Linden Mountain-SURF Spring 2024

Author: Linden Mountain | Major: Career and Technical Education | Semester: Spring 2024

My name is Linden Mountain, and this past Spring 2024 semester I have continued working alongside my research mentor, Dr. Erin Howie Hickey, toward our shared goal of understanding and promoting physical activity levels among school-aged students. Dr. H is an Associate Professor with the Exercise Science department, and I am a Career and Technical Education major with a Biology minor within the College of Education and Health Professions. As a future secondary classroom teacher, working alongside Dr. H has allowed me to combine my passion for promoting physical activity with my upcoming career as an educator.

Although I have certainly found the education sphere to be the place I wish to build my career, I began college as an Exercise Science major. I knew that I wanted to blend these passions through research, and luckily Dr. H’s research does just that! By beginning to help with various research projects and tasks in my sophomore year, I was introduced to the Exercise is Medicine and Recess project groups that Dr. H facilitates. Although I work mainly with Exercise Science undergraduates and PhD students, I have found that my input from an education standpoint has been beneficial in many cases, such as in the Playworks project that we are currently working on. Playworks is a training program that works with selected public elementary schools in Arkansas to train educators in facilitating healthy and effective recess practices.

This semester, I quickly learned that the research process often takes a significant amount of time. Many tasks and revisions must be completed prior to the initiation of the data collection phase. I previously categorized “research” as this actual data collection and analyzation; however, I now understand that the preparations for these phases are key components of the entire research process. Although the Playworks study was ready for the recruitment phase at the beginning of the semester, the team experienced trouble recruiting enough schools to sign up to participate. We had sent an email to the principal of every eligible elementary school in Arkansas, yet we received few responses despite offering funding and professional development training to schools who participated. However, both my mentor, Dr. H, and Chris, a current graduate student, modeled how to overcome such barriers and helped me keep my research moving forward. My specific project is a survey that aims to gather data on teacher attitudes and actions taken in regard to student physical activity. The goal is to, through a variety of survey questions, understand educator perceptions regarding student physical activity levels, the role that the school setting plays in promoting student physical activity, and the preparation teachers feel they have received to promote such activity. Because Playworks faced recruitment issues, the participant group for my survey was also affected. After brainstorming strategies to recruit teachers outside of Playworks to complete the survey, we formulated a new participant population and recruitment strategy. Any Arkansas teacher or preservice teacher can complete the survey, and recruitment will be through word-of-mouth and social media. Including preservice teachers in the participant pool will allow us to evaluate if current teacher education programs are including physical activity or movement integration training for their undergraduate students. While we were developing this recruitment strategy, I was able to construct the survey in Qualtrics. I received feedback throughout this process that made my questions more specific, clear, and quantifiable. The next step was to write an IRB; because this research is no longer being conducted within the Playworks study, separate review and approval is needed. Answering the specific questions asked in the IRB process reminded me of the value that my research will have once completed; there is a significant deficit in actual versus recommended physical activity levels among students, and including teachers in this discussion will help researchers and policymakers better understand how to combat this issue. I also spent time developing a flyer as a recruitment material; this will be accessible to participants via social media, word-of-mouth, as well as physical flyers distributed in appropriate locations.

Throughout the semester, this work has strengthened my ability to adapt to changes and has given me a better understanding of the IRB process. While I am disappointed that we are not to the data collection phase yet, the IRB is awaiting final approval from Dr. H and I am excited to begin distributing the survey this fall!