Cavitational Modeling 1
Cavitational Modeling: A Practical Framework to Maximize the
Role of Modeling in Direct Instruction
A body of research undertaken between 1987 and the present informs much of our current practice about direct instruction and modeling in the classroom. This research draws from studies in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, constructivist theories and brain research. Much of this research focuses on teaching skills using direct instruction. The work of Berek Rosenshine (1990, 1997) defines some of the elements of direct instruction and discusses modeling as an approach that is at the core of effective direct instruction. We build on the work of Rosenshine by further defining the nature and characteristics of direct instruction and by presenting two practical resources for teacher use. The first is a schematic that places the elements of direct instruction in relation to each other in the context of a lesson. Direct instruction is presented as the catalyst for exciting students about learning (cavitation) and setting the stage for increasingly independent use of new skills and knowledge in new contexts (gradual release of responsibility).The second resource is a list, supported by some elaboration, of the components of an approach for effective modeling during direct instruction. We call this approach Cavitational Modelling.
Objectives and Purpose
In this article we attempt to provide teachers with two models that we feel are helpful to conceptualize effective direct instruction. Indirect instruction, through cooperative learning, activity centers, or forms of computer directed discovery, is another viable approach to teaching. However, we are focusing our attention specifically on direct instruction where the teacher models new learning as a major strategy in the lesson.
The first resource we present in this article is a schematic that allows teachers to visualize all of the elements of a lesson at once and to place direct instruction in the context of the whole lesson. The second resource provides an acronym-based list of the essential characteristics of strong direct instruction. We call this accumulated list of characteristics, Cavitational Modeling.
By presenting these two resources, we are helping teachers, theorists, researchers, and professional development leaders to present the role and characteristics of direct instruction in an easily conceptualized, easily remembered, and easily adapted context. Additionally, the model will help teachers to visualize the gradual release of responsibility that must characterize the transition between the teacher modeling and the student attempting to repeat what was modeled.
Background to the Theoretical Framework
The research about teaching undertaken during the last thirty years tells us a great deal about how to teach effectively. This research comes from many orientations and branches of learning, including developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and more recently, from constructivist theories and brain research.
Studies have shown us that structured and goal oriented thinking strategies engage and challenge students and support group problem solving efforts (Adams, 1989). Experiences that expand the learner’s mental structures are of value to learners (Dewey, 1969; Piaget and Inhelder, 1969). Effective learning also provides active engagement for learners to reorganize and revise information, become exposed to opportunities for sudden, non-linear insights and pattern recognition, use a variety of personal talents and abilities to create meaning, consider various perspectives, respond affectively as well as cognitively, receive support from strong models, and have opportunities to reflect (Caine and Caine, 1997; Healy, 1987, Jensen, 1998). This emphasis on the role of strong modeling in effective direct instruction emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the characteristics of strong modeling. Constructivists teach us that the learner undergoes a process of internal construction of meaning by relating physical experience to understanding (Bodrova and Leong, 2003). Inconsistencies in experience cause the learner to modify personal models for how things work. The overt actions of the learner can precede real understanding (Gallagher and Reid, 1981).
Brain research supports our practices of timely and early intervention to impact the way the brain is wired to facilitate future capacity to learn (Shore, 1997: Jensen, 2005; Diamond, 1998; Restak, 1993; Santrock and Yussen, 1992). Both physical and social interactions influence the learning (Auger and Rich, 2007). Activity is a key feature of a stimulating learning environment (Healy, 1987) and activity stimulates and sustains neural pathway development (Shore, 1997; Wolfe, 2001).
Many studies related to effective teaching have been undertaken specifically in relation to the effective teaching of thinking skills. These studies add to our body of knowledge about strong teaching by identifying types of instructional knowledge (Zohar, 1997), approaches we can choose to teach skills (Prawat,1991), and a hierarchy of skills that need to be taught (Kuhn, 2000). Studies into the concept of the learner’s will and ability to self-regulate when learning (McCombs and Marzano, 1990), help us to understand the interaction between the learner’s skill development and their choices to use, or neglect to use, the skills they have. Emphasis in many jurisdictions on the development of exemplars to serve as models of effective response shows us the forms that modeling can take beyond those used in direct delivery by an expert teacher.
