Schools are learning organisations. They continuously strive to do better for the children and young people in their charge. In doing so, they try new things, seek to learn from those experiences, and work to adopt and embed the practices that work best. Implementation is a key aspect of what schools do to improve, and yet it is a domain of school…

Providing an in-depth look at the processes, pitfalls, and successes that can emerge from major education reform efforts at the state level, this volume covers the full policy change cycle in the development and transformation of the Illinois principal preparation program. Offering perspectives from the major stakeholder groups involved in…

"Scale Up in Education, Volume 1: Ideas in Principle" examines the challenges of "scaling up" from a multidisciplinary perspective. It brings together contributions from disciplines that routinely take promising innovations to scale, including medicine, business, engineering, computing, and education. Together the contributors explore appropriate…

Effectiveness of school health education programs is judged by the extent the programs are disseminated and maintained in the classroom. This paper reviews concepts, strategies, and methods used to study dissemination and implementation, specifies functions of this research, and describes procedures that evaluate effectiveness of dissemination and…

The dissemination of successful educational innovations has long been a strongly supported policy in educational settings. Recent research developments have led to a debate as to the appropriateness of a centralized versus decentralized dissemination policy. The current research provided a test of the modified Research, Development and Diffusion…

Although schools have served as a major target of both educational and mental-health oriented interventions, they have shown a marked tendency to assimilate innovative programs into existing patterns. This paper analyzes the sources and manifestations of resistance to change in schools and discusses the implications of such resistance for the…

This paper describes one component of the Study of Dissemination Efforts Supporting School Improvement, which focused on the role that external facilitators play in helping schools implement new educational practices. The first part describes the external facilitator sample (95 respondents) and delineates the major formal role groups of external…

Discusses the technique of measuring program implementation, describing an effort to evaluate and refine the implementation of an innovative instructional model and examining the implications of this project for future research. (MCG)

The three diagnostic dimensions of the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) are tools that can evaluate the degree of new program implementation at the classroom level. Implementation success is a function of use/nonuse, appropriate/inappropriate practice, and user concerns about the innovation. These dimensions: Levels of Use (LoU) of the…

Past research has correlated differential curriculum implementation outcomes at the classroom level with the actions of the key change facilitator at the school level: the principal. Accordingly, this paper reports the results of a study of three change facilitator styles among principals: responders, managers, and initiators. Working definitions…

This report summarizes the development, testing, and dissemination of an instructional improvement program called Achievement Directed Leadership (ADL) during the period of National Institute of Education (NIE) funding for ADL, from late 1977 to late 1985. A brief introductory chapter discusses the context and rationale for the work on ADL, whose…

Discusses the development of a computer laboratory for sociology courses, as well as some advantages and disadvantages of incorporating computer technology into the classroom. Examines the proposal and proposal-review process. Provides tips for writing a successful proposal. (MJP)

This book explores the challenges of implementing and assessing educational interventions in varied classroom contexts. Included are reflections on the challenges of designing studies for improving the instructional core of schools, guidelines for establishing evidence of interventions' impacts across a wide range of settings, and an assessment of…

Describes the Principal-Teacher Interaction Study that focused on the interventions made by nine elementary school principals and their staff and on their involvement together in the implementation of new curricula. Examines what principals and others did in the process of facilitating change and what effects their interventions had on the…

This study examined the mobilization and implementation stages of introducing microcomputers into elementary and middle schools in a majority adopter (i.e., schools which began implementing microcomputers for instruction in 1983-84) school district. Data collection included structured interviews with school district staff and principals;…