This paper grew out of research conducted by the first author on a pilot implementation of Direct Instruction curricula--Reading Mastery and Language for Learning--in three classes (K, 1 and 2) in an elementary school whose population consists almost entirely of disadvantaged children. Direct Instruction is usually understood primarily as a form of communication that helps students to acquire complex knowledge systems. However, one of the first findings of the research was marked change in the social behavior of children. For example, as early as the placement testing phase of the implementation (September, 1998), students were told that the testing would help their teachers select the right reading materials for the children. The students expressed interest in the testing process, making sure that every student had the opportunity to meet with the first author. When the first author (who conducted most of the testing) periodically visited classrooms, the students asked when they would be starting to "do reading." When the materials arrived and were distributed to classrooms, the students were excited that they could begin "reading" now.

Students were placed in groups according to their skill level, with a teacher who had chosen to teach a particular curriculum (reading and/or language) based on her interests and expertise. After a three week transition phase, teachers reported several interesting observations. First, the students were quite attentive, and disruptive behavior had decreased significantly. Second, students were making sure that all group members were getting the opportunity to answer questions and respond to the prompts. Third, equity and equal participation became increasingly important to the children. Students would prompt other students to take their turn, for example. Fourth, students also became increasingly concerned that everyone participate appropriately. Fifth, students self-correcting and helping others became routine in the groups. For example, when the teacher said, "We can play 'Say it fast' if everyone says this together.", the children would visible straighten up, turn their eyes toward the teacher and remind those sitting near them to pay attention. This suggests that group contingencies became a powerful reinforcer within the reading group.

More specific examples of changes that reflect the development of learning communities include the following.

1. Increased attention overall to lesson activities.
2. Precise attention to signals from the teacher; e.g., "Get ready"; or "Your turn" or "My turn"; and hand gestures.
3. Precise attention to the behavior of other students--especially skill at distinguishing between on-task and off-task behavior and between more proficient and less proficient behavior.
4. A decrease in off-task behavior.
5. An increase in generally helpful behavior, such as helping other students to give right answers or changing seating position so that other students can see the teacher or the book she is holding.
6. A great deal of enthusiasm about the lessons.

In other words, Direct Instruction lessons seem to foster precisely the skills (perceptual, action), sentiments, and moral principles that enable students and teachers to participate competently in them. The lessons are not adequately understood merely as one-way teacher "transmission" of information, or even as two-way transmission of information. Instead, lessons are better understood as a larger whole--namely a learning community--with shared understanding of aims, norms about appropriate behavior and about the roles of students and teacher, values, and skills.

Certainly the details and the sequences of teacher-student communication explain children's acquisition of knowledge, as described in Theory of instruction (Engelmann & Carnine, 1991). Sociological theory helps to explain how Direct Instruction fosters the larger social formation--learning communities--within which such communication occurs. First, Georg Simmel (1909) described the origins of "society" and the socializing effects of society in an early paper entitled "Social interaction as the definition of the group in time and space." Simmel wrote:

Society exits whenever several individuals are in reciprocal relationship. This reciprocity arises always from specific impulses or by virtue of specific purposes...That which constitutes "society" is evidently types of reciprocal influencing. Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes "society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing (Simmel, 1909).

This is exactly what happens in Direct Instruction lessons, which are scripted and which use the same formats (sequences of tasks and wordings) from lesson to lesson. For example, teachers and students are supposed to engage in certain behaviors in response to each other. As part of a reading lesson the teacher says, "What word?" Students say the word, and the teacher acknowledges the correct response. Or students make an incorrect response, and the teacher corrects the error in a typical way (e.g., by giving the correct answer and then re-asking the question). These interaction sequences are highly regular from moment to moment and from lesson to lesson. The result is that students learn not only subject matter (e.g., to read), but also learn the "rules" and skills for social behavior in lessons. In fact, when teachers make mistakes, students invariably correct them. These corrections reveal students' "commonsense" understanding of the social order and moral obligations of lessons and the group. Following are some examples. The first set are examples of students "correcting" of the errors of a substitute teacher--the second author.

1. "Sit on the chair."
"Miss S sits on the chair."
"Not on the floor here?" (Substitute teacher)
"No, we gotta all see."

2. "You gotta get us ALL to say it."

