Building to Impact

Turn ideas into goals—and goals into impact

The road to school improvement and student achievement is paved with good intentions—so why does the destination seem so far away? If you’re like most educators, the answer is a pothole known as the implementation gap.

This book provides a road map to bypassing that gap in your school or district, offering a carefully researched, field-tested methodology that takes leadership teams, professional learning communities, and educators all the way from good ideas to systematic impact. Following the five Ds, you’ll: 

• Discover goals worth pursuing and problems worth addressing
• Design instruments and actions that generate deep impact
• Deliver interventions and collect data
• Double-back to monitor your progress and evaluate the impact
• Double-up to enhance, sustain, and scale your success

You became an educator to make a difference in students’ lives. With this playbook, you’ll transform research and ideas into achievable actions—and make maximum impact.

Dr. Arran Hamilton is Group Director of Education at Cognition Education. Previously he has held senior positions at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Education Development Trust, the British Council, Nord Anglia Education, and a research fellowship at Warwick University. His core focus is on translating evidence into impact at scale, and he has overseen the design, delivery, and evaluation of education programs across the Pacific Islands, East Asia, the Middle East, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Arran’s recent publications include The Gold Papers and The Lean Education Manifesto. Dr. Douglas Reeves is the author of more than 40 books and more than 100 articles on leadership and education. He has twice been named to the Harvard University Distinguished Authors Series and was named the Brock International Laureate for his contributions to education. His career of work in professional learning led to the Contribution to the Field Award from the US National Staff Development Council, now Learning Forward. He was also named the William Walker Scholar by the Australian Council of Educational Leaders. His recent books include Deep Change Leadership, Achieving Equity and Excellence, From Leading to Succeeding, and Fearless Schools. Doug is the founder of Creative Leadership Solutions, with the mission to improve educational opportunities for students throughout the world using creative solutions for leadership, policy, teaching, and learning. Through this he has worked across more than 40 countries. Dr. Janet Clinton is the Deputy Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE), Director of the Teacher and Teaching Effectiveness Research Hub, and Professor in Evaluation, at MGSE. She has wide international experience as an evaluator and educator and has an extensive publication record. She has led over 120 international evaluation projects across multiple disciplines, in particular education and health. Her major interest in program evaluation is the development of evaluation theory, mixed methodologies, and data analytics. Janet’s current evaluation work focuses on development of evaluation frameworks and implementation protocols, as well as using evaluation as a vehicle for change and building capacity through extensive stakeholder engagement. John Hattie, PhD, is an award-winning education researcher and best-selling author with nearly thirty years of experience examining what works best in student learning and achievement. His research, better known as Visible Learning, is a culmination of nearly thirty years synthesizing more than 2,100 meta-analyses comprising more than one hundred thousand studies involving over 300 million students around the world. He has presented and keynoted in over three hundred international conferences and has received numerous recognitions for his contributions to education. His notable publications include Visible Learning, Visible Learning for Teachers, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn, Visible Learning for Mathematics, Grades K-12, and 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning.