Project BEAT - STP Planning Series Webinar
Project BEAT: Integrating the key lessons of time, space and gender into STP
A WIMBA presentation as part of the national School Travel Planning Series
Wednesday February 15 (12 noon EST)
Presenters: Michelle Stone and Guy Faulkner, University of Toronto.
The BEAT (Built Environment and Active Transport – www.beat.utoronto.ca ) project, funded by CIHR and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada was a large-scale, mixed methods and multidisciplinary research programme designed to explore how such a behavioural shift towards active school transport (AST) might be supported. In a series of sequential stages and studies we addressed AST at multiple levels – national, provincial (Ontario) and local (GTA). Our work has identified the prevalence and correlates of AST in Canada, and, has resulted in the creation of a unified theoretical model of AST and the built environment through examination of the personal, family, social and environmental correlates of active school transport.
The objective of this webinar is to present some of the key lessons learned from the BEAT project including data on the relationship between school travel and objectively measured physical activity levels of children. Our focus will be on three key lessons that have implications for the School Travel Planning (STP) model. We classify these lessons as three interrelated themes of time, space and gender:
TIME: The main purpose of STP is to help parents/guardians overcome perceptual barriers to the practice of actively traveling to school. These barriers typically focus on safety (e.g., traffic & stranger danger). However, the STP intervention itself does not explicitly address what appear to be key issues in school travel mode choice - the parental or caregiver ascription of convenience to the various travel modes available for school trips (i.e., the theme of “time”) and the level of independent mobility granted to the child.
SPACE: Participation in AST varies regionally and also across different types of space or neighbourhood. STP work has traditionally targeted the school environment, while our research also suggests that features of the built environment around the home play a more significant role in the school travel mode decision-making process.
GENDER: The school travel experience is very different for girls than it is for boys. Fewer girls engage in AST and parental perceptions regarding school travel are different for girls than they are for boys. Girls are granted less independent mobility than boys; the ramifications are likely contributing to the lower levels of physical activity and less outdoor play time observed in girls. Modifications to built form may affect girls differently than they would boys.
Throughout this webinar, we will provide an overview of the evidence underpinning each theme and facilitate discussion on how each lesson is, or could be, integrated into STP implementation.
Please register directly with Sandra Jones, Green Communities Canada: scjones@telus.net
