Evidence-informed professional development: Blueprints or jigsaws?

 Thomas Perry and Rebecca Morris, University of Warwick, UK Implementation: Easier said than done Underlying a lot of current thinking about evidence-based practice is the idea of teachers selecting and implementing the programmes and strategies that researchers deem to be effective. In this division of labour, researchers find out ‘what works’ and teachers are tasked with figuring out the practical details to make programmes and practices work with sufficient ‘fidelity’ (i.e. adherence) to a research-backed blueprint. Vital to this conception of evidence-based practice is the notion of ‘implementation’. The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) implementation guide goes as far as saying that ‘implementation is what schools do to improve’ (Sharples et al., 2018, p. 3). It describes implementation as a form of project management supported by and incorporated within a wider scheme of school self-evaluation, leadership and improvement. The process of implementatio