Why Is Implementation Science Important for Intervention Design and Evaluation Within Educational Settings?

The current challenging economic climate demands, more than ever, value for money in service delivery. Every service is required to maximize positive outcomes in the most cost-effective way. To date, a smorgasbord of interventions have been designed to benefit society. Those worthy of attention have solid foundations in empirical research, offering service providers reassurance that positive outcomes are assured; many of these programmes lie within the field of education and everyday school practice. However, often even these highly supported programmes yield poor results due to poor implementation. Implementation science is the study of the components necessary to promote authentic adoption of evidence-based interventions, thereby increasing their effectiveness. Following a brief definition of key terms and theories, this article will go on to discuss why implementation is not a straightforward process. To do so, this article will draw upon examples of evidence-based but poorly implemented school programmes. Having acknowledged how good implementation positively affects sustainability, we will then look at the growing number of frameworks for practice within this field. One such framework, the Core Components Model, will be used to facilitate discussion about the processes of successful design and evaluation. This article will continue by illustrating how the quality of implementation has directly affected the sustainability of the Incredible Years programmes and the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) curriculum. Then, by analyzing implementation science, some of the challenges currently faced within this field will be highlighted and areas for further research discussed. This article will then link to the implications for educational psychologists (EPs) and will conclude that implementation science is crucial to the design and evaluation of interventions, and that the EP is in an ideal position to support sustainable positive change.