Implementation research is the art of understanding where, why, for whom and how interventions work in the “real world”. The goal is to find new ways to scale solutions and interventions. To do this, implementation research looks into the context, the players and the processes.
Laterite recently had the opportunity to work on several implementation research projects in education. A recent example is our collaboration with Brink on uBoraBora – a fund set up to continuously improve foundational literacy and numeracy in Sub-Saharan Africa.
From these experiences, we know that implementation research can be a game changer. And to support the growing interest, we worked on a brief introduction that includes:
- What is implementation research?
- What makes implementation research different?
- What types of outcomes can be studied with implementation research?
- Examples of research questions and methodologies
The brief also includes:
- An overview of the steps required for an implementation research cycle, from an excellent understanding of the program’s implementation to different options for research design.
- And two cases studies to show how implementation research works in practice: one focusing on A/B testing as an experimental approach; and another on qualitative approaches to assess implementation outcomes.
Implementation research in education
