How can school personnel effectively implement evidence-based practices or programs?

Transcript: Implementing POW

This year the middle school teachers will be implementing a new writing strategy called POW. The implementation team decides that it needs to conduct a task analysis of this strategy to help monitor fidelity of implementation. To learn more about POW, the team first reviews the IRIS Module Improving Writing Performance. Doing so, they learn that the POW writing strategy consists of three components: P stands for “pick an idea,” O stands for “organize thoughts,” and W stands for “write and say more.”

The team recognizes that these three steps need to be included in the task analysis. The teachers can instruct their students about how to apply the POW writing strategy by using self-regulated strategy development or SRSD, a scientifically validated framework for teaching learning strategies.

SRSD consists of six steps:

Step 1 is Develop Background Knowledge
Step 2 is Discuss the Strategy
Step 3 is Model It
Step 4 is Promote It
Step 5 is Support the Students
Step 6 is Encourage Independent Practice

In order to create a task analysis, the team first lists the six steps of SRSD, which are then easily adapted for teaching the POW writing strategy. The team also thinks it is important for the teachers to discuss and model each of the three POW components. Therefore, they incorporate each component of the POW writing strategy under steps 2 (pause) and 3 (pause). By developing this task analysis, the team has outlined what teachers need to do to implement the POW writing strategy with fidelity.

Use Implementation Guidelines and Supports

Paige Elementary School

The commercially available progress monitoring system that Paige Elementary School purchased included procedural guidelines. These guidelines provided detailed information on the administration and scoring of probes, on how to enter data using the software, and on how to understand and use the data to guide instruction.

Although the Paige implementation team finds the manual to be comprehensive, they believe it will be beneficial to provide additional guidance on school specific information such as the frequency of administration, school personnel who can assist with administration of probes, etc.

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Use Implementation Guidelines and Supports

Grafton Middle School

The reading program purchased by Grafton Middle included a comprehensive procedural manual. However, the implementation team thinks that they can increase the fidelity of implementation by creating a brief troubleshooting guide for the teachers implementing the program. This supplemental guide provides information not covered in the manual and that is more specific to Grafton Middle. Below is a section of the supplemental guide that the team created.

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Use Implementation Guidelines and Supports

DuBois High School

Though the training provided by the PBIS Technical Assistance Center outlines the core principles of the PBIS approach, the PBIS team at DuBois High School needs to develop the details of the program that they will implement at their school. They will make a variety of decisions based on the school’s and the students’ needs (e.g., specific behavioral goals). The implementation team at DuBois High will use a guidelines template developed by the PBIS Center to guide their decision-making and to help them document their choices. They will make these guidelines available to everyone at the school who is involved in the implementation of PBIS (e.g., teachers, principals, cafeteria workers).

(From the Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports [PBIS] Website, http://www.pbis.org/pbis_resource_detail_page.aspx?Type=2&PBIS_ResourceID=356)

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