5 Rules for Teaching That Work (For Everyone)

Why Educational Failure Is Often Designed, and How to Fix It

By Joe Toko

Introduction: Design or Disaster? The Moral Weight of Teaching

Every teacher knows the uneasy silence that can creep into a classroom. Students appear to be listening, they may even give the right answers, but weeks later the knowledge has evaporated. Too often we confuse performance for learning, engagement for understanding, or memorisation for mastery. When some students succeed and others fail, we assume the difference lies in ability or motivation. But what if failure is not down to the learner at all? What if the real cause is the way our teaching was designed?

This is the challenge posed by Siegfried Engelmann and Douglas Carnine in their landmark work Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications (2016). Their message is provocative but profoundly ethical: when students fail to learn, it is usually because the instruction was poorly designed. Learning follows logical, predictable patterns, and when we violate those patterns, we build barriers rather than bridges.

Their insights align with decades of cognitive science. Barak Rosenshine’s “Principles of Instruction” (2012) showed how clarity, modelling, and guided practice are vital for all learners, not just the most able. John Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (1988) demonstrated that poorly structured teaching overwhelms working memory and leads to failure. Daniel Willingham (2009) reminded us that memory is the residue of thought, if lessons are unclear or inconsistent, learners remember confusion rather than knowledge.

What follows are five rules, drawn from Engelmann and Carnine’s work and my own experience training teachers, that show how better instructional design can make education work for every student, not just the top few.

Rule 1: Teach Through Difference, Not Definition

Giving a definition is rarely enough. Real understanding comes from contrast, knowing not just what something is, but what it isn’t. Engelmann and Carnine argue that learners generalise concepts by recognising sameness and difference. Without counterexamples, students risk forming vague or distorted understandings.

For instance, a child who only ever sees roses may call every flower a rose. In the same way, students may say “democracy is rule by the people,” but unless they can distinguish it from dictatorship, monarchy, or oligarchy, the term remains empty. As Willingham (2009) points out, knowledge is sticky when linked to clear contrasts and boundaries. True mastery lives in the edges of difference.

Rule 2: Match the Method to the Concept

Not all knowledge is alike, so why do we teach it as if it were? Some concepts, such as categories (“mammal”), require examples and non-examples. Processes, such as long division, demand step-by-step procedural teaching. Abstract ideas like “irony” need layered, relational explanations.

Instructional failure often arises not because students cannot learn, but because the method used doesn’t match the concept type. Engelmann and Carnine stress that understanding the structure of knowledge is as important as understanding the content itself. This insight resonates with Rosenshine’s principle that teachers should present new material in small steps, checking for understanding along the way. If the wrong tool is used, the learning task becomes impossible, not because the student is incapable, but because the design is.

Rule 3: Build the Foundation First

Educational failure is often a sequencing failure. We rush to complex tasks before checking that prerequisite knowledge is secure. Students are asked to write essays without mastering sentences, or to solve equations without a firm grasp of number facts.

Engelmann and Carnine emphasise that most failure comes from missing building blocks. This is not about lowering standards but about building them logically. As Sweller (2016) reminds us, working memory has limits, if essential prior knowledge is missing, learners cannot construct new schemas. Stronger students may mask these gaps with prior knowledge, but struggling learners hit a wall. Equity begins with diagnosis: start where students are, not where we assume they should be.

Rule 4: Use Examples with Precision

Every example teaches, but not always what we intend. If you show only red circles to teach “red,” some students may think “red” means “circle.” This is not learner error but a design flaw.

Engelmann and Carnine argue for “faultless communication”: control every variable except the one you want students to notice. If teaching size, keep shape and colour constant. If teaching verb tense, vary subject and object but keep the tense consistent. Cognitive Load Theory reinforces this: extraneous variation creates unnecessary load, leading students to encode the wrong patterns.

This is not spoon-feeding. It is precise teaching, the kind that respects students enough to make success possible.

Rule 5: Design Is the First Line of Equity

When students struggle, the reflex is often to simplify tasks. But simplification is a false kindness. True equity comes from going backwards, repairing missing knowledge, and then moving forward.

Engelmann and Carnine argue that errors are rarely random; they are predictable consequences of poor instructional design. If half the class confuses multiplication with addition, it is not because they lack mathematical ability, it is because the concepts were never contrasted clearly enough. As Rosenshine (2012) observed, effective teachers anticipate common errors and design instruction to prevent them. Instructional design is not a luxury; it is the frontline of fairness.

Final Thoughts: Instruction as Moral Action

At its core, Theory of Instruction is not simply about teaching techniques, it is about responsibility. Learning is not mysterious; it is structured, logical, and teachable. If only the strongest students succeed, then our design is not just weak but unjust.

We cannot claim inclusivity without precision. We cannot claim fairness without diagnosis. And we cannot claim effectiveness if predictable groups of learners consistently fail. Educational failure, Engelmann and Carnine remind us, is often a design flaw. And if it is a design flaw, then it can be redesigned.

References

Engelmann, S. & Carnine, D. (2016). Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications. Eugene, OR: National Institute for Direct Instruction.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know. American Educator, 36(1), pp. 12–19.

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.

Sweller, J. (2016). Cognitive Load Theory and educational technology. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(2), pp. 249–255.

Willingham, D.T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.