2 FOUNDATIONS FOR GOOD IMPLEMENTATION

FOUNDATIONS FOR GOOD IMPLEMENTATION

Create a leadership environment and school climate that is conducive to good implementation.

Set the stage for implementation through school policies, routines, and practices.

School leaders play a central role in improving education practices through high-quality implementation. They actively support and manage the overall planning, resourcing, delivery, monitoring, and refinement of an implementation process, all of which are discussed in detail in this guide.In addition to these practical roles, they also create an organisational climate that is conducive to change. Leaders set the stage for good implementation by efining both a vision for, and standards of, desirable implementation practices in their school. For example, if there is an explicit expectation that staff use data precisely to inform teaching and learning, or to participate in ongoing professional development, schools are more likely to find implementation easier than where such expectations do not exist or where they are only implied. Implementation is easier when staff feel trusted to try new things and make mistakes, safe in the knowledge that they will be supported with high quality resources, training, and encouragement to try again and keep improving. In such supportive contexts, leaders develop a sense of enthusiasm, trust, and openness to change. If not present already, an ‘implementation friendly’ climate cannot be created overnight. It requires continuous nurturing over time through a consistent focus on a school’s implementation practices.

Identify and cultivate leaders of implementation throughout the school.

While dedicated leadership of implementation is key, it is also important to recognise that implementation is a complex process that requires leadership at different levels of the school; that is, dedicated but distributed leadership. A culture of shared leadership can be nurtured by explicitly creating opportunities for staff to take on implementation leadership responsibilities. One way

to achieve this is to use dedicated implementation teams. Another approach is to intentionally acknowledge, support, and incentivise staff who display behaviours and attitudes that support good implementation. In this way, implementation leadership becomes a shared organisational activity with a broad base of expertise to draw on.

Build leadership capacity through implementation teams.

This may involve identifying effective interventions to implement, developing plans and assessing readiness when preparing for implementation, collecting and synthesising data during delivery, and consolidating the use of the new practices across the school—to name just a few examples. Effective implementation teams typically combine both educational and implementation expertise, rely on formal and informal leaders, and can draw on external, as well as internal, colleagues. It is important that implementation teams are adequately resourced.

Effective implementation requires schools to pay regular attention to specific, additional activities; however, the busy everyday life of a school can make this investment of time and effort difficult.Dedicated implementation teams can be a solution to this dilemma. They draw together multiple types of expertise and skills, from a range of different perspectives, to guide and support the implementation process. They build local capacity to facilitate and shepherd projects and innovations, and continuously remove the barriers that get in the way of good implementation.

Checklist questions:

Does our school have a climate that is conducive to good implementation? Does the school leadership team create a clear vision and understanding of expectations when changing practices across the school? Do staff feel empowered to step forward and take on implementation responsibilities? How do day-to-day practices affect the motivation and readiness of staff to change? How do day-to-day practices affect the motivation and readiness of staff to change?