Each of these earlier studies enriches our understanding of effective modeling in direct instruction.
“Cognitive apprenticeship” is a term used by researchers to identify the stages of showing an apprentice how to do a skill based task effectively (Collins, Brown and Holum, 1991). The Collins, Brown and Holum model for cognitive apprenticeship reflects the four elements of traditional trades-based apprenticeships: modeling, scaffolding, fading, and coaching. This cognitive apprenticeship model shares much in common with the model for direct instruction that is presented here. Direct instruction includes the steps of modeling, scaffolded support as students attempt what was modeled, and increasingly independent practice as students attempt a new task in contexts that allow for the gradual removal of support until full independence is achieved (consolidation and application). Following modeling by the expert or teacher, both cognitive apprenticeship and direct instruction promote the gradual removal or distancing of support to allow the apprentice or learner to try it on their own. Support is available in both models as support is needed, until mastery is achieved.
The applicability of terms to apprenticeship, and to the classroom when direct instruction is used as a teaching strategy, is identified below in Table 1.
Table 1: Matching a Cognitive Apprenticeship Model to a Direct Instruction Model
Cognitive Apprenticeship Model / Direct Instruction Modelmodeling / modeling
scaffolding / scaffolding
fading / consolidation ( with scaffolded practice)
coaching / application ( with gradual release of responsibility)
Direct Instruction: From Rosenshine to a Flexible Schematic
Modeling and supported practice are key to both the cognitive apprenticeship approach and to direct instruction in a classroom setting. Modeling is done to give students the opportunity to observe, engage in, and invent or discover expert strategies in context (Collins, Brown, and Holum, 1991). In the work setting the apprentice observes the master worker. In the classroom, the student observes the teacher.
The research of Berek Rosenshine (1997) identifies some of the characteristics of effective modeling in the classroom. He refers to these as instructional elements. Rosenshine’s instructional elements include:
- Providing procedural prompts specific to the strategy being taught – The teacher would question, prompt and probe in ways that give students the language of the procedure they would use to complete a task successfully.
- Teaching the cognitive strategy using small steps – The teacher would identify the end goal of the instruction and then deconstruct that goal to create a sequence of steps to address incremental learning.
- Providing models for appropriate responses – The teacher, as the expert learner, provides opportunities for students to see and hear about what the expert learner would be likely to say or do in their response.
- Thinking aloud as choices are being made – The teacher models personal thought processes by explaining them as modeling is done for the students.
- Anticipating potential difficulties – The teacher anticipates the responses students are likely to have to the new learning and plans to address those during instruction to alleviate any potential for confusion.
- Regulating the difficulty of the material – The teacher makes decisions about what to teach based on knowledge and pre-assessment of the group of students being taught.
- Providing a cue card to prompt an element of the task – The teacher teaches procedural language to the students as they acquire new skills so that students can choose to repeat the procedure in similar circumstances.
- Guiding student practice – The teacher provides scaffolded or supported opportunities for practice in a classroom situation where help is readily available when/if the student starts to make mistakes.
- Providing feedback and corrections – The teacher provides timely and detailed responses to students’ practice attempts; responses are aimed at keeping students on the right track as they practice new learning.
- Providing and teaching a checklist – The teacher instructs students in strategies for using a checklist to edit and self-check so that students can ensure that they have addressed all elements of a task prior to its evaluation.
- Providing independent practice – The teacher structures sufficient quality learning time for students to work independently on the task, while gradually releasing responsibility for the products to the students as they show evidence of mastery.
- Increasing student responsibilities – The teacher makes conscience and informed decisions about when to remove instructional support to let the students attempt tasks with increasing independence.
