Education Endowment Foundation:Effective evidence-based teaching strategies can fail with poor implementation

New EEF guidance report aims to support schools to put evidence to work

Writing in this week’s TES magazine, Sir Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), argues that good and thoughtful implementation of teaching and learning strategies can be the difference between success and failure.

He urges schools to give their innovations the very best chance of working by carefully planning, carrying out and sustaining change. The article highlights a new guidance report from the EEF – A School’s Guide to Implementation – that aims to support schools to put evidence to work in their classrooms.

According to Sir Kevan:

Published today, Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation frames implementation in four stages that can be applied to any school improvement decision:

Explore

• Specify a tight area of focus for improvement that is amenable to change.
• Determine a programme of activity based on existing evidence of what has – and hasn’t – worked before.
• Examine the fit and feasibility of possible interventions to the school context.
• Make an adoption decision.

Prepare

• Develop a clear, logical and well-specified implementation plan:

1. Specify the active ingredients of the intervention clearly: know where to be ​‘tight’ and where to be ​‘loose’.
2. Develop a targeted, yet multi-stranded, package of implementation strategies.
3. Define clear implementation outcomes and monitor them using robust and pragmatic measures.

1. Create a shared understanding of the implementation process and provide appropriate support and incentives. 
2. Introduce new skills, knowledge and strategies with explicit up-front training.
3. Attend to the implementation infrastructure.

Deliver

• Adopt a flexible and motivating leadership approach during the turbulent initial attempts at implementation.
• Reinforce initial training with follow-on coaching within the school setting.
• Use highly-skilled coaches.
• Complement expert coaching and mentoring with structured peer-to-peer collaboration.
• Use implementation data to actively tailor and improve the approach.
• Make thoughtful adaptations only when the active ingredients are securely understood and implemented.

Sustain

• Plan for sustaining and scaling an innovation from the outset.
• Treat scale-up as a new implementation process.
• Ensure the implementation data remains fit for purpose.
• Continuously acknowledge, support, and reward good implementation practices.

The report also provides guidance on how schools can create the right environment for change, from supporting staff to getting leadership on board. This report sits alongside the EEF’s other guidance reports – focused on literacy, maths, and making best use of teaching assistants – providing the basis for an overall advance towards evidence-informed school improvement.