Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions and Experiences Implementing CATCH My Breath

ABSTRACT

Background

Vaping among American secondary students is increasing. School-based health education is well positioned to deliver messaging about the dangers of vaping and to develop refusal skills. CATCH My Breath (CMB) is an evidence-based vaping prevention curriculum that provides resources to create and sustain healthy behaviors. Given inherent challenges during the induction stage of career socialization, pre-service and beginning health and physical educators may experience heightened teaching efficacy by delivering prepackaged curriculum.

Purpose

Investigate health and physical education pre-service teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with implementing the CMB curriculum.

Method

Basic qualitative research design was utilized to determine perceptions of 12 pre-service teachers from two teacher education programs in the eastern United States. Pre-service teachers completed semi-structured focus group interviews.

Results

Themes emerged from a detailed analysis: (a) mastery experiences, (b) support, (c) resources, (d) health education impact, (e) collaborate and lead, and (f) challenges.

Discussion

By implementing the curriculum, participants gained teaching efficacy and reported likelihood for future selection of prepackaged units.

Translation to Health Education Practice: Implementing evidence-based prepackaged curricula into PETE/HETE programs aligned with teacher education standards supports collaboration and reflection within the student teaching triad which may increase teaching efficacy of pre-service teachers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Mendeley Data at http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/m42ysf525c.1.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible in part due to the support of the CVS Health Foundation Grant “Be the first: CATCH My Breath.” The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The CATCH My Breath: Vaping Prevention Program was the source of the content used by participants in the study. CATCH My Breath is a free open-source resource for educators that is available through their website, catch.org. CATCH My Breath or the CATCH organization had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Neither CVS Health nor CATCH My Breath are affiliate with this manuscript or it’s authors.