Digital Nutrition Education Materials for Middle School Teachers (SLT) - IC 1 of 2

OMB Control # 0584-0524 | Expiration Date: 9/30/2019

Attachment I –Teacher Focus Group Guideline

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Middle School digital nutrition materials

Teacher focus group guideline

Research Objectives: To gather feedback on materials implementation and best practices for marketing, distributing, and framing the materials.

Note: Optional probing questions appear in italics. These probes are intended to provide options for the researcher to obtain feedback that supports the study objectives.

Introduction (5 Minutes)

Hello my name is ___________ and I’ll be conducting this focus group interview. The purpose of this focus group is to get your opinions about the nutrition education materials that you’ve been implementing in your classrooms. As you know, the USDA/FNS created these materials to promote nutrition education in middle school students. Now that they’ve been implemented in your classrooms, the USDA/FNS would like to know how they were implemented and how they should be distributed and marketed to teachers in the future. Keep in mind that there were only 26 teachers in the country piloting these materials so your feedback is very important!

• First, there are no wrong answers. We are here today to hear what you think, so please speak up, especially if what you have to say is different from what someone else is saying.

• You don’t have to answer every question, but I do want to hear from everyone, so I might call on you at some point.

• Also, so you know, I didn’t create any of the materials and I don’t work for the USDA/FNS. So, please be honest if there are things you liked or didn’t like. Your responses won’t affect me either way.

• Lastly, everything we talk about here will be kept private. That means we will not use your name in any of our reports, and we ask that you do not share the details of what was said here today.

• If it’s ok with everybody here, we’d like to record these conversations. They will only be used to confirm our notes and allow us to revisit this conversation. Nobody but the people in this room will ever hear the recordings, and any transcriptions of this conversation will not include any names. Is that ok with everybody? (Note to moderator: If someone is uncomfortable, thank them and allow them to leave – do not stop the recording).

Does anyone have any questions?

Objective Introduction, establish rapport

Question I’d like to have everyone go around and introduce himself or herself. You all might know each other already, but I want to get to know you, too. Just say your first name and then tell me what class you teach and your favorite activity to do with your students.

Objective Understand how teachers worked together to complete the activities.

Questions How did you work with each other or other teachers to implement these activities? Did you split the activities among teachers or implement them all? What resources did you share with each other? How could teachers of different subjects work together to complete these lessons? What other opportunities might exist for teachers to work together to teach these lessons? How could teachers from different grades work together to complete lessons like these?

Objective Understand the school’s role in implementing these activities.

Questions To what extent did you feel supported by the school administration in implementing these activities? How did that support impact implementation? What other support would teachers need from the administration to teach the materials? What could the school/cafeteria do to support these activities and materials? Would the lessons be more or less effective with more teachers involved? Are there other school/cafeteria connections that would make the lessons more impactful?

Teacher/School Collaboration (12 Minutes)

I know you all may have gone about implementing these activities differently so I’d like to spend the next few moments understanding how you may have worked together, with other teachers, or on your own to conduct the activities.

Marketing and Distribution (23 minutes)

Objective Understand the best ways to market/frame these materials.

Questions What place do you think these lessons have in middle school students’ learning? In what subject area classes do you think these materials work best? Why? What other opportunities do you think exist for integrating these materials? How would you describe these materials to other teachers like yourselves? What would you tell teachers their students can learn from these materials? What parts of the materials would you highlight? What did you wish you knew about these materials before piloting them in your classes? What information/resources would have been helpful for teaching these activities?

Objective Identify effective ways to distribute these materials.

Questions Where do you usually go to learn about new curriculum or classroom activities? Do you talk to other teachers? Do you search online? What do you usually search for? What websites do you typically go to in your online search? How would you like to be told about new, free education materials like the ones you piloted? If, hypothetically, you didn’t know these materials existed, how would you like to be told about them? Would you like an email, snail mail, social media? What kind of professional development would you want for these types of materials? How would you want to be trained to use these materials? Would you want a workshop? Virtual training? More written instruction?

Conclusion (5 minutes)

We only have a few minutes left, and I want to be respectful of your time.

Objective Get any final feedback from teachers.

Questions Is there anything else you’d like to share about these materials? Anything else we should know about how to market or distribute these materials? Anything else we should know about how teachers can work together to complete the activities? Anything else we should know about which subject areas these materials would work best in?

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