The intervention I plan on implementing is requiring physical education and health classes throughout all schools. In order to implement this intervention, first the school board and curriculum organizers must be contacted. They must agree to make these classes required for all ages from first to 12th grade. Curriculum organizers must put together these classes and determine what is to be taught. The physical education classes should have at least 30 minutes of class time in which the students participate in a fairly rigorous exercise activity. The health classes should be designed to include nutrition education and also education on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and the consequences of not being healthy.
For this strategy there are not a lot of barriers. Cost is always a factor because more teachers would need to be hired and instructed for these classes and various learning tools will be needed to supply these classes adequately. The school will have to look at their budget and cut costs on things that seem unnecessary in order to fuel this project. Another barrier could be designing the class structure and what is going to be done in the class time. The curriculum organizers can meet with nutritionists and doctors in order to come up with a proper education plan.
A key stakeholder that would need to be communicated with is the children's parents. The school can send home letters and email the parents informing them on the cirriculum change. The health classes can email the parents once a week to briefly let the parents know what was covered in class and could potentially create healthy habits at home. The physical education class could encourage the parents to help their child get another 30 minutes of exercise each day.
To evaluate the intervention, we would need to take health screenings of the kids before the program and then take health screenings of the kids after the program. By tracking their progress in a years time, we can evaluate if it was effective or not. My expected outcomes for this intervention is moderate. I believe that it could help change the life styles of some of the younger students, but the older students tend to be more apathetic.
Hi Zoey,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned your intervention and a bit about how to implement it. If I understand you correctly, your intervention is creating a requirement for physical education, but you will leave it up to each school to organize unique curricular activities. I think this could work, but you might want to define a couple more requirements, such as defining "rigorous" activity. Also, tell your reader how you will achieve this intervention - are you proposing legislation so that a law might get passed to require this?? (HOW will you implement it?)
I think you discuss a couple important barriers, but you could think more broadly about how to overcome them. Could schools apply for federal grants? Should more money from the government go straight to this program, or, do they really have to cut other programs?? (what are the odds a school would cut math or english in favor of PE?)
Parents are one stakeholder, but there are several stakeholders, don't you think? Is there one thing you could prepare that could be helpful for many stakeholders? (like, a commercial, education campaign, et?) I do like your ideas about how you would inform the parents very much.
In terms of evaluation, if you do before and after screenings, is this a process or outcome measure? (How will you know your intervention is working??) You should be more overt about process vs. outcome measures. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "expected outcomes for this intervention is moderate". The expected outcomes are where you say what you think will happen as a result of implementation of your intervention. For instance, do you think children might lose weight? Do you think there might be less diabetes? Do you think kids will become hungrier and just eat more? etc. etc.
Let me know if you have questions/need help this week before you turn in your paper.
Erin