Increasing implementation science literacy to address the research-to-practice gap in school psychology

Many evidence-based practices have not achieved their potential to broadly impact student outcomes as schools struggle with their adoption and implementation. This costly and consequential implementation gap must be addressed within school psychology through the focused study of implementation processes and outcomes. Implementation science is a multidisciplinary, translational field focused on increasing the usage and implementation of evidence-based practices into typical practice to improve outcomes. Despite the rapid development of the field of implementation science over the past decade it has been underexamined in school psychology research. As a step toward decreasing the implementation gap, the purpose of this introductory article is to increase school psychology researchers' implementation literacy. Specifically, this article provides an overview of implementation science, including (a) key terminology; (b) theories, models, and frameworks designed to explain, describe, or illustrate implementation processes or constructs; (c) strategies to support implementation across levels (e.g., provider, organization); (d) measures to capture implementation and related context; and (e) utilized research designs. By increasing school psychology researchers' implementation literacy, it is hoped that future research will attend to and evaluate implementation process and outcomes and thus facilitate the adoption and implementation of evidence-based practices to improve student outcomes.