The Role of School Nutrition and Physical Activity Programs in Increasing Students' School Engagement

The nutrition and physical activity programs offered by the majority of American middle schools have garnered additional attention recently because of their potential to reduce rates of childhood obesity.  Although most school health programs focus on proximal outcomes, such as dietary intake and rates of physical activity, they likely also contribute to students’ engagement in school. As posited by self-determination theory (SDT), individuals have innate needs to feel connected, to have choice, and to feel competent.  Applying Stage Environment Fit Theory to student well being suggests that students who perceive their schools as affording them opportunities to feel competent and to make meaningful choices will experience greater connection and lower stress, leading to enhanced engagement in school.

In the current study, I explore two components of SDT (autonomy and competence) related to school nutrition and physical education programs and their relationship to students’ self-reported engagement in school among 1,200 middle school students in 11 schools.  Logistic regression analyses were performed using STATA 12, with student-reported school engagement as the dependent variable.  School engagement was categorized as low, average, or high using a one standard deviation cut-point below and above the mean. Robust variance estimation was used to account for clustering of students within schools.  Analyses control for students’ sociodemographic characteristics and self-reported academic expectations, teacher connectedness, family connectedness, and school engagement from the prior year. 

The results of these analyses indicate that students are significantly less likely to report low school engagement if they attend schools that offer a choice of entrees for purchase (OR 0.68, p<0.05) or that offer a wide range of healthful competitive foods from which to choose (OR 0.50, p<0.001).  Related to physical activity, results indicate that students who report feeling highly competent in physical education class are more likely to report high levels of school engagement (OR 1.37, p<0.05). 

These results suggest that meeting students’ needs for choice and competence in the cafeteria and the gymnasium may contribute to increased school engagement, which has been associated with numerous positive outcomes.  Although the directionality of the relationship cannot be determined in these cross-sectional data, longitudinal analyses could further explore the direction of these potential pathways. Furthermore, the consistency of the results with the theoretical pathways suggests that school nutrition and physical education professionals should consider how they might increase students’ perceived competence and autonomy through offering students a range of healthful choices with meaningful feedback.