Introduction: An inoculation intervention was developed to improve the tracking of Physical Activity Curriculum Cards (PACC) taught at a training workshop. A pilot training was conducted to implement a block reporting protocol used in previous research. In addition, pre-and post assessments were introduced to determine if a reintroduction of the curriculum would impact the teaching beliefs, skills, and barriers toward physical activity. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of a five-week inoculation on PACC implementation and physical activity promotion.
Methods: Childcare teachers who had previously participated in a Let’s Wiggle: Promoting Physical Activity in a Childcare Setting workshop with five-week coaching, were selected to receive a five-week follow-up coaching inoculation. The coaching included a pre-training assessment, a lesson plan taught at the center by the research team, coaching on lesson development and block activity reporting, an observation of childcare providers, and a post-coaching assessment.
Results: N = 8 childcare providers were given the 5 week inoculation follow-up. Teachers were significantly more likely at follow-up to report competence in their ability to assign physical activity homework, modify activities for developmental appropriateness, and provide parents with ideas to promote physical activity at home. With regard to barriers to teaching physical activity, social influence, fear of injury, and lack of skill were all significantly lower at post-coaching assessment. Non-equipment cards were used most with 12.22 total activities on average. Polyspots and bean bags were reported the least at 0.33 and .0.89 used on average respectively.
Conclusions: Teachers reported less barriers to teaching physical activity following the coaching inoculation. The activities that were most frequently reported were non-equipment activities. The results of the study provide a successful protocol for tracking PACC use and resulted in increasing teacher’s abilities to promote physical activity in childcare settings.