- Assessing student mastery – The teacher examines the products of students’ efforts and determines the level and quality of the work that students produce as evidence of their learning.
These professional actions constitute the desirable elements of strong instruction in Rosenshine’s direct instruction model. They describe a teacher who is intuitive, clear, and sensitive to evidence of students’ learning.
A Resource for Visualizing the Elements of Direct Instruction
By applying the approach to direct instruction that is outlined by Rosenshine, we have developed a graphic representation of a direct instruction resource that profiles the role of introductory activities to generate students’ interest in the topic, modeling to demonstrate the new learning, questioning to ensure understanding, and the gradual release of responsibility for learning through proportional use of scaffolded practice as students consolidate and apply their new learning. Additionally, students have an opportunity to review what they have learned at the conclusion of the lesson as they revisit new learning and create metacognitive (Heller 1986; Bondy, 1988) awareness (knowing what they know). This model is being used currently in one university to represent the instructional elements of direct instruction. It is presented here as “The Phases of Instruction In A Direct Instruction Model”.
Using this model, the direct instruction lesson would start with a motivational activity, which is sometimes referred to as a hook, or as activating prior knowledge. This is a brief segment of the lesson, intended to ensure students’ attention and interest in the topic. Following a brief motivational introduction to the topic, the teacher, as expert learner, explains, tells, and shows students the new learning through modeling. Modeling is accomplished with strategies that ensure that it is effective, focused, and efficient in its delivery. Following the modeling portion of the direct instruction lesson, the teachers uses recapitulation questions about the topic to be certain that students have understood the new learning. Questioning is followed by opportunities to practice and use the new learning in contexts similar to those that characterized the modeling portion of the lesson. As the teacher observes the students during practice, it will become evident when students understand, and are ready for more challenging applications of the new learning. The teacher offers these opportunities to apply the new learning while gradually releasing responsibility for the learning. During the process of the gradual release of responsibility during applications, the teacher observes carefully but allows for exploration of ideas and strategies so that students have appropriately supported opportunities for trying out the new learning in situations that offer more constraints (i.e., time limits, new contexts, layer “puzzles” or problem solving) that challenge the students’ ability to make sense of the new learning in increasingly realistic contexts. The direct instruction lesson concludes with the teacher summarizing the new learning from this lesson in a brief series of statements designed to ensure that students attach language to their new learning and are fully aware of what they now know that is new learning for this lesson. This creates metacognition. That is, the students have an opportunity to show that they know what they know. This will enable them to be more aware of having this skill or knowledge for the future when it may be applicable to another context.
This diagram has proven to be a memory aid for new teachers as they learn about the elements of direct instruction and learn to consider ways to manage the time during any direct instruction lesson. The dividing lines within the diagram should be considered to be flexible “arms” that can be moved around the circle to represent proportions of the total lesson time to be allotted to any one aspect of the direct instruction. Direct instruction lessons can expand to take up more than one class so all of the elements of direct instruction may not be addressed in each lesson.
Cavitational Modeling in a Direct Instruction Approach:
Creating an Image through Analogy
As molten rock moves toward the surface of the earth, it bubbles from the heat, then cools quickly, leaving behind traces of the bubbling in its formation of rock structures. This process is called cavitation. Similarly, the teacher causes changes in students’ thinking as they witness modeling and learn new strategies and skills by watching and listening to the expert learner, their teacher. Modeling is an effective and efficient approach to have students learn how to do something. It is one of the major instructional strategies taught to new teachers in Faculties of Education.
To create an analogy, the modeling that students experience as they watch the expert learner during direct instruction is comparable to the bubbling, changing, and cooling that create rock formations. To capture this analogy, we offer the concept of cavitational modeling. Cavitational modeling is modeling done in a way that generates keen enthusiasm (bubbling or motivating), provides demonstration from the expert learner for the new learning, and allows for the gradual movement toward learner independence with the new learning (consolidation and application). Cavitational modeling recognizes that how modeling is done matters to the learner who is engaged in watching and listening.
