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A subtle, yet significant, name change

About the author: Don Deshler is director of the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. This article originally appeared in the January 1997 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM teachers.

From our beginning in 1977, the overriding mission of the Center for Research on Learning has been to create solutions that enable at-risk individuals to deal effectively with the demands placed on them. We knew then that it would be important for us to have a framework to guide our thinking and research and to make certain that the outcomes of our research could be tied together into a meaningful whole related to problems at-risk students face. Thus, we created an overarching framework and called it SIM--the Strategies Intervention Model.

SIM includes everything that has been researched at the Center. Before beginning any new line of research, we make certain it will logically and meaningfully fit into SIM. We have found, however, that some confusion may exist regarding the place of Content Enhancement Routines in the SIM structure.

Content Enhancement Routines are instructional procedures that enable classroom teachers to make good decisions about what content they consider to be critical to emphasize and how they will transform and deliver it to students. Content Enhancement fits within SIM because when teachers use these procedures, they enable students to better cope with the problems they face in school.

The confusion about whether the routines are a part of SIM probably comes from two sources:

1. Nothing in the name "Content Enhancement" refers to "strategies" per se.
2. The name Strategies Intervention Model seems very specifically tied to learning strategies.

Let's try to clarify these two misconceptions.

First, the key factor that makes Content Enhancement procedures effective in improving the performance of at-risk students is the application of teaching procedures that would be considered "strategic" by general education teachers. That is, the instruction of general education teachers is strategic when (1) they carefully select critical content (i.e., they do not try to cover it all but rather they try to select the most crucial information for students to learn) and (2) they deliberately change and transform the critical information they have selected into a form that is easier for all students to understand and remember. For Content Enhancement to make a difference, teachers need to be very strategic in terms of how they think about what they will teach and how they actually go about teaching students.

Second, we feel the name "Strategies Intervention Model" is somewhat limiting and misleading. Therefore, we are changing the name of the model to Strategic Instruction Model. (The acronym will still be "SIM.") The name "strategic" is broader than "strategies"--it captures instruction that is aimed at improving students as learners (e.g., learning strategies) as well as the quality of instruction that is delivered in class (e.g., Content Enhancements). In addition, the name "instruction" gets to the very core of what we, as educators, are all about--teaching and all of the interactive dynamics with students that the teaching process implies. The name "intervention," in contrast, implies that the process is more of a one-way street in which the teacher is active and the student passively "receives the intervention." Additionally, we see the term "intervention" as being more of a medical than educational term.

Though it may take awhile for us to change all of our forms, manuals, and other materials to this new name, we are going to begin the transition now. Before you know it, we will all be comfortable with the subtle but very significant change.