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The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills

Learning aquatic skills is an important component of developing physical literacy in children. Aquatic skills such as floating, swimming and safe entry/exit promote engagement in different water environments and may help preserve lives in an emergency. This scoping review was conducted to evaluate t...

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Autores principales: van Duijn, Tina, Ng, Jonathan Leo, Burnay, Carolina, Anderson, Neil, Uehara, Luiz, Cocker, Kane, Button, Chris
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8531637/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733489
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author van Duijn, Tina
Ng, Jonathan Leo
Burnay, Carolina
Anderson, Neil
Uehara, Luiz
Cocker, Kane
Button, Chris
author_facet van Duijn, Tina
Ng, Jonathan Leo
Burnay, Carolina
Anderson, Neil
Uehara, Luiz
Cocker, Kane
Button, Chris
author_sort van Duijn, Tina
collection PubMed
description Learning aquatic skills is an important component of developing physical literacy in children. Aquatic skills such as floating, swimming and safe entry/exit promote engagement in different water environments and may help preserve lives in an emergency. This scoping review was conducted to evaluate the influence of task constraints (i.e., equipment) and environmental constraints (i.e., physical and social) on how children learn foundational aquatic skills. In developed countries, children are typically taught in swimming pools under direct supervision. It is also not uncommon to see children and infants learning to swim with assistive equipment (e.g., buoyancy aids). However, perhaps surprisingly, the evidence on how and where children learn aquatic skills does not uniformly promote such practices. For example, the use of flotation devices has not been proven to aid skill learning. Some researchers have advocated that children should learn aquatic skills whilst wearing outdoor clothing. One benefit of children wearing clothing is an increased capacity to practice in colder water (such as the ocean, rivers, or lakes). Overall, whilst practitioners often use equipment for various reasons it seems that not all equipment is equally useful in promoting the acquisition of aquatic skills. In less developed countries, with limited access to swimming pools and fewer resources for private instruction, a range of different open water aquatic environments and practices, such as swimming in temporarily flooded areas, have been reported. Such strategies are in urgent demand of further research given that drowning rates in less developed countries around the world exceed those in developed nations. It can be argued that learning in pools does not afford the opportunities to develop the whole range of adaptive skills that may be required in different open water environments such as navigating currents and waves, floating whilst clothed, or making life-saving decisions. Consequently, a shift toward teaching in open water environments has occurred in several countries. This review provides an evidence-base upon which practitioners can design more effective aquatic education programs for children.
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spelling pubmed-85316372021-10-23 The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills van Duijn, Tina Ng, Jonathan Leo Burnay, Carolina Anderson, Neil Uehara, Luiz Cocker, Kane Button, Chris Front Psychol Psychology Learning aquatic skills is an important component of developing physical literacy in children. Aquatic skills such as floating, swimming and safe entry/exit promote engagement in different water environments and may help preserve lives in an emergency. This scoping review was conducted to evaluate the influence of task constraints (i.e., equipment) and environmental constraints (i.e., physical and social) on how children learn foundational aquatic skills. In developed countries, children are typically taught in swimming pools under direct supervision. It is also not uncommon to see children and infants learning to swim with assistive equipment (e.g., buoyancy aids). However, perhaps surprisingly, the evidence on how and where children learn aquatic skills does not uniformly promote such practices. For example, the use of flotation devices has not been proven to aid skill learning. Some researchers have advocated that children should learn aquatic skills whilst wearing outdoor clothing. One benefit of children wearing clothing is an increased capacity to practice in colder water (such as the ocean, rivers, or lakes). Overall, whilst practitioners often use equipment for various reasons it seems that not all equipment is equally useful in promoting the acquisition of aquatic skills. In less developed countries, with limited access to swimming pools and fewer resources for private instruction, a range of different open water aquatic environments and practices, such as swimming in temporarily flooded areas, have been reported. Such strategies are in urgent demand of further research given that drowning rates in less developed countries around the world exceed those in developed nations. It can be argued that learning in pools does not afford the opportunities to develop the whole range of adaptive skills that may be required in different open water environments such as navigating currents and waves, floating whilst clothed, or making life-saving decisions. Consequently, a shift toward teaching in open water environments has occurred in several countries. This review provides an evidence-base upon which practitioners can design more effective aquatic education programs for children. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-10-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8531637/ /pubmed/34690889 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733489 Text en Copyright © 2021 van Duijn, Ng, Burnay, Anderson, Uehara, Cocker and Button. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
van Duijn, Tina
Ng, Jonathan Leo
Burnay, Carolina
Anderson, Neil
Uehara, Luiz
Cocker, Kane
Button, Chris
The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title_full The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title_fullStr The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title_full_unstemmed The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title_short The Influence of Equipment and Environment on Children and Young Adults Learning Aquatic Skills
title_sort influence of equipment and environment on children and young adults learning aquatic skills
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8531637/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34690889
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733489
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