From leadership research to district action: Factors influencing nutrition education in elementary schools: A qualitative study

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

Abstract Background: Curriculum-based nutrition education is a common strategy to build food literacy skills and promote lifelong healthy eating. While past research has reported on the barriers teachers face when teaching about nutrition, very few recent studies have been published on the topic. This paper aimed to explore some of the views, barriers and facilitators that teachers face when teaching nutrition in elementary schools. Methods: A descriptive qualitative research study was conducted among elementary school teachers in Ontario, Canada, using a semi-structured interview guide. The guide was informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, and then validated and pilot tested. Two independent researchers inductively coded and thematically analysed the transcripts. Results: Participants (n = 9) indicated that nutrition was an important part of their teaching. Barriers to teaching nutrition included insufficient training/professional development opportunities, limited instructional time, competition with other subjects deemed a higher priority, limited financial resources to pay for teaching materials, lack of French language resources and sensitivities related to culture, socioeconomic status, and eating disorders. In contrast, interactive learning activities, integrating nutrition with other subjects, and support from school leadership, parents and professional organisations were seen as facilitators of nutrition education. Conclusions: Enhancing teacher training, resources and support while prioritising nutrition in the school curriculum is crucial for effective and equitable nutrition education in Canadian elementary schools. Addressing barriers and leveraging the facilitators identified in this study are essential to improve curriculum-based nutrition education provision. Keywords: Canada, elementary schools, health interventions, implementation research, nutrition education, teachers

Study methods

A descriptive qualitative research study of teachers was conducted via online focus groups (90 minutes) and individual interviews (30 minutes) between August 2022 and March 2023. This design was chosen to gain a deep understanding of teachers’ lived experiences with nutrition education, including an understanding of barriers and facilitators faced when doing so. Focus groups were the primary method of data collection to provide participants with the opportunity to share their experiences and encourage richer discussion; individual interviews were used in cases where we were unable to schedule multiple participants. Participants were certified elementary school teachers (Kindergarten to Grade 8) working in Ontario, Canada. Study participants were purposively sampled by expressing interest in the study through social media advertisements, which was chosen as the method of recruitment to reach eligible teachers from across the province. The research team, the STEAM Lab at Ontario Tech University and the Ontario Physical Health Education Association (OPHEA) advertised the study on their Facebook social media platforms, with a link to an online sign-up form. This study was reviewed by the Ontario Tech University research ethics board (Reference: 16608), and a written informed consent was obtained prior to data collection. All participants who agreed to complete the study were included in the analysis. The researchers had no prior relationships with the interviewees. A sample size of 12 participants was anticipated to reach theoretical saturation, and participants were recruited until saturation was achieved.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations to this study. First, while the sample size was small, it was consistent with that identified as appropriate in the literature (Hennink and Kaiser, 2022) and allowed us to reach theoretical saturation, as determined by no new information, themes or insights arising from the data. In order to reach out to teachers in the aftermath of COVID-19, the study used a combination of focus groups and individual interviews. This approach was a necessity since recruitment and scheduling proved a challenge at a time when the workload demands placed on teachers had increased. The study was conducted online instead of in-person, which may have reduced the richness of data elicited from participants (Carter et al., 2021). However, online interviews have also been shown to offer benefits that we observed in this study, such as reducing geographical barriers, accommodating participants’ schedules and observing whether participants followed the researcher’s instruction to allow everyone to finish speaking and respect other people’s time (Earnesty et al., 2022; Fielding et al., 2017; Moore et al., 2015).

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Beatriz Franco-Arellano; Ellen Vogel; Matthew Stein; Jacqueline Marie Brown; Vanessa Laketa; JoAnne Arcand. Factors influencing nutrition education in elementary schools: A qualitative study. Health Education Journal (2025-12-03). https://doi.org/10.1177/00178969251386236

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.