P99 Improved Self-efficacy and Nutrition Knowledge Among Indiana High School Teachers After Training in and Implementation of a New Nutrition Curriculum

Background Professional development can improve teacher self-efficacy and knowledge to enhance their delivery of food guidance. This may result in improvements in students’ knowledge about and skills for healthy eating. Objective To explore effects of a training on a nutrition curriculum, Forecasting Your Future: Nutrition Matters, on teachers’ self-efficacy to teach nutrition and knowledge of 2015 Dietary Guidelines. To explore teachers’ outcome expectations for students. Study Design, Setting, Participants Family and Consumer Sciences high school teachers were recruited for training at a state conference and divided into 9-strata based on school location and size, then randomly assigned to intervention (INT, n = 18) or control (CON, n = 18). INT were trained (spring 2018), then implemented the new curriculum in the classroom (fall 2018); CON implemented the usual curriculum. Both completed a 60-item pre-test (spring 2018) and 55-item post-test (late fall 2018). Follow-up semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted (n = 32) to expand on multi-opt results. Teachers answered 6 open-ended questions about outcome expectations for their students. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Survey data were analyzed by hierarchical linear modeling to determine whether changes from INT differed from CON for self-efficacy to teach nutrition and nutrition knowledge. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and imported into NVivo software, then thematically analyzed. Results After training then teaching the curriculum, INT had greater increases in nutrition knowledge of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines (P = .028) and self-efficacy to teach nutrition (P = .010) vs CON. Interviews with INT revealed they did not expect immediate behavior changes but hoped to affect students’ future health by giving them the knowledge and skills necessary to make healthy choices. Conclusions Professional development sessions and providing updated curricula has promise for improving teachers’ nutrition knowledge and self-efficacy to teach nutrition. More research should be done on outcome expectations to guide future curriculum development.