Glossary

Community Leadership Team

The Community Leadership Team (CLT) represents a group of local agencies and individuals who regularly work together to address a need or problem that is impacting the local early childhood community. Therefore, the CLT should represent agencies with the authority to make changes, as well as those intended to benefit from the changes.

Coordinator

A Coordinator is a person(s) authorized by leading state agencies that facilitates and represents the State Leadership Team, supports the Professional Development Network, and coordinates the state implementation activities.

Data and Evaluation Systems

The statewide implementation, scale-up, and sustainability process uses data-based decision making in almost all activities to ensure that implementation fidelity and outcomes are achieved. Data and evaluation systems involve the use of tools for data-based decision making and evaluation of progress and outcomes.

Demonstration Site

Demonstration sites are selected local high-fidelity implementation sites or programs that agree to serve as showplaces for fidelity implementation of the targeted practices. A site might be one agency, one program, or one location.

Evidence-based practice

Early childhood interventions or supports that have published research documenting their effectiveness. Practices that are considered evidence-based are ones that have been demonstrated as effective within multiple research studies that document similar positive outcomes.

Expansion

Expansion is a systematic effort to increase the number of practitioner, classrooms and/or home-visiting sites using the targeted practices with fidelity within a program so that more children and their families have ready access to effective interventions and supports. The Program Leadership Team plans for and provides an expanded infrastructure to support additional practitioners, classrooms and/or home visiting sites to achieve full implementation.

Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are a bidirectional process for communication among teams that ensure all invested partners have input, ownership, and voice in planning and problem solving. It is a process used to gain input, analyze data, and problem solve throughout the implementation process.

Fidelity

Fidelity is the degree to which an intervention or practice is delivered as intended by the developers and achieves expected results. Fidelity implies strict and continuing faithfulness to the original innovation or practice. Fidelity can be measured and compared to previous or future efforts to deliver the intervention or practice.

Implementation Fidelity

Implementation fidelity is the degree in which an intervention or practice is implemented as intended. In using evidence-based practices it is crucial that intervention agents use practices in a fashion that does not vary from how the practices were originally performed in research studies.

Implementation Site

Implementation sites are local sites or programs that participate in training and coaching to implement the targeted practices and have a leadership team to guide the process of implementation. A site might be one agency, one program, or one location.

Partner

Individuals who reflect various perspectives within the population that the innovation will benefit, and those providing financial, organizational, and direct service support.

Practice-Based Coaching

Coaching that is focused on the implementation of specified practices. Practice-based coaching occurs in the context of a collaborative partnership and uses a cyclical process of action planning, observation, reflection and feedback for supporting practitioners' use of recommended practices.

Practices

Practices are the teachable and doable behaviors that staff will use with children and families that can be used, replicated, and measured for fidelity.

Practitioner Coach

The (internal) practitioner coach provides practice-based coaching to practitioners in the implementation of the targeted practices. The practitioner coach is typically employed by the program or site.

Professional Development Network of Program Implementation Coaches

A group of carefully selected professional development experts who are responsible for delivering training and providing program coaching to Program Leadership Teams to establish high-fidelity implementation of targeted practices in implementation sites.

Program Benchmarks of Quality

A tool used by the Program Leadership Team to assess their status in the implementation of the elements needed to support implementation and scale-up of targeted practices across the program or targeted practices of the program as a whole. The Benchmarks of Quality are used to assess initial status, plan activities, and monitor progress through all stages of implementation. This tool comes in two versions: Benchmarks of Quality for Classroom-Based Programs and Benchmarks of Quality for Home-Visiting Programs.

Program Implementation Coach

The (external) program coach provides guidance and support to the Program Leadership Team on the implementation of targeted practices. The program coach provides an outside perspective that is informed by experiences across programs. Program coaches also serve as state training and technical assistance providers. The PIC also communicates progress of programs to the community and state teams, by regularly sharing data. They play a crucial role in the expansion of implementation across the state.

Program Leadership Team

A Program Leadership Team is charged with ongoing guidance of program-wide implementation of the targeted practices in a program. This team includes administrators in the program and key partners (for example, practitioners, family members). Other key roles on the team include the practitioner coach and data coordinator. The leadership team meets monthly to discuss program needs and program-wide implementation progress, and to review data.

Program-Wide Implementation

Program-wide implementation is a systematic effort to support the implementation of targeted practices by all practitioners in the program. A Program Leadership Team guides program-wide implementation. The Pyramid Model for Supporting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children is a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's healthy social and emotional development that has been implemented in over 20 states. This guide represents lessons learned, examples, resources and tools from that initiative.

Scale-up and Sustainability

Scale-up and Sustainability is a systematic effort to increase the number of communities and settings using the targeted practices with fidelity within the state so that more children and their families have ready access to effective interventions and supports. The State Leadership Team plans for and provides an expanded infrastructure to support additional programs to achieve full implementation.

State Leadership Team

A State Leadership Team is a team of cross-agency state leaders and agency representatives who are responsible for planning and supervising all aspects of the initiative including funding, policy initiatives, evaluation and data-based decision making, recruiting and training the network of Program Implementation Coaches, site selection, publicity, dissemination, scale-up, and sustainability.

State Leadership Team Benchmarks of Quality

The State Leadership Team Benchmarks of Quality are a tool used by the State Leadership Team to assess their status in the implementation of the elements needed to support implementation and scale-up of targeted practices in the state. The benchmarks help assess initial status, plan activities, and monitor progress through all stages of implementation.