As more schools embrace evidence-based teaching, a new micro-course is helping leaders tackle one of the biggest challenges in education reform – embedding evidence-based teaching across their schools, and in a sustainable way.
The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) launched a 15-minute course, ‘Implementation in schools: Achieving lasting change’, to help school leaders better understand what drives successful implementation and stronger student outcomes.
Informed by research from AERO’s Learning Partner project involving more than 50 schools, the micro-course also features a case study from St Columban's College, where staff are working to embed explicit teaching in mathematics.
What successful schools do differently
“Schools are increasingly drawing on evidence-based practices in their efforts to improve learning outcomes for all students,” AERO CEO Dr Jenny Donovan told The Educator. “However, when it comes to successfully implementing these across a school, how we go about this is just as important as the teaching practices we are seeking to embed.”
Dr Donovan said research shows that implementation can fail for many reasons, such as an overreliance on a single implementation strategy, failing to provide the tools to support implementation, insufficient attention to the school context, or a lack of focus on sustaining implementation efforts over time.
“Schools can sometimes underestimate the need to plan for implementation to occur in stages, assume barriers rather than actively find out what is hindering progress, and hope change will simply follow exposure to new ideas, rather than providing sustained support to teachers,” she said.
“AERO’s ongoing implementation research through our Learning Partner project is showing that successful schools take a deliberate and structured approach — ensuring the practices they are seeking to implement are aligned with school priorities, not rushing the early stages of implementation, providing support to teachers over an extended time period, and monitoring how practice is actually shifting in classrooms.”
Dr Donovan said the new micro-course offers “a starting point” for school implementation staff who would prefer an overview before exploring more detailed resources and can also serve as a handy refresher for school leaders with implementation work already underway.”
Putting teachers at the centre
St Columban’s College in Queensland took a markedly intentional approach when introducing the micro-course to its staff.
"From the outset, we treated implementation not as a ‘rollout’ to staff, but as a process it was building with them," St Columban’s Assistant Principal – Learning and Teaching, Amanda Schimke told The Educator.
"Early on, we created space for staff voice by unpacking the why together — linking the work directly to known challenges in classrooms and to student outcomes, rather than positioning it as an external initiative."
Schimke said the school also used shared observations, data, and examples from its own context to ground the work, which helped staff "see relevance rather than compliance."
"We staff feedback from 'enablers and barriers' sessions to ensure staff were setting their implementation plan up for every success," she said. "We also started small, focusing on common language and agreed non-negotiables, and gave staff time to trial, reflect, and discuss before anything was formalised."
Schimke said building trust and giving teachers genuine input from day one proved critical to getting the reform off the ground.
"This slower approach allowed staff to feel more ownership of the implementation effort, and like it was something we had collectively agreed on."
Turning good practice into routine
Schimke said the most meaningful shifts the school has seen so far are improved consistency and intentionality.
"Practices are becoming more visible and shared across our mathematics classrooms in year 7-9, which has strengthened collective efficacy," she said.
"Teachers, students and senior leaders are reporting improved lesson structures, clearer expectations for students, and more deliberate use of strategies such as strong lesson starts, explicit explanations and checks for understanding."
To build on this progress, Schimke said the school's focus is on working to sustain practices.
"This includes supporting leaders and teacher leaders to model and reinforce the practices so they remain a normal part of professional dialogue," she said. "We are also using coaching, peer observation conversations to keep the practices alive in day-to-day work."
Schimke said another important part of making the success stick is revisiting the agreed practices regularly and refining them based on feedback and evidence, rather than constantly introducing new initiatives.
"This has been critical as we focus on sustainable implementation," she said. "This approach helps ensure the work remains coherent, manageable, and focused on continuous improvement over time, rather than a short-term push."
Schimke said the school’s biggest lesson has been the value of slowing down and staying focused.
"In a world where there is so much change and demand on teachers, it has been great to have the opportunity to focus on implementation that is focused on going slow to get it right."