Research School Network: Implementation Decisions: What are your barriers and enablers? Reflecting on what can help or hinder implementation

The tool below, taken from the EEF’s Implementation guidance report, helps frame the explore stage. In our recent series, we have looked at:
How to identify the right problem
How to explore the evidence
How to identify challenges
In the final blog, we ask: What are the barriers and enablers to change in our setting?

Barriers and enablers take many forms. They can include structures, people and the features of whatever is being implemented. Some can be identified by looking at the specific approach e.g. staffing challenges to a literacy intervention programme, whereas others are rooted in the school culture – a school that values the implementation process in general will better enable all implementation.

Enablers ease implementation

It often feels that the barriers to implementation loom largest. However, it’s crucial that we also reflect on the enabling factors that will make implementation run smoothly. Judith Kidd, Director of Dixons Academies Centre for Growth, recommends starting with our ​‘endowment’, everything that we already have in place that can make things work:

• The places where we already demonstrate the behaviours that drive effective implementation: engage, reflect, unite.
• The structures that are already in place and work well; these can support implementation.
• The right people: those with expertise, knowledge of effective implementation, and credibility to enable change.
  
• The values, norms and attitudes in the school that can act as guiding principles and communication tools for implementation. Implementation needs to be grafted onto these to bring it to life.

Barriers are never fixed

We can’t be naive about the barriers we identify, but have to challenge deficit narratives, where we might see the majority of barriers as brick walls rather than hurdles. Any blanket statement that begins ​“Our staff can’t…”, ​“Our parents don’t…”, ​“Our pupils will never be able to…” is doing this. Not to say that there won’t be barriers, but that they are not insurmountable.

Often, we should look at how to change structures from barriers to enablers. According to the EEF’s implementation guidance, structures can be:

• school structures such as timetables and groups;
• logistics and processes, for example, data monitoring systems;
• resources such as funding and equipment;
• time, for example, set meeting time;
• policies, for example, MAT, local, or national policies; and
• roles, for example, implementation teams.

So a school timetable could be the barrier that constrains an approach, but it could also be the thing that unlocks implementation. As they write in the guidance:

Readiness

A good way to reflect on barriers and enablers is through the lens of ​‘readiness’. Scaccia et al (2015) state that readiness refers to ​‘the extent to which an organization is both willing and able to implement a particular innovation’ and that it consists of three component parts:

Assessing readiness will identify the barriers and enablers. This will then inform the prepare stage. What are the barriers to readiness? We can plan to address these. What are the enablers? We can plan to use these.

A final point. We have been looking at the explore stage of implementation, but we should reflect on barriers and enablers at every stage of the process.

Scaccia JP, Cook BS, Lamont A, Wandersman A, Castellow J, Katz J, Beidas RS. A practical implementation science heuristic for organizational readiness: R = MC2. J Community Psychol. 2015 Apr;43(4):484 – 501.