Research to Practice: Phonemic Awareness in Kindergarten and First Grade

Teachers attend a workshop and learn about a "research-based" practice. A consultant works with the teachers for a while to set up the program and maybe even conduct an evaluation and follow-up instruction. The consultant leaves; the teachers are on their own. A couple of years later, nobody can find evidence the program ever existed. Does this sound familiar? Why does this occur? What happens to make teachers drop programs that may even be excellent? The secret may lie in what does not happen. We set out to discover the secret to successful research-based practices as teachers use them in real life. The example we chose was a phonemic-awareness program; this article describes how phonemic-awareness research and intervention knowledge was successfully translated for teacher implementation – over 3 years.