Designing PAL interventions in collaboration with school staff: Active School-Denmark

ACTIVE SCHOOL is a national research project, with researchers from University Colleges and the University of Copenhagen.

Implementation of 45 min of daily PA in Danish Schools have been poor since the enactment of a new law in 2014 (1). Lack of beliefs in the learning effect, lack of competencies to teach PA and lack of support from colleagues are reasons mentioned as barriers (1,2).

These challenges are addressed by the ACTIVE SCHOOL project with the aim of developing two types of school PA interventions. They will be based on scientific evidence and theories. School staff will actively participate in the project and their views will contribute to optimal and realistic practice within the interventions.

The project is developing through a four phased design-based process (3,4). Every phase informs the next in an iterative pattern and school staff participate with in-class testing and refining clues to tailor the two interventions and make them feasible for practice (5).

During the first phase of the project, the current status of PA implementation was explored by informal interviews with stakeholders and focus group interviews with school staff. Key themes were detected through a domain analysis and factors influencing their daily practice were revealed.
These results informed the process in a subsequent development workshop with school staff, and both design activities serve as a departure point for intervention development.
In the short oral presentation, a synthesis of interviews and the workshop findings will be presented.
Different designs are still iterated, before a final proto intervention design is landed in the summer 2022.
These intervention designs will be explored in an 8 week feasibility study to consolidate the most feasible and adaptable components and strategies (6).
The final PA interventions will be investigated in a large RCT-study in the years 2023-2024.