In a Policy Forum, Noam Angrist and colleagues discuss a science-backed research agenda for understanding how to successfully implement educational programs at scale. “The frontier of education research and practice is to improve implementation,” Angrist et al. write. “There is growing evidence on what works – now we need to translate that evidence into action and systematically study the process, so that we can do it repeatedly and at increasing scale to achieve effective, equitable, and enduring learning for all.” Although most children around the globe attend school, learning outcomes remain low in many parts of the world. A growing body of research has identified programs that can improve learning, yet interventions that succeed in small, controlled studies often lose effectiveness when implemented at scale and by governments. According to the authors, a major obstacle is that education research rarely measures how faithfully programs are implemented or how widely they are adopted, making it difficult to determine whether poor outcomes result from flaws in the program itself or from shortcomings in its implementation. Here, Angrist et al. call for stronger implementation science in global education, modeled partly on efforts in health care, to close the gap between research discoveries and real-world practice. The authors propose a four-stage framework to turn educational research into effective, equitable practice at scale: efficacy trials, effectiveness trials, policy plans, and large-scale implementation. This approach emphasizes testing whether interventions work across diverse populations and real-world settings, as well as whether they are affordable and sustainable. “We hope the implementation science for global education agenda motivates a shift toward research that informs the decisions and challenges that confront implementers and government decision-makers,” the authors write. “By ensuring that more science makes it into implementation and that more implementation is made scientific, implementation science can support the ultimate goal of all children learning.”
