About this collaboration
To ensure all students benefit from effective teaching practices, we need to understand how to successfully implement those practices in schools.
In the Learning Partner project, the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) works alongside school leaders and regional system teams to use a deliberate and structured approach to implementation. This collaboration allows AERO to learn with those who directly enable teachers to strengthen and sustain their use of evidence-based teaching practices. Through this collaboration, key ideas from implementation research can be operationalised in ways that are useful and usable for Australian schools.
AERO works with systems and sectors to identify networks of schools interested in being part of the Learning Partner project. While our work to support implementation is growing, we’re still limited in the number of schools we can partner with as a national agency. To help with this, we’re committed to sharing implementation resources and insights from the Learning Partner project with all schools across Australia. These include:
- resources on a deliberate and structured approach to implementation
- practical resources developed from the Learning Partner project.
Collaboration aims
The aims of the Learning Partner project are to:
- learn about promising ways to implement evidence-based teaching practices in schools
- use an evidence-informed approach to provide direct support and guidance to schools to enhance both implementation leadership and evidence-based teaching practice
- generate examples of promising implementation of evidence-based teaching practices in diverse school settings.
Scaling up support
More than 50 schools across 3 cohorts have participated in the Learning Partner project to date. This includes:
- schools located in both urban and regional environments
- government and Catholic schools across 4 states
- primary and secondary schools
- inclusive education settings
- schools with varying socio-economic contexts.
All schools have focused on implementing explicit instruction.
We regularly use collective learning and insights to refine how the Learning Partner project is carried out. Key iterations include:
2023
The first year focused on how school leaders could use key concepts from implementation research on a day-to-day basis to help guide the implementation process and support improvement in teaching practice.
2024
The second year involved partnering with schools across a broader range of socio-economic backgrounds to ensure insights included varied school contexts. There was also greater focus on:
- providing more support for leaders to develop their understanding of both explicit instruction and implementation processes to build local capacity for leading implementation efforts
- supporting the creation of school implementation teams to lead the implementation process in each school.
2025
In the third year, AERO is working more closely with systems and sectors to learn about implementation support provision at scale across diverse contexts. This involves:
- supporting schools in typical network groupings (i.e., clusters of 10 to 25 schools)
- collaborating with regional system teams (e.g., Education Advisors and Improvement Coaches) to explore their role in supporting school implementation teams to implement well.
2026+
AERO will continue working with regional system teams to support and learn alongside Learning Partner schools, focusing on providing highly scalable forms of implementation support.
News and updates
This collaboration has been featured in AERO and external publications, including:
- Q&A with Trinity Hook, Principal of Mount Hutton Public School 2 minute media clip
- The Educator Australia Online, highlighting insights from the collaboration
- Insights into Implementation in Schools in 2025 discussion paper
- Insights from the Classroom, featuring Somerville Rise Primary School
- Reflections on Implementing Well, featuring Chelsea Primary School
- Teacher Magazine, highlighting early insights from the collaboration
- Education HQ, featuring Mount Hutton Public School
- Education Daily, featuring Mount Hutton Public School
- Insights into Implementation in Schools in 2024 discussion paper.
Keywords: evidence-based education, school change, continuous school improvement