Understanding Health and Physical Education Teachers’ Perceptions of Professional Identity and Self-efficacy to Teach Nutrition in Queensland Secondary Schools

Jaclyn Munge

doi:10.25907/00783

Adolescence represents a pivotal stage for instilling healthy nutritional habits that can mitigate long-term health risks and their associated health costs. Poor nutritional habits can negatively affect physical and mental health and academic success during adolescence. As such, nutrition education is crucial for adolescents as it has the potential to promote health, wellbeing, and academic achievement. By providing adolescents with education on nutrition, they become empowered to make informed, healthier choices, thereby promoting overall health and academic success. Schools are ideal settings for health promotion and education to engender healthy behaviours among adolescents, and teachers in school settings are well-positioned to effect positive changes in adolescents’ nutritional habits and practices. However, teachers’ perceived self-efficacy has been identified as a major determinant affecting their teaching of nutrition education. Teachers’ self-efficacy has also been shown to be closely linked with their professional identities, hence their professional identity also likely influences their teaching and experiences teaching of nutrition education. To the author’s knowledge, no Australian studies have articulated the association between secondary Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers’ own perceptions of their self-efficacy and professional identity and how this shapes their experiences and delivery of nutrition education in secondary schools in Queensland, Australia. Therefore, this study aims to answer the following research question: how do experienced secondary HPE teachers’ own perceptions of their nutrition-teaching self-efficacy (NTSE) and professional identity shape their experiences and delivery of nutrition education in Queensland secondary schools? A total of 38 secondary HPE teachers who taught nutrition education in secondary schools in Queensland, Australia were recruited to participate in this study. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design that consisted of two distinct phases was used. In Phase 1, an online survey was administered which generated data on secondary HPE teachers’ general characteristics and experiences teaching nutrition in schools, as well as their perceptions of their NTSE and professional identity. Data on teachers’ general characteristics and experiences were generated from open-ended questions. Data on perceptions were generated from two previously validated surveys, one that measured perception of NTSE and the other that measured perception of professional identity. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering method was then applied to group all the participants into three identifiable clusters of teachers based on their responses to the surveys on their perceptions of their NTSE and professional identity. In Phase 2, five secondary HPE teachers from across the three clusters were interviewed about their experiences teaching school-based nutrition education in secondary schools in Queensland, Australia. Inductive content analysis of the teachers’ responses from the open-ended questions in Phase 1and their responses from the interviews in Phase 2 was done. The findings of the analysis from Phase 1 built on the findings from Phase 2 to provide a richer and thicker description of how each cluster of teachers’ own perceptions of their NTSE and professional identity shape their experiences and delivery of nutrition education in Queensland secondary schools. Findings from this study indicate a need to support pre-service and practicing secondary HPE teachers in their development of their NTSE and sense of professional identity. Recommendations for the provision of this support include making programmatic changes in initial teacher education programs, opening up partnership connections between schools and initial teacher education institutions, and providing more professional development opportunities for secondary HPE teachers. These recommendations are aimed at strengthening secondary HPE teachers’ NTSE and sense of professional identity to positively influence their experiences teaching nutrition education in secondary schools in Queensland, Australia.

Understanding Health and Physical Education Teachers’ Perceptions of Professional Identity and Self-efficacy to Teach Nutrition in Queensland Secondary Schools

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