🌿 Implementation Science: Moving from Being and Knowing to Doing

 

The Belonging Project began as a Canadian professional learning hub. It was created as a space where educators could engage with inclusive education through story.

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From the very beginning, it was clear that story could move hearts and shift perspectives. Yet as the work deepened, an important realization emerged. Understanding inclusion and valuing inclusion were not enough to make it sustainable in practice.

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If inclusion was going to live across classrooms, schools, and systems, there needed to be a bridge. There needed to be a way to translate shared belief and knowledge into consistent and collective action. That bridge is Implementation Science.

 

🪴 From Professional Learning to System Change

 

Implementation Science is the study of how effective practices take root. It explores how ideas become action, and how action becomes culture.

 

In Alberta’s Continuum of Supports and Services guide, leaders are invited to see their work through a Being, Knowing, and Doing lens:

• Being is the set of beliefs and values that shape how we show up.

• Knowing is the knowledge, the evidence, and the understanding that guide our choices.

• Doing is the intentional action that brings inclusive learning to life.

 

This holistic model reflects the same insight that shaped The Belonging Project. Lasting change happens when belief, understanding, and behaviour are aligned.

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Implementation Science provides the structure for this alignment. It offers the iterative processes, feedback loops, and leadership practices that support sustainable change over time.

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🌱 How Implementation Science Works Here

 

In The Belonging Project, Implementation Science is woven into every layer of the learning ecosystem.

 

Being: The Culture of Belonging

The heart of inclusion is relational.
The Belonging Project begins with story because story reconnects us to the people involved.
Story cultivates empathy, reflection, and shared purpose.
Story strengthens our reason for this work.

 

Knowing: Building Shared Understanding

Through courses, case studies, and collaborative design, educators build knowledge about inclusive design.
Knowledge becomes shared language.
Understanding becomes coherence.

 

Doing: Implementation and Iteration

Change happens in practice.

 

Implementation Science supports sustained doing through competency drivers, organizational drivers, and leadership drivers that bring individual learning and system structure into alignment.

It turns insight into action. It turns reflection into improvement. It turns intention into culture.

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🌿 The Implementation Drivers

 

• Competency Drivers include professional learning, coaching, reflection, and supported practice.

• Organization Drivers include systems, structures, and collaboration that reduce barriers.

• Leadership Drivers include vision, relational alignment, and modeling that carry the work forward.

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Together, these drivers make sure that belonging is not dependent on one person or program. It becomes part of the culture of a school.

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✨ Why It Matters

 

Inclusion cannot be achieved by information alone.

It grows through a process that honors who we are, strengthens what we know, and supports how we act.

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By grounding this project in both story and Implementation Science, The Belonging Project helps educators move from insight to transformation. Inclusive culture becomes something that is lived, not only hoped for.

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🌾 In Short

 

Story builds connection.
Implementation Science builds continuity.
Together, they help educators turn belief into practice, and practice into lasting belonging.

 

Explore the other foundations of The Belonging Project by following the links below: