Evidence-Based Practices (Part 2): Implementing a Practice or Program with Fidelity

Transcript: Challenge

You are an education professional who recently learned about the identification and selection of evidence-based practices or programs—or EBPs—but now it’s time to actually implement those EBPs.

As you know, educators implement practices and programs all the time, so doing so with a new EBP should be easy, right? Well, maybe it’s not so easy after all. A lot of education professionals—yourself included—often find themselves posing plenty of questions about what to do and how to do it. For example, you might find yourself asking:

“How much time is this going to take away from my other instruction?”

Or:

“Because my schedule is tight, can I implement an EBP two days a week instead of the recommended three?

Or even:

“I’ve been implementing this practice for three weeks! Shouldn’t I be seeing some progress?”

Although EBPs have been demonstrated to improve performance when implemented with fidelity, educators often make changes to the EBP in order to accommodate their busy schedules. Of course, they also expect to see improved performance among the individuals they work with, and they sometimes discontinue the use of an EBP when they don’t see that improvement right away.

As an education professional, you know that you are expected to implement EBPs, but you want to do it correctly. You still have so many questions.

Here’s Your Challenge:

What is fidelity of implementation?

How can an educator implement an evidence-based practice or program with fidelity?