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Create Your Implementation Blueprint: IntroductionResources for this ArticleAdditional Articles
Additional ResourcesThe idea of Response to Intervention (RTI) is simple. RTI involves regularly assessing proficiency in a skill, determining which students are behind, providing help in small groups for those students below benchmark, assessing regularly to monitor progress, and intensifying instruction for students whose progress is insufficient. Yet, many schools all across this country are discovering that implementing RTI is far from simple.
Some common pitfalls schools encounter in attempting to implement RTI are highlighted here and are explored in further detail in a brief article focused on these pitfalls:
Implementing RTI requires a broadening in focus. To implement this innovation in a school setting, one has to pay attention not only to research about effective instruction, but also to the change management process. For too long education has underestimated what it will take for the adults in a school setting to change their practices and behaviors. The benefit of RTI is for our students, and success will be measured in how much their achievement scores improve. However, when it comes to implementation planning, the focus has to be on the adults—the teachers who will use the new practices.
Where can we look to understand implementation processes? Fixsen, codirector of the National Implementation Research Network, and his colleagues (Fixsen, Naoom, Blasé, & Wallace, 2007) recently completed a review of the human services implementation literature, including the literature on education. Although their review was about innovation and implementation in general, rather than being specific to RTI, they did describe implementation as the “missing link” between research and practice. Fixsen and colleagues released two frameworks as a product of their extensive review, and these frameworks also form the basis for the articles in this section on implementing your plan:
A brief overview of the six stages of implementation is provided below with more details provided in the related articles. The stage names are those of Fixsen and his colleagues; the details about the activities that occur in an implementation of RTI are those of Susan Hall.
Although this stage approach may seem linear, Fixsen et al. (2007) are clear that it is actually more recursive. What happens in one stage affects another stage. Fixsen et al. are also clear that implementation is not an overnight process. Fixsen’s suggestion that it may take 3–5 years to fully implement a human services innovation is consistent with my observation that most schools require at least 3 years to implement RTI.
REFERENCE
Fixsen, D., Naoom, S., Blase, K., & Wallace, F. (2007, Winter/Spring). Implementation: The missing link between research and practice. The APSAC Advisor, pp. 4–10. Back To Top |