3. "We get to read a whole thing (points to a column of words) by ourself."
Three other students lean in and touch the columns of words on the presentation book.
"Me and then JT and then N and then..."

4. "Hold the book up here." (higher)
"Not on your knee."

5. "JT said it wrong. Make him do it again."
"He said 'Oh.' It's 'Ah.'"
"He's gotta do it again."

6. "You ain't pointin' at the word."

7. "That's not the sentence we're on." (referring to the story book)

8. "We can't do this Take Home!"
"Yeah, we didn't finish the story!!"
"I can't answer this question. It's later. We didn't finish."

The next set of examples reveal students' knowledge of appropriate behavior during lessons, and how they attempt to preserve the social order.

9. "Sit up, N (a student), you're slowin' us down."

10. "It's not your turn, it's the teacher's turn now."

11. " It's not MY turn, it's your turn."

12. "Wait, E goes next, then S."

13. "I will help T."

14. "Watch me, T. I can do it first, then you can do it."

15. "Wait for C and S, they didn't say it good enough."

Simmel does not explain how repeated performance of teacher-student interactions within lessons fosters common understandings and skills. However, the sociologist and philosopher George Herbert Mead addresses this issue. For Mead (1956), interactions between teacher and students, or among students, are called "social acts." Social acts have three phases.

1. One person initiates a social act with a "gesture" (vocal or nonvocal).

2. The second person interprets the meaning of the gesture.

3. The second person then makes an "adjustive response" (reaction) based on his or her interpretation of the initiating gesture. The first person interprets the meaning of the second person's adjustive response, and makes his or her own adjustive response, and the sequence continues.

For Mead, the meaning of a gesture is pragmatic meaning--its significance; i.e., what the gesture implies about what will happen or what is supposed to happen next. For example, the meaning (significance) of a smile from one person is that he or she is likely to approach the person smiled at and is likely to speak in a pleasant tone (signifying sentiments of liking). When interacting persons come to share the meaning of a gesture (i.e., they respond to it the same way), the gesture is called a "significant symbol." For example, both teachers and children understand (can predict) the meaning (i.e., what follows from) a teacher saying, "Listen," or "My turn," or "Your turn," or "Say it with me." And teachers and students come to share the meaning of students' correctly read words vs incorrectly read words--namely, the teacher will enact a correction routine and students will then "get it right."

These significant symbols have at least three functions:

1. They are what members communicate about.

2. They are how members communicate.

3. They are a large part of the culture of the group or "society." They define "us."

Interestingly, the concept of significant symbol is addressed by Engelmann and Carnine in Theory of instruction. Theywrite:

The communication must also provide a signal that accompanies each example that has the quality to be generalized...(W)e must use some form of signal to tell the learner, in effect, that these examples are the same...The signal, typically a behavior such as saying "red" for all examples that are red, also provides the learner with the basis for communicating with us. (Engelmann & Carnine, 1991: p. 5)

Teacher: You're going to say the first sounds in hard words.
Teacher: Listen: slip. Say it. (Signal)
Students: Slip
Teacher: My turn to say the first sound in (pause) slip. sss.
Your turn. Say the first sound. (Signal)
Students: sss.
Teacher: My turn to say the next sound in slip: lll
Your turn. Say that sound. (Signal).
Students: lll

As persons (now group members) come to better understand the meaning or significance of gestures, they are better able to "take the attitude" of the person making the gesture; i.e., to see things as he or she does, and therefore to predict what he or she will do next or what he or she expects the receiver of the gesture to do next. Another sociologist, Alfred Schutz (1970), calls this the assumption of a "reciprocity of perspectives"; i.e., each person assumes that if she trades places with the other person, she will see what the other person sees. This assumption of a reciprocity of perspectives fosters "intersubjectivity," or a "we-feeling," which appears to be much what Simmel meant by "with-and-for-one-another."

The common understanding by members that they are no longer individuals alone, but members of a "we," sharing the ability to take the attitude of other members, and sharing a number of significant symbols, gives members an identity (a self) as members, and also an incentive to protect the group by: 1) self-controlling order-disturbing action; 2) attempting to control order-disturbing actions of other members (e.g., reminding other members of the rules, as shown in the earlier examples); and 3) enthusiasm about participation. This, of course, fosters learning the content of lessons. Emile Durkheim makes a similar argument in The Division of Labor in Society (1933) and in Suicide (1951). Following are some relevant quotations.

