ABSTRACT
This chapter is significant because it challenges readers to reconsider teaching and learning in the primary school classroom by encouraging teachers to focus on students’ strengths, and to put these at the centre when designing teaching and learning activities. It does not promote socio-cultural theory as the most adequate theory of teaching and learning in the primary school, but rather to present a form of collective teaching and learning that incorporates important elements of behaviourist, constructivist and socio-cultural approaches to teaching and learning that has been developed and researched in the primary school classroom over a number of decades. Direct instruction has been subject to considerable, sometimes contested, research, often being compared with constructivist approaches to teaching and learning. This research generally supports direct instruction practices when results are measured by standardised instruments.
