Understanding the effective implementation of evidence-based practices in schools is a critical step to maximising educational outcomes for all students. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has been working closely with a small number of schools on the Learning Partner Project to learn about implementation in their settings and pilot an approach informed by implementation research. This discussion paper shares early insights from our work with these schools.

The key objective of this first phase of our Learning Partner work has been to learn about promising approaches to implementation, so we have used monitoring and evaluation processes that are formative in nature. The formative evaluation involved school leaders and teachers completing surveys and participating in interviews and discussion groups in the middle and at the end of the year in 2023. They provided feedback about:

• their experience with the project
• the aspects they found most useful 
• what (if any) benefits they experienced or observed.