Examining the Schoolwide “Spread” of Research-Based Practices

Abstract

We investigated what had transpired in two elementary schools four years after we first began supporting one of the schools' efforts to restructure its special education program and three years after we provided a year-long professional development program to eight elementary and special education teachers. We had continued providing ongoing informal support during the years since, and wished to determine the extent to which the practices had “spread” to other teachers in our original school and a second school. Furthermore, we wished to learn why teachers who had not been a part of the original professional development program chose to learn and sustain use of the practices. A secondary interest was to discern how and why teachers adapted the practices. We found that 93% of the 98 teachers in the two schools had tried at least one of the practices and more than half continued to use one or more of the practices on a regular basis.