Through the Looking-Glass: Tackling Implementation Questions in IES Research

This TED-like Talk will feature four IES researchers who have taken implementation science to a different place with the IES goal structure.

IES aspires to build a body of evidence that can provide solutions to education problems. The IES goal structure of Exploration, Development/Innovation, Efficacy/Replication, Effectiveness, and Measurement is critical to this vision. Within this framework, though, it is not immediately obvious that IES cares about the challenges of implementation. Researchers often ask: Where is the Implementation goal?

While IES does not have a goal dedicated solely to implementation, it does expect its researchers to consider things like feasibility and fidelity as they develop and test interventions. But what if IES research could do more? Are there additional opportunities to study implementation in the goal structure?

The individual talks demonstrate how the IES goal structure is being used to explore, develop, test, and measure practices intended to support and sustain the implementation of evidence-based interventions in schools. These talks inform the Special Conference theme “Optimizing the Relevance of Prevention Science to Systems” through talks that inspire new approaches to implementation science to improve the uptake of effective programs and practices in the U.S. education system.

The four talks illustrate the rigor with which implementation questions can be asked within the IES framework.

• Exploration: Is it possible to identify the ingredients of flexible, cost-efficient, individualized coaching for teachers? YES suggest secondary data analyses that show a relationship between a range of implementation factors and student outcomes.

• Development: Can teacher attitudes and beliefs be changed to facilitate adoption and sustained implementation of evidence-based practices? YES suggests preliminary work to develop an intervention that enhances teacher implementation.

• Efficacy/Replication: Can increasingly greater impacts on student outcomes from one year to the next inform our understanding of how schools adopt a new program to support the PreK to K transition? YES say exploratory analyses from an RCT of a school-based intervention for teachers and parents.

• Measurement: Can teacher perceptions guide resource allocation for implementation support in schools? YES suggests a project adapting an organizational assessment from a different field.