Advancing Australia's Agenda for Young Children's Health and Wellbeing: Empirical Insights into Educator Knowledge, Confidence and Intentions in Promoting Children's Learning, Eating, Active Play and Sleep (LEAPS)

Abstract

EDUCATORS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD education and care (ECEC) settings play a critical role in advancing Australia's agenda for children's health and wellbeing. The LEAPS (Learning, Eating, Active Play, Sleep) professional development program was designed to acknowledge and improve educator knowledge of national healthy eating and physical activity guidelines, as a critical foundation for health and wellbeing of children and families. The program consisted of online reading and face-to-face professional development. Change in educator knowledge and confidence was assessed via pre- and post-questionnaire, with two additional open-ended questions regarding intention to change practice post-program. Educators (n = 765) participating in LEAPS increased their knowledge of nutrition and physical activity guidelines, and planned to implement practice changes as a result—namely communication of healthy eating and physical activity messages with colleagues, parents and children; and engaging parents in these areas within their service. Professional development regarding health guidelines is important to support evidence-based communication between educators and parents.

Measuring Early Childhood Educators’ Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior–Related Self-Efficacy: A Systematic Review of Tools

“…Studies by Cotwright et al (2017) , Duff et al (2019) , and Derscheid et al (2014) employed versions of the same tool (i.e., the Confidence About Activity and Nutrition [CAN] Teach Questionnaire ), while studies by Murtha et al (2020) and Cleland et al (2018) employed the same tool (i.e., survey created to assess ECEs’ confidence to follow the Get up and Grow! guidelines); therefore, a total of 13 unique tools were identified in this study.…”

“…Survey assessing confidence to the Get Up and Grow! guidelines was used by Cleland et al (2018) and Murtha et al (2020). Physical activity items are indicated with light gray shading and sedentary behavior items with dark gray shading.…”

“Healthy Kids”—A capacity building approach for the early childhood education and care sector

“…24 This indicates there are opportunities for sector improvement in the ways in which educators create supportive environments and experiences as they are well positioned to play a critical role in making a difference to the health and wellbeing of young children. 25,26 There are also opportunities to lift national standards related to "health and safety" to embrace the integration of a range of health promotion strategies across the ECEC sector. 27…”

Infant feeding nutrition policies in Australian early childhood education and care services: a content and qualitative analysis

“…Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) provides the theoretical framework for this study. SCT is a popular theory for describing behavioural change and is used widely in health and education in the investigation of barriers and enablers to ECEC nutrition best practice (Bandura 1977;Cleland et al 2018;Ward et al 2008). SCT's Triadic Reciprocal Determinism model allows exploration of the complexities of educator behaviour, agency, and knowledge in ECEC.…”

“…The LEAPS program included a detailed mixed-method evaluation, informed by Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura 2004), encompassing pre/post-surveys of 765 educators participating in the LEAPS training and qualitative case studies of 12 LEAPS services. This study is nested within the LEAPS evaluation (Cleland et al 2018), contributing to initial policy documents collected during the qualitative case studies and analysis of related national ECEC public policy in Australia.…”