Effectiveness of personnel and material implementation strategies: The case of an instructional approach for mathematical word problems

For implementing instructional approaches in classrooms, material or personnel implementation strategies have been applied, yet rarely compared with respect to the separate effectiveness of each strategy. Our effectiveness study (75 teachers, 1466 students) compared different implementation strategies for an intervention on mathematical word problems, with students’ self-efficacy beliefs and word problem performance as dependent variables. In four implementation conditions, teachers received weak or strong personnel and/or material support with an additional control condition. Multilevel models revealed that students of teachers with support had significantly higher post-test performance in both dependent variables than the control group. High personnel or material support led to significantly higher post-test word-problem performance than only weak support. Combined high personnel and material support led to higher outcomes in self-efficacy beliefs than either did separately. In conclusion, implementation strategies should provide both strong personnel and material support, as the combination can best enhance students’ performances and self-efficacy beliefs.