Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems

Improving outcomes for young children and their families may start with choosing evidence-based curricula, interventions, and practices—but it doesn't end there. To ensure sustained changes to early childhood programs and systems, interventions must be implemented effectively and consistently over time, which isn't an easy or straightforward task. This important book is the first research volume on applying implementation science—an evidence-based framework for bridging the research-to-practice gap—to early childhood programs and systems.

With contributions from 25+ early childhood researchers, this essential reference will help ensure that interventions are not only implemented effectively, but also scaled up and sustained so they help as many children as possible. Administrators, researchers, and policymakers will

• examine how the growing field of implementation science can help close the research-to-practice gap in early childhood
• discover the core components needed to implement and sustain change in programs and systems
• explore through specific examples how to build practitioner competency and promote high-fidelity implementation of early childhood innovations
• get in-depth guidance on replicating and scaling up programs at the district and state level
• learn from a helpful five-step model for assessing the fidelity of interventions
• understand how to create readiness for change and why it's so important
• see how implementation science can inform the process of systems change for early childhood professional development systems and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS)

More than a how-to guide to effective implementation and scale-up, this volume also addresses the theoretical foundation of the stages of implementation science at all levels of early childhood systems and considers research, practice, and policy implications.

A foundational volume on the fundamentals of implementation science, this book will help improve long-term outcomes for all young children. Early childhood programs will learn how to replicate and sustain best practices, researchers will be ready to conduct more informed program evaluations, and policymakers will discover what it really takes to have effective, sustainable programs and systems.

Dr. Halle is Codirector of Early Childhood Research at Child Trends. She oversees projects in Child Trends’s Washington, D.C., office. She conducts research on children’s early cognitive and social development, children’s school readiness, family and community supports for school readiness, and school characteristics associated with ongoing achievement and positive development. Her recent work focuses on early literacy development among children who are English language learners and evaluations of early childhood curricula, programs, and professional development aimed at supporting children’s school readiness.

Dr. Allison J. Metz is a developmental psychologist, Director of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), and Senior Implementation Specialist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Metz specializes in the implementation, mainstreaming, and scaling of evidence to achieve social impact for children and families in a range of human service and education areas, with an emphasis on child welfare and early childhood service contexts. Her work focuses in several key areas including the development of evidence-informed practice models; the use of effective implementation and scaling strategies to improve the application of evidence in service delivery systems; and the development of coaching, continuous quality improvement, and sustainability strategies. She is Co-Chair for the Global Implementation Conference, a part of the Global Implementation Initiative. Dr. Metz is co-editor of Applying Implementation Science in Early Childhood Programs and Systems (with T. Halle & I. Martinez-Beck; Paul H., Brookes Publishing Co., 2013).

Dr. Martinez-Beck coordinates the work of the child care research team at the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), developing the child care policy research agenda, managing large research projects, and representing OPRE and the child care policy research perspective in diverse federal interagency research work groups. Prior to joining The Administration for Children and Families, Dr. Martinez-Beck held a Society for Research in Child Development Executive Branch Policy Fellowship with the Child Care Bureau where she was involved in designing a research agenda to answer policy-relevant questions for Child Care and Development Fund State Administrators and other key stakeholders. A recent focus of her work has been on issues related to the quality of early care and education settings and links to young children's developmental outcomes.