The literature on policy implementation in education has largely concluded that implementing instructional change at a large-scale level is a substantial challenge, especially when the change is top-down (Tyack & Tobin, 1994; Hamilton & al. 2003; Dumay, 2009). Many reforms fail in their twin goals to change teaching practices and improve student achievement (Dupriez, 2015).

For a long time, researchers have aimed at identifying the mechanisms explaining the deviations between the political intentions of the reforms and the teachers’ work. They have in particular shown that the level of political congruence, pervasiveness, intensity, and voluntariness mattered to make sense of the differences in the level of policy implementation within schools. To respond to this failure, in the USA, several initiatives most often-labelled ‘Comprehensive School Reforms’ (CSR) have emerged with the objective to promote students’ learning in high-poverty schools. The CSR (for instance the ‘Success for All’, the ‘America’s choice’ …) provided opportunities for studying the effects of alternative modes of policy implementation on the teachers’ work. In particular, Rowan and Miller (2007) have shown that reforms using a professional control (based on collaboration and colleagues’ support) or a procedural one (based on precise guidelines) are more successful than a cultural control (based on teachers shared understanding of reform intentions). Likewise, some facilitators should be ensured, for example trainers could guide the teachers and give them an easy access to support and equipment needed while they implement the program. Finally, programs that follow structured approaches to instructional change are more likely than the adaptive ones to implement new instructional practices in schools (Rowan & Miller, 2007).

It remains unclear, however, what are the processes underlying the greater efficiency of procedural and professional modes of implementation. The major objective of this presentation will be to explore this issue based on the analyses of experimental data of the program implementation.

An experimental study was conducted in a sample of secondary schools (n = 19) and classes (n = 82) with the objective to foster the competencies in reading comprehension of 1^st year students. Secondary schools were randomly assigned either to the control group or to experimental conditions. Two experimental conditions were created that reflected procedural and/or professional controls. In experimental condition 1, teachers received the structured didactic intervention with a training adapted to its use; in experimental condition 2, teachers received the treatment, adapted training and guidance through coaching sessions.

Through our research, we try to understand how procedural and professional control could foster the implementation of alternative teaching practices. However, we also attempt to find different levels of instructional change depending on the type of control. To understand this, we have explored another piece of literature interested in factors affecting implementation (Durlak & Dupre, 2008). This literature shows among others the importance of individual characteristics and collective dimensions.

First, we hypothesize that procedural and professional control, in comparison with the control group, would promote instructional change through the implementation of the program because it is structuring for practices and it enables the introduction of new routines (Marz, 2014). However, we believe that this effect would be mediated by teachers’ characteristics such as self-efficacy and task values (Dumas & al., 2001; Dusenbury & al., 2003).

Second, we hypothesize that professional control would promote a higher level of implementation that procedural control thanks to coaching sessions which take place in experimental condition 2. Coaching sessions is attempted to foster the instructional change because they were built to develop collective dimensions such as collaboration, colleagues support and shared-standards inside the educative team (Durlak & Dupre, 2008).

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