Aquatic Education for School Children: An Educational Expert Statement from the Nordic Consortium

Swimming is a profound source of joy in life. The impact of swimming competence extends beyond leisure, encompassing aquatic skills crucial for the prevention of drowning incidents. The World Health Organization (WHO) strongly advocates for the proactive initiative of teaching basic swimming and water safety skills to school-aged children, which is recognized as a direct and effective measure in mitigating the risk of drowning. This article aims to investigate and quantify aquatic skills and swimming competence in 9–10-year-old primary school children. A study was conducted throughout the academic year of 2021–2022, as an integral component within the primary schools' physical education. The study design was tailored to facilitate large-group assessment, encompassing children from 69 primary schools ( n = 2421) situated across three Norwegian municipalities. The assessments were administered upon the culmination of the fourth-grade learn-to-swim programs and carried out using the Swimming Competence Assessment Scale, involving six consecutive aquatic skills: water entry, swimming on the front, surface diving, float/rest, swimming on the back, and water exit. The results indicated that 62.5% of the children successfully met the predetermined criteria for swimming competence according to the Norwegian standard. Among the six assessed aquatic skills, proficiency in swimming on the front emerged as the most influential factor contributing to the overall competence level. This study emphasizes the pivotal role of swimming education for school-aged children. It highlights the need to prioritize swimming and water safety education, initiating children's learning journey toward being water-competent.

As drowning is a leading cause of unintentional injury/death in children worldwide, perceptions of their actual aquatic skills are of critical importance. Children's self-perceptions may influence the risks they take, and parental perceptions may influence the degree of supervision deemed to be necessary for children in and around water. Accordingly, we examined the differences between young children's actual, self-perceived and parent-perceived aquatic skills. Using a three-way repeated measures ANCOVA, we analyzed data from 134 child-parent dyads (56.0% boys; M age = 7.1, SD = 1.1 years; and 71.6% mothers). We measured self and parental perceptions of the child's aquatic skills with the 'Pictorial Scale of Perceived Water Competence' (PSPWC), and we applied the exact same 17 test items of the PSPWC to assess the child's actual aquatic skill level in the water. Controlling for years of swimming school experience, within-subject differences between the total scores on the 'Actual Aquatic Skills Test' (AAST) and both the child- and parent-completed PSPWC indicated lower than actual estimates of the children's aquatic skill level. The degree of disagreement against the AAST was more pronounced in parents than in 6-7 year-old children but was similar between parents and 8-9 year-old children, with these patterns being evident regardless of the children's sex. Our study contributes to an ongoing validation of the PSPWC and represents a key advance in assessing and comparing children's actual and perceived aquatic skill competence, using perfectly aligned instruments. Future research and practice might explore children's actual aquatic skills in different contexts (e.g., open water), include perspectives of non-parent caregivers and assess perceived and actual water competence across development.

Background and Purpose This study explored the transfer of children's swimming competence from a calm and controlled indoor swimming pool to a more dynamic open-water environment. Given the integral role of aquatic activities in recreation and sports worldwide, it is important to develop preventative measures to reduce the risk of drowning. Grounded in an ecological dynamics perspective, this research examines how swimming competence in one setting correlates with performance in another. By assessing 9–10-year-olds’ competencies across swimming pools and open-water conditions, this study sought to identify the relationship between these environments in order to improve aquatic education strategies. Methods A paired repeated-measures design was used with 83 children (44 girls and 39 boys) who were conveniently sampled from three primary schools. Participants were assessed in both an indoor swimming pool and an open-water lake using the Swimming Competence Assessment Scale (SCAS). The SCAS, which is aligned with the Norwegian physical education curriculum, evaluates six aquatic skills in a successive proficiency test, including water entry, swimming on the front, surface diving, floating/resting, swimming on the back, and water exit. Findings Significant differences emerged between the two aquatic environments, with nearly half of the children who were competent in the indoor pool failing to demonstrate the same competence in the open-water lake. Environmental factors such as water temperature and visibility notably impacted performance, especially in the aquatic tasks of water entry, surface diving, and swimming on the back. Conclusion The findings of this study underscore the urgent need for comprehensive aquatic education programs. They suggest that indoor swimming competence does not necessarily transfer to open-water proficiency due to the more challenging nature of open-water environments. This research informs the development of more effective training interventions and safety guidelines, ultimately contributing to drowning prevention efforts.

DevelopmentAquatic literacy (AL), emerging from the broader concept of physical literacy and translated to the aquatic environment, comes close to the concept of water competence. Water competence is described as a broad spectrum of competencies required to effectively help to prevent drowning by integrating the physical competencies with the cognitive and affective. Dudley (2019) explains the learning’ in aquatic environments from a physical literacy perspective, describing four dimensions: psychomotor, cognitive, affective, and social aspects. In aquatic literacy special attention is given to positive motivation to engage in aquatic recreation, considering the degree to which individuals have been privileged or restrained for different aquatic activities in a variety of contexts.The European project “Aquatic literacy for all Children” or ALFAC aims to improve the quality of aquatic education, in order to prepare them to take part in wide range of water sports while at the same time protect children from the dangers looking for balanced ‘challenges’.ImplementationDeveloping children's aquatic skills, motivation, enjoyment, engagement, and confidence will be studied in seven European countries. The target group consists of elementary school children.An international database, enabling situating the level of children on the basis of reference values is a valuable tool for pedagogues, researchers and institutional actors whose aim is to improve swimming education systems.Evaluation & DisseminationThe objective of building a standardized set of tests and a common evaluation will allow to build the foundations of a transnational work that will have repercussions on the national plans of aquatic recreation in general and school swimming in particular. The three elements of the Personal Assets Framework are inspiring for the educational approach in aquatics: (a) personal engagement in activities, (b) quality social dynamics, and (c) appropriate settings.ConclusionWith ALFAC a pragmatic but evidence based international AL measurement tool will be created enabling to identify the most relevant areas of progress in aquatic education. It will offer educational resources proposing tasks, technical content, and educational support to help individual children and groups in their progress of AL.

Less than half of Australia’s population meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. This general trend of inactivity in today’s society is increasing the disease burden placed upon our health care systems. Participation in swimming and aquatic activities can help reduce this burden through facilitating high intensity exercise. The purpose of the current research was to evaluate change in parents’ attitudes and beliefs of their children’s swimming and physical activity behaviours as a result of participating in the Swimming Skills for An