Primary School Teachers’ Experiences of the Food Dudes Programme.

Objectives: The study explored teachers’ perceptions and experiences of the Food Dudes programme, a behaviour change intervention designed to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in primary school children.

Design: Semi structured interviews were conducted with teachers from participating schools. This enabled a detailed exploration of teachers’ understanding of the programme before the intervention took place, aspects of the intervention that worked well, challenges to implementation and how the intervention impacted upon the children in their school.

Methods: Semi structured interviews were conducted with eight teachers from six of the eight schools which received the intervention. Participants consisted of teachers who co-ordinated the implementation of the programme within their school. Transcripts from each interview were analysed using Ritchie and Spencer’s Thematic Framework method.

Results: Teachers identified many positive aspects of the Food Dudes intervention, specifically relating to the rewards given to children and the potential of the programme to raise awareness of the importance of healthy eating. Maintaining children’s interest in healthy eating and the need to develop strategies to facilitate this was also considered to be important. However, teachers also expressed the difficulties associated with incorporating the programme within the school day, an aspect which was considered to be a pertinent challenge.

Conclusions: The study emphasised both the potential of but also the challenges associated with delivering the Food Dudes programme. The views of teachers implementing the programme ought to be taken into account when developing tools and materials to support the roll out of the programme within primary schools.