Discussion: Connecting Our Model to Research Evidence
In developing the “Phases of Instruction” diagram to help teachers visualize the elements of direct instruction, and to clarify our approach to recent research using modeling to improve students’ writing (Maynes and Scott, 2008), we have expanded on the Rosenshine model for direct instruction. Cavitational modeling delineates how we should engage in modeling, based on previous work which identifies that we should make use of this strategy.
We spent an average of twenty hours of instructional time in each of four elementary school classrooms modeling writing strategies for students. During that time, we examined our own practices to determine what we were doing when we modeled that seemed to extend learning. Pre- and post-test examples of students’ writing gave us clear evidence of the efficacy of our strategies and fueled our interest in defining precise details of how we were accomplishing the modeling that created such dramatic improvements in students’ writing in several genres (Maynes and Scott, 2008).
The interest that students consistently demonstrated in improving their writing sparked the analogy to rock cavitation. The interest and enthusiasm we saw in students made us think of the action of molten rock as it bubbles and cools. The solidification of rock in this process paralleled the sudden eureka moment when a student grasped the difficult skill of writing that was being modeled. Using this energized approach to modeling in a direct instruction lesson, we were able to teach Grades 3 to 6 students how to write effective and clear definitions, how to write comparative essays using a minimum of four criteria for comparison and including compound-complex sentences to compare, and to write argumentative essays that considered a minimum of three options against a minimum of four criteria. The resulting writing that students were able to produce astonished their teachers!
What are the characteristics of the modeling that we used to produce these results during direct instruction? As stated earlier, we have called this group of approaches to modeling, Cavitational Modeling. To aid memory of the characteristics, we have developed the acronym CLEAR to attach certain characteristics.
Cavitational Modeling includes strategies that:
- base modeling on the dominant learning styles of the students, making new ideas concrete and visible.
- include concrete learning goals (or expectations).
- tie expectations or learning goals to visual representations.
- are active.
- are supported by regular review and practice.
Each of these characteristics is expanded below (Table 2) to identify what teachers would do to ensure effective cavitational modeling for maximum learning benefit.
Table 2: The Elements of Cavitational Modeling
C = Concrete and Visible /- students can see (visual learning style)and hear (auditory learning style)what the teacher is demonstrating
- the teacher attempts to include many learning styles in the modeling to make the learning easily accessible to students
L = Learning Goals or Expectations /
- instruction is standards based
- learning expectations are clear
- goals for learning represent noticeable extensions of previous learning (up to 3 years beyond usual grade level goals)
- high expectations for student achievement are consistent; achievement is challenging and noticeable to students
E = Expectations are tied to visual representations /
- organization of ideas precedes tasks
- graphics and frameworks are used when and where appropriate
A = Action /
- new learning is connected to prior learning
- pace of the modeling is brisk
- modeling is accomplished with energy
- modeling is achieved through a variety of learning styles (verbal, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic)
- students’ interest is created through the style and pace of the modeling (use of humour, exaggeration, active student involvement); this creates excitement and interest (cavitation)
- modeling uses precise, technical language to create metacognitive links
- modeling is literacy connected; language skills are developed in context
- modeling style creates an immediate need to know; students are aware of upcoming tasks they will apply the skill to
- modeling includes cyclical advancements in the focal skill; skill advancements are reviewed regularly
- modeling includes compacted incidental teaching
- learning is chunked so that new learning is accessed by students every 3 to 5 minutes
R = Review /
- lessons provide plenty of practice time to use new skills
- lessons progress through the phases of instruction (see diagram above) to match students’ progress (i.e., students move ahead to new learning when they are ready to move ahead, not on a pre-set schedule)
- practice moves from closely scaffolded practice
- progress is constantly being assessed as students work (not after each product is complete)
These approaches to modeling during direct instruction have shown potential in initial research. Further study will help us determine the extent to which individual components of Cavitational Modeling may influence student learning.