There is a continued call for the use of practices supported by evidence to improve the quality and effectiveness of services provided for our children, families, and communities. Despite best intentions, our various systems in education, health and human services continue to struggle to adopt these practices and transfer them into consistent, sustained use by practitioners (Burns & Ysseldyke, 2009; Insitute of Medicine, 2007; Madon et al., 2007).

This gap between what we know works and utilization of those practices in real world settings may deny individuals such as students with disabilities proven benefits (Dew & Boydell, 2017). Research and practice has shown persistent inequities for students from historically and currently marginalized groups. Equitable Implementation occurs when strong equity components (including explicit attention to the culture, history, values, assets, and needs of the community) are integrated into the principles and tools of implementation science to facilitate quality implementation of effective programs for a specific community or group of communities (DuMont, Metz, & Woo, 2019).

Implementation science, the multi-disciplinary study of methods and strategies to promote use of research findings in practice, seeks to address this by providing frameworks to guide creation of conditions and activities that facilitate use of evidence-based practices (Eccles & Mittman, 2006). 

In 2005, the National Implementation Research Network released a monograph synthesizing implementation research findings across a range of fields. Based on these findings, the evolving field of research, and thier own practice evidence, NIRN developed five overarching frameworks referred to as the Active Implementation Frameworks.

In these modules we provide an overview of the Active Implementation Frameworks as follows:

Active Implementation Frameworks

• Usable Innovations
• Implementation Stages
• Implementation Drivers
• Implementation Teams
• Improvement Cycles