I'm doing a D9P right now and the focus fabric is fussy cut...sooo no strip piecing for this one. Fussy cutting sucks, btw, I can't wait to get it done.
I can see individual squares being used to teach...it was easier at first, for me anyway, to "see" the block and understand how it goes together when I had individual pieces. That's not to say that I don't strip piece now, I do as much as possible, lol, but it makes sense, kinda, for a beginner tutorial.