Executive Summary 

The Traditional Model for Evidence-based Education
The primary focus of evidence-based education has been on “efficacy” research, which tells us whether or not an education intervention has the desired impact on the target academic or social behavior when analyzed in a controlled setting.

The complexities of successfully applying the education intervention in a real world setting have been largely minimized and ignored.

The Problem
The education landscape is strewn with practices that had proven research results and failed miserably. There are also many examples of programs with poor or no research backing that have gained adoption and continue to be implemented despite poor performance.

The Expanded Model for Evidence-Base Education: The Roadmap
The Roadmap for the expanded evidence-based education model includes four critical components:

• efficacy research (what works?)
  establishing promising interventions through rigorous, high quality research
  
  
• effectiveness research (when does it work?)
  identifying through research the minimum conditions for interventions to be successful (student characteristics, setting features, resource demands, social contingencies)
  
  
• implementation (how do we make it work?)
  addressing all relevant variables so an intervention will be successfully adopted and sustained in a particular setting
  
  
• monitoring (is it working?)
  establishing the effectiveness of interventions through on-going evaluation

When most people think of the term “evidence-based education”, they think of “efficacy” research. Efficacy research tells us whether or not an educational intervention has the desired impact on the target academic or social behavior. It is typically done in controlled, university settings, and is the most common form of published research. There is the belief that, once we know what works, it is a simple matter to apply the new intervention in the “real world” education environment.

The Problem
This belief is held by many education professionals as well as lay people. Yet, the education landscape is strewn with practices that had proven research results and failed miserably. There are also many examples of programs with poor or no research backing that have gained adoption and continue to be implemented despite poor performance. It becomes obvious that something in the “evidence-based education / efficacy research” model is missing.

The next piece to be added to the model was “monitoring”, or as more recently coined, “accountability”. This emphasis on results is prevalent in the new No Child Left Behind legislation. The notion is that schools need to be held to measurable, standardized outcomes. Along with the accountability standards, schools are given clear reinforcement for meeting the goals and significant punishment for failing to meet the goals. The law doesn’t specify particular interventions or practices, just outcomes. It does contain numerous references to using “scientifically-based research” (efficacy research) in decision-making. The result is a mandate that exhorts the use of research and measurable outcomes but treats everything in between as a “black box”. It emphasizes knowing where you want to go and reporting when you get there. What is missing is the “how” to get there.

Of late there has been increasing attention paid to the concept of “research to practice”, which asks the “how” question and highlights the fact that there are critical variables to be analyzed when successfully translating research into real world practice. The first missing piece of the model is a second form of research: “effectiveness” research. Effectiveness research asks the question “what are the minimum conditions for interventions to be successful in real world settings?” (student characteristics, setting features, resource demands, social contingencies). While effectiveness research is much less common than efficacy research, there is growing recognition of the critical role it plays in successfully implementing efficacy research in education settings…which brings us to the fourth and final component of the model.

“Implementation” refers to the process by which the intervention moves from research to practice, addressing the critical variables necessary for an intervention to be successfully adopted in a particular setting. While effectiveness research can tell us the variables that will affect a practice’s likely success in a general type of setting, it cannot tell us whether or not a practice will succeed in a particular setting. Implementation involves a systematic process for analyzing and addressing the variables for success in a particular setting during two critical phases: adoption and sustainability.

The Expanded Model for Evidence-Base Education: The Roadmap
The resulting roadmap for the complete evidence-based education model includes all four components:

• efficacy research (what works?)
  establishing promising interventions through rigorous, high quality research
  
• effectiveness research (when does it work?)
  identifying through research the minimum conditions for interventions to be successful (student characteristics, setting features, resource demands, social contingencies)
  
• implementation (how do we make it work?)
  addressing all relevant variables so an intervention will be successfully adopted and sustained in a particular setting
  
• monitoring (is it working?)
  establishing the effectiveness of interventions through on-going evaluation

The model outlines numerous directions of interactivity. There is a natural flow to the process as interventions move from research to practice. The first step would be efficacy research, in which a new intervention is tested in a controlled environment for its desired impact on target behaviors. Once there is solid evidence of cause and effect, effectiveness research would be used to identify the critical variables necessary for the intervention to be successfully transferred to a real world setting. Implementation strategies would then be used to analyze and address the variables unique to that particular setting. Finally, monitoring would be used to evaluate whether or not the intervention was achieving the desired outcomes.

A critical feature of this model involves continual feedback loops. Each component can interact with the other components depending on the outcomes. Implementation outcomes might suggest further topics for efficacy research or effectiveness research. Outcomes from effectiveness research might suggest different strategies in monitoring. The key is that each component is responding to the data generated in the overall model, and each component is part of a whole process that helps us determine where we want to go, how to get there, and how to know when we’ve arrived.