...when individuals who are found to have common interests associate, it is not only to defend these interests, it is to associate...to have the pleasure of communing, to make one out of many, which is to say, finally, to lead the same moral life together" (Durkheim, 1933: p. 15)

The influence of society is what has aroused in us the sentiments of sympathy and solidarity drawing us toward others; it is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political and moral beliefs that control our actions. To play our social role we have striven to extend our intelligence and it is still society that has supplied us with tools for this development by transmitting to us its trust fund of knowledge. (Durkheim, 1951: pp. 211-212.)

Where collective sentiments are strong, it is because the force with which they affect each individual conscience is echoed in all the others, and reciprocally. The intensity they attain therefore depends on the number of consciences which react to them in common...But for a group to be said to have less common life than another means that it is less powerfully integrated; for the state of integration of a social aggregate can only reflect the intensity of the collective life circulating in it. It is the more unified and powerful the more active and constant is the intercourse among its members. (Durkheim, 1951: pp. 201-202)

The phenomenologial sociologist, Alfred Schutz, makes still more contributions to an understanding of Direct Instruction learning communities. For Schutz (1970), members gradually develop a common understanding of their "reality." It is not merely that they share the meaning of gestures. They develop shared meanings ("typifications") of:

1. Time. Direct Instruction time, quiet time, active time, time when we are real smart.

2. Space. Lesson space, personal space, classes where we learn a lot.

3. Objects. Our materials, my materials, materials that make you smart, materials that define us.

4. Activities. Enjoyable, boring, individual, group, in which we all succeed, when the teacher helps us do it right.

5. Persons. Members, nonmembers, helpers, members who do it right.

By acting according to these typifications (e.g., settling down when lesson time begins in lesson space), teachers and students: 1) enact and reenact these typifications; 2) communicate to each other the vitality and the moral force of these typifications ("Shhh, Jimmy, its time for SRA."); and 3) continue to sustain the cohesion of the group and their identities and skills as members.

In addition, Direct Instruction learning communities can be seen as "provinces of meaning" for their members. Schutz (1970) argues that we live in multiple realities--the reality of dreams, illness, the blues, religious experience, and the workaday world of everyday life. Each "reality" or province is somewhat separated from the others by time and space, and by the special activities used for entering or enacting the province and for leaving it. For example, members of a congregation engage in certain actions that enable them to exit the world of daily life and enter the reality of religious experience. Similarly, Direct Instruction lessons can be seen as a province of meaning separate from the world of the playground, the street, and perhaps from other lessons. Direct instruction lessons have:

1. Their own typifications of time ("to learn a lot"), space ("where we feel real close to each other"), objects ("The book she uses to teach us" "The story books we can read"), actions ("Trying hard" "Getting it right"), interactions ("How she helps us do it"), and persons ("Kids in our group" "Kid who finally gets it" "Teachers who don't teach like this").

2. Their own aims or "projects at hand." "Everyone will learn to read the new words."

3. Their own norms. "We help each another." "We don't make fun of mistakes."

4. Their own motives (learning and participating).

To the extent that Direct Instruction lessons, as a province of meaning, contrast sharply with other classes in students' school life, Direct Instruction lessons may become more salient; may exert a stronger influence on students' actions and feelings; and therefore produce more prosocial behavior and achievement.

In summary, as a form of communication embedded within a larger form of social organization (lessons), Direct Instruction appears to create a true learning community in which members have: 1) high expectations of achievement for themselves and the group; 2) clearly established standards and accountability; 3) shared symbols; and 4) shared conceptions of time, space, action, interaction, objects and activities. It is not possible at this time to assert which has stronger causal influence--i.e., whether increasing achievement fosters a learning community or whether a developing learning comunity is a necessary condition for achievement. However, this is a topic for future research.

Durkheim, E. (1933). The division of labor in society. New York: The Free Press. (Originally published in 1893.)

Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide. New York: The Free Press. (Originally published in 1897.)

Engelmann, S., & Carnine, D. (1991). Theory of instruction (revised edition). Eugene, OR: ADI Press.

Mead, G.H. (1956). The social psychology of George Herbert Mead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Schutz, A. (1970). On phenomenology and social relations. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Simmel, G. (1909). "Social interaction as the definition of the group in time and space." American Journal of Sociolgy, XV, 296-298.