First She Changed Reading, Now She’s Coming for Teaching

Emily Hanford is an education journalist whose reporting, especially the podcast Sold a Story, has been a catalyst for a wholesale change in the way reading is taught in schools in the U.S. Since her earliest reports in 2017, dozens of states have introduced legislation mandating reading curricula that align with the science of reading, a phrase she helped popularize. In the podcast’s second season she pulls back the lens even further and examines direct instruction, a teacher-led style of education, and in particular the teaching program developed in the 1960s by Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann, a former marketing executive, which bears the brand name Direct Instruction. Most schools use a different, more inquiry-based and student-led approach, where teachers act more as guides than instructors, even though some studies suggest it’s less effective. Hanford discussed the huge changes she helped engineer in schools, what makes a great teacher, and why Engelmann’s style of teaching is so controversial.