Practice makes perfectible: The impact of training and rehearsal on program fidelity

ABSTRACT Intervention fidelity is essential to the implementation of effective educational programs and research. Providing rigorous facilitator training is one method of promoting intervention fidelity. This study documents the rehearsal paradigm and the fidelity of the implementation of a theatre-in-education intervention. The intensive facilitator training schedule, designed to ensure that each actor-teacher had a high level of facilitator expertise and could faithfully administer the program, successfully fostered intervention fidelity. Although the rigorous training paradigm described in this article was designed to prepare professional actor-teachers to administer a theatre-in-education intervention with preschool children in Head Start and their teachers, the depth, breadth, and rigor of the training paradigm can inform other forms of educator preparation and instruction.