s big DI or little di, what we want to see is these tenets and principles applied across the school day. Of course, we want teachers applying them with fidelity and integrity, as intended in the programs, but we want to see these practices throughout the day. So say we’re engaged in Corrective Reading, or explicit instruction in our core classrooms. I’m a literacy geek — yes, I want to see that in literacy, but I also want to see it in mathematics. I want to see it in science. I want to see it in social studies. When a student makes an error in social studies, I want to see the teacher able to do immediate error correction. I want to see many opportunities for students to respond — teachers knowing what those options might be, whether it’s choral responding, whiteboards, ABCD cards, or turn and talk to a partner with a jot-down. All these really good principles of instruction — you want to see them throughout the day. And when you have a DI program, it teaches you what those tenets and principles are.
Every teacher wants students to learn. I have never met — and I know you probably haven’t either — a teacher who didn’t want their students to learn. And when they engage in big DI and little di, students learn. I am a firm believer that behavior precedes belief. When we support teachers in understanding deeply the principles of Direct Instruction, both big DI and little di, and we support them in translating that into their classroom and practicing it, every single time students learn more. And then teachers often want to know more about what I’m teaching them related to the simple view of reading, or Scarborough’s reading rope, or orthographic mapping, or set for variability — all these knowledge components that are necessary but not sufficient. My own simple view has always been knowledge times practice, if we want better outcomes for kids. And I think DI fits that simple view — which is not empirically validated in any way! It’s just from watching teachers and supporting them. I’m failing retirement in many ways, and I’ve been in education for 40-some years. That’s what I’ve seen really work, really elevate teachers, and change cultures and climates in ways that make a difference for kids and teachers.
[08:45] Zach: I always tell this anecdote from my own life. I learned a lot about cognitive load theory. I knew all about it — I was even presenting on it — and I didn’t actually quite understand the principles until I taught a Direct Instruction program, at which point I realized, “Oh, 90 percent of this is review and 10 percent of this is new.” And if I really reflect and do the math, even knowing about cognitive load theory didn’t stop me from having maybe 70 percent new and 30 percent review. Actually doing it, and seeing the results in front of you — that behavior ends up changing future practice and helping me generalize to different subjects.
[09:28] Pam: Well, Carl Hendrick is one of the keynote speakers here too. I’ve taken a deep dive, like you, into cognitive load theory, working memory, and in particular the instructional hierarchy — marrying those with my practices when I’m doing professional development and supporting teachers. I think the science of reading — thank you, Emily Hanford and others — has really been elevated to a general population, in addition to the literacy geeks. But I think we’ve missed something almost like a tier underneath it — at the foundation of it, or integrated with it — and that’s the science of learning.
A lot of the teachers I work with are engaged in effective practices that align with the science of reading but haven’t addressed the science of learning. So they’re providing massed practice when interleaved practice or spaced practice is more appropriate, or they’re moving students from acquisition into fluency-building practice before they’ve mastered the skill. So they’re practicing errors, and we want errorless learning. I’ve been integrating all of that into everything I do, and I think it’s definitely a missing piece — along with the science of implementation. Like three Venn diagrams: the science of reading, the science of learning, and the science of implementation.
But Direct Instruction is so powerful and impactful for student learning, and for helping teachers teach in that way, whether it’s through a program like Corrective Reading or Reading Mastery, or little di. I have never had teachers say they feel like they’ve lost the art. They say, “Now I have more time for the art, because my students are learning — they’re learning at an accelerated pace.” So that’s why I’m a big believer that behavior precedes belief. When I have the honor of working with schools and engaging in these little di and big DI practices, teachers become—
[11:34] Zach: Yeah.
[11:35] Pam: —on fire for these practices, and champions for them. So that’s why we’re here: to continue to learn as educators. We must continue to learn. It’s a moral imperative. And what an honor it has been here this week to learn from you, and Dr. Hendrick, and Evan Haney, and Sean Duncan — those are the sessions I’ve been in. I’m really honored to be here.
[11:59] Zach: Awesome, Pam. Thank you so much for talking to my audience. Listeners, thank you for tuning in. I’m going to keep recording these all week. It’s just been a blast so far here at the NIFDI conference in Eugene.
