The Science (and Art) of Implementation: Using Research To Improve Outcomes

We’ve Been Making Progress

I could never have imagined this swell of public interest in the science of reading. Years ago, it was hard to start a conversation about evidence-based reading instruction. Most teachers felt balanced literacy met their needs, and reading instruction wasn’t of interest to noneducators. However, there are now countless blogs, Instagram, and TikTok accounts dedicated to sharing information about the science of reading. And the topic has reached the mainstream with articles about reading instruction on the front page of Sold a Story topping podcast charts (Goldstein, 2022; Hanford, 2022).

When people ask, “Are you optimistic? Do you think we’ll get things right and our literacy rates will rise?” I always want to reply with a whole-hearted, “Yes!” I want to believe we can succeed and teach every child to read. But the truth is I worry not enough people understand the scope of the work ahead of us. And I’m afraid if we don’t talk about the challenges of implementation, we won’t find the solutions that educators need to succeed. So, in short, I’ll say, I’m cautiously optimistic and working hard to focus conversations on implementation science.

Bridging the Last Mile

I hope by now, teachers, the schools of education that train us, and the publishers who develop our curriculum, have realized the science of reading is not a trend, it isn’t the swing of a pendulum, and it’s not a phase in education we should wait out. And I do think that, at long last, the answer to Dr. Kerry Hempenstall’s question, “The three-cueing system, will it ever go away?” may finally be “Yes.” But there’s so much work left to be done to translate research findings to classroom instruction.

We’ve spent more than a billion dollars developing the science of reading—learning how reading skill develops, why students sometimes struggle, and what qualities of instruction most reliably result in student learning. But we haven’t yet managed to ensure, at scale, that every child learns to crack the written code. And we’re even farther away from raising the upper limits of students’ reading comprehension to ensure all students can comprehend grade-level texts. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2024), despite decades of reading research, only 33 percent of fourth grade students read proficiently. The science of reading is certainly not complete but federal funding for educational research is being cut. I worry that even though we’re closer than ever to improving literacy rates, we’ll give up before we get the job done.

We’re in what I’ve come to think of as “the last mile” of a long journey. We’ve learned, the hard way, that it doesn’t work to build a mountain of research and expect teachers to figure out, on our own, how to apply the findings to our instruction. Implementation science shows it can take 17 years for research findings to reach everyday practice (Green et al., 2009) and in the field of education, things are even slower. A passive approach to disseminating science to teachers takes too long, results in too many mistakes, and results in stagnant literacy rates. This last mile is the stretch that matters most to students and teachers—we cannot let research grind to a halt.

Moving From Consumer to Contributor

I used to think teachers should be consumers of research. I saw my job as learning from reading scientists and then trying to apply what I’d learned to my teaching. My learning process was challenging, at times lonely, confusing, and occasionally disappointing. But I was committed to learning what I could and sharing what I learned. I knew we needed translators of the science to bridge the research-to-practice divide, and I hoped to help, but I didn’t know that I was seeing just half of a larger problem.

By now, most teachers know about the research-to-practice divide, which left us in the dark about how decoding occurs in the brain and what instruction helps students to become automatic readers. But there’s also a practice-to-research divide, which is making research unnecessarily hard to apply to classrooms and slowing potential gains. As I’ve begun to contribute to science by being part of a Research to Practice Partnership, I’ve learned how important it is for teachers to be involved in the design of studies to ensure their relevance and scalability. Coburn and Penuel (2016) emphasized these partnerships improve both the quality of research and the likelihood of successful implementation.

So, what exactly is a Research to Practice Partnership?

• It’s a long-term collaboration between educators and researchers—not just a one-off project
• Both sides work together to answer real questions about what works in classrooms, using actual research evidence
• Practitioners bring the classroom expertise; researchers bring the methodology—two skill sets that don’t usually connect
• It’s mutually beneficial: Teachers get research that’s actually relevant, and researchers get studies that can be implemented and scaled

Suppose more practitioners become involved in implementation research, helping scientists to discover how to improve reading outcomes within our school systems. In that case, we can speed up solutions and span this last mile together.

Learn More on EDVIEW360

To learn more, listen to the EDVIEW360 podcast, The Science (and Art) of Implementation: Using Research To Improve Outcomes. I dig into how teachers and administrators can take this next step and become active participants in the science of reading. I share more about:

• How teachers can move from research consumer to active participant
• How Research to Practice Partnerships work and why they matter
• How teachers and administrators can approach implementation like a scientist
• What might be possible if we span the “last mile”

Listen here.