The Evaluation of a Diagnostic Procedure for Swimming Skill Analysis

In swimming lessons, the realization of individualized teaching depends on a quali-tative analysis of the learners’ skills. However, research addressing the diagnostic competence of PE teachers shows that they often have difficulties analyzing their students’ motor skills in order to purposefully guide their learning process (Louns-bery & Coker, 2008; Ward et al., 2021). It is in line with the authors’ observations that even experienced PE teachers face challenges with swimming skill analysis. Findings of a previous study (Fokken et al., 2023) suggest that the quality of infor-mation gathering is not sufficient to design swimming lessons tailored to the indi-vidual needs of the students. In order to support PE teachers in also mentioned that the procedure is most helpful for PE teachers with little experi-ence. Teachers described the procedure as child-oriented and reported that the stu-dents mostly enjoyed performing the tasks. As the data collection is still ongoing, the final results of the study are expected to be presented at the AIESEP 2024. The interviewed PE teachers seem to benefit from the support provided by the pre-sented diagnostic procedure. The large-scale quantitative online study aims at veri-fying this hypothesis. A particular focus will be on the group comparison between experienced and less experienced PE teachers. Future research should investigate whether the improved information gathering can also increase the adaptivity of swimming lessons. Fokken, I., Staub. I., & Vogt, T. (2023, accepted). DOI: 10.1123/jtpe.2022-0297 Lounsbery, M., & Coker, C. (2008). DOI: 10.1080/00336297.2008.10483580 Vogt, T., & Staub, I. (2020). DOI: 10.7752/jpes.2020.02085 Ward, P., Ayvazo, S., Dervent, F., Iserbyt, P., Kim, I., & Li, W. (2021). DOI: 10.1080/07303084.2020.1853635 the diagnostic pro-cess, the authors’ research group developed an easy-to-use diagnostic procedure for swimming skill analysis on the basis of the “Assessment of Basic Aquatic Skills” (ABAS; Vogt & Staub, 2020). The procedure is designed to enable teachers to easily perform an initial classification during the first swimming lesson and to gain direct insight into the learning group. The present study investigates how teachers evalu-ate the feasibility of this procedure and how they subjectively perceive the value of its use. German PE Teachers (n = 155) were asked to include the procedure at the beginning of their swimming lessons for diagnostic purposes. Afterwards, they were asked to participate in an online survey to evaluate the tool. The questionnaire com-prised several statements to be rated on a five-point scale, which were derived from the teachers’ answers of a qualitative pilot study (n = 14). Preliminary findings of the pilot study indicate that using this procedure helped teachers to better structure their swimming skill analysis and to make a more reliable judgement. Participants