Increasing Hong Kong Chinese students’ physical activity through fitness infusion and creating an autonomy supportive learning environment: Evaluation of the SELF-FIT program using a clustered randomized controlled trial

The proposed intervention is named “SELF-FIT”, and is designed to promote Self-initiated, Enjoyable, Lifelong Fitness. The intervention will last for 16 weeks. The intervention has three main components, namely the “fitness dice” activity, teachers’ need support, and other motivational components. These components were designed based on tenets of self-determination theory. Specifically, each component was designed to support students’ basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Regarding the “fitness dice” activity component, students will be given a modified 20-minute fitness activity during each of their weekly PE lessons, for a minimum of 8 consecutive lessons. The goal is to strength students’ training in four aspects of health-related fitness components highlighted by the Hong Kong Education Bureau PE curriculum - flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, and muscular endurance. The activity will take the form of circuit training, with four stations. At each station, students will complete 3 to 4 bouts of 30- to 60-second exercise, with rest in between. The exercise they do will be decided by the throw of a “fitness die”. The 6 sides of the dice will be easily customizable – all sides of the dice will be transparent plastic film, contents can be decided by sliding in a card/paper with the exercise description. There will be one die per station, and they will include exercises related to 1) flexibility, 2) cardiovascular endurance; 3) upper body muscle strength and endurance; and 4) lower body muscle strength and endurance. All students in the same station will do the same activity as shown on the thrown dice. Furthermore, upbeat music will be played during the 20-minute activity sessions. The second main component of the SELF-FIT program is providing increased teacher need support. Essentially, teachers will be trained to teach in manners in which students’ basic psychological needs are supported. For example, teachers are encouraged to allow students to choose their stations and select an appropriate intensity for each activity; provide positive, information feedback; and taking students’ perspectives and acknowledging negative feelings. According to SDT, when students’ needs are satisfied, they will more likely engage in these activities during their leisure time as well. Finally, the SELF-FIT program also includes other motivational strategies, such as goal-setting, self-monitoring, and role modeling. Specifically, all participating students will be given a PE report/record card. Based on students’ result in the previous assessment, students will note down on the card which fitness components s/he will have to improve. Students will be encouraged to set goals s/he would like to achieve during the school academic year (with respect to physical fitness). They will be asked to set both short- and long-term goals. A small calendar will be printed on the card for students to tick what type of exercises (flexibility, cardio, or muscular training) they completed on each day. Finally, teachers will be asked to encourage, but not pressure (so the cards will not be collected), students to complete the record cards. Teachers are also encouraged to complete the record themselves and share their progress with students. In order to train teachers how to implement the SELF-FIT intervention, teachers in the experimental group will be invited to partake in a four-hour workshop on one day. The workshops will consist of four sections. First, the principle investigator (AH) will introduce teachers to the main concepts and ideas of the intervention, and explain to them why and how the intervention can promote leisure time PA. Second, skills training will be provided to teachers in the workshop to teach them 1) the use of the fitness dice; 2) how to set varying intensities and provide choices for students to meet individual differences; and 3) special precautions to take to protect health and safety. This section will be co-led by a fitness instructor and an in-service PE teacher who had helped develop the activity. The third section of the workshop will focus on training teachers to create an autonomy supportive classroom environment. This section will be led by the PI, and will follow an approach similar to that reported in Cheon et al. (2012). Specifically, teachers will be presented with the theoretical background and explanation of SDT. They will be provided with examples of suggested good and bad practices that are considered to be supportive of basic needs or controlling, respectively. Further, teachers will be given different scenarios, and they would need to practice how to instruct in an autonomy support manner in each of these situations. Within the one-day workshop, teachers will spend around one hours on the second (skill training) and third sections (autonomy supportive teaching methods). Finally, the PI will introduce the fitness record cards to teachers, and explain how the cards should be used. To ensure the that the intervention was implemented as designed at the school by the teachers, research assistants will be present at two or more lessons at each participating class to video-record the class.