Co-designing a running/walking programme with adolescent girls using meaningful physical activity and an activist approach

This paper reports the co-design of a run/walk programme with adolescent girls, in collaboration with a UK women’s running organisation, This Woman Runs. The objective of this participatory inquiry was to create a meaningful programme for adolescent girls to support engaging regularly in running/walking for 30 minutes. The study employed co-design and participatory methodologies (Enright and O’Sullivan, 2012) and an activist approach pedagogical model (Oliver and Kirk, 2016), to listen and respond to girls’ interests and ideas for meaningful physical activity. Sixteen girls (age 11-13), their physical education (PE) teacher, researchers, and representatives from This Woman Runs participated in five workshops. The workshops facilitated a process of inquiry and discussion around girls’ interests and needs in learning to run, using written and verbal expressions of what girls found meaningful in running/walking and other physical activity. These materials were mapped, with girls’ input, to meaningful physical education features (Kretchmar, 2006; Beni et al., 2017). Participants then generated ideas about structure, location, frequency, marketing, and curriculum and listened to each other’s experiences in co-designing an accessible programme. The paper presents the outcomes of the inquiry, specifically a 12-week run/walk after-school programme that includes physical and curricular activities to support positive social interactions, feelings of competence, and personally relevant learning. We reflect on how the girls’ knowledge and values about running were supported through the co-design process. Listening to respond, by embedding ongoing inquiry with young people, is crucial for the success and meaningfulness of physical activity interventions.