A Guide to Support Implementation: Essential Conditions

Alberta Unites on Teaching Quality
Learning Forward (formerly National Staff Development Council) has written an article about the Guide to Support Implementation – Essential Conditions. The focus of the article is to share how the guide has the potential to support the capacity of the system through implementation planning.

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A Message from Alberta’s Education Partners

A Guide to Support Implementation: Essential Conditions was developed by a provincial working group of education partners¹ committed to realizing positive change in Alberta’s schools and classrooms. Development of this guide was founded on the shared belief that successful implementation² requires the coordinated, collaborative, and comprehensive efforts of education partners working together towards a shared vision of learning success for all students.

The working group reviewed current research, literature, and promising practices³ to

identify the characteristics of successful implementation of education policies, curricula, priorities, programs and initiatives;
describe the complexity of the work involved in successful implementation;
identify the conditions deemed essential for successful implementation – shared vision, leadership, research and evidence, resources, teacher professional growth, time, and community engagement; and
describe the environment within which these essential conditions are most effectively addressed – an environment where education stakeholders⁴ share the responsibility for addressing essential conditions within a culture of learning that fosters inquiry, risk-taking, sharing and collaboration.

This guide offers a compilation of their review in a format that is intended to support collaborative implementation planning by educational leaders at all levels across the Kindergarten to Grade 12 system.

Recognizing the rich diversity that exists within school communities and student populations, this guide is not intended to prescribe a specific approach to implementation planning. Instead, it offers guiding questions to support implementation planning that intentionally addresses each of the aforementioned seven essential conditions. Furthermore, it offers suggestions for what might be used as evidence that the essential conditions are being addressed. And finally, it provides space to record what specific implementation support activities might be undertaken. It is hoped that additional supports, such as illustrative examples as well as implementation planning and assessment tools, will be developed and made available via education partners’ web sites.

For more information or to contribute to the working materials for this site, please contact info@erlc.ca or call 780-444-2497.

1	See the Contributing Education Partners above and the Acknowledgements on the back cover for more information about the working group.
2	In this guide, implementation means “to put into practice an educational change that achieves its intended outcomes, the most important of which is improved student learning.”
3	See the Selected Bibliography.
4	In this guide, education stakeholders refer to all those who contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the learning success of every student. Education stakeholders therefore include school boards, superintendents, jurisdictional and school personnel (i.e., administrators, teachers, teacher’s aides, education consultants, transportation and maintenance personnel, administrative support staff), school council members, professional learning providers, faculties of education and Alberta Education personnel.