Using Research to Facilitate Implementation: The Role of the External Linker.

This paper describes the activities and experiences of a technical assistance consultant working with a superintendent and assistant superintendent to implement the Achievement Directed Leadership (ADL) school improvement program during 1981-82. The paper's first section describes the ADL program's "top-down" implementation plan, with its step-by-step training first of central office administrators, then of principals, and finally of teachers. Following the second section's description of the troubled, unstable context for change in the urban New Jersey school district where the program was to be implemented, section 3 discusses the efforts of the technical assistance "external linker" to involve the district's central office administrators, principals, and curriculum supervisors in the program's planning stages. In three subsequent sections, the author describes how the external linker (1) mobilized program support by developing a Quarterly Topic Plan, (2) facilitated program implementation with the help of a Principal/Teacher Conference Form, and (3) sustained and supported the program's implementation by means of extensive followup observation and consultation. The paper concludes by affirming the successful efforts of the particular external linker in question and the value of effective in-person technical assistance generally in contributing to district-wide improvement. (JBM)