Development of educational info capsules proposing instructional strategies aiming to deal with overweight and obese students

Abstract

Irwin et al. (2003) pointed out the principles that quality PE teachers should incorporate into their pedagogical practice in order to take into account the increasing number of overweight and obese students in their classes. Fighting against obesity is so complex that no simple solution can be proposed. It means that the development of specific tools providing PE teachers with new instructional strategies inspired from public health is needed (Prusak et al., 2011). Inclusion of overweight students into PE can be linked with a social ecological model (Li & Rukavina, 2012). Even if PE teachers are able to develop and implement specific instructional strategies, it seems that they need support from health experts (Cloes et al., 2013). Internet, continuing professional development activities, and educational info capsules were identified as the preferred supports to be used by the practitioners (Cloes et al., 2014). The aims of this study were to produce and validate three pedagogical capsules focusing on specific concerns of PE teachers as well as to analyze the procedure of validation. Using an extensive analysis of the literature, the researchers first identified theoretical and practical resources to be mobilized in the understanding and development of solutions for the selected problems: (1) Students’ lack of awareness about the risks of overweight and obesity; (2) Constraints associated with the motor/physical disabling; (3) Parents’ lack of awareness about PA impact on health. The capsules were then submitted to 11 experts (health specialists, health educators, psychologists, PE teachers) who had to analyze the documents. They acknowledged the content and form of the capsules. Minor changes were requested in order to finalize them. The proposed evaluation sheet was also validated but face-to-face assessment was recommended. Dissemination of the existing capsules as well as development of additional ones should be the next steps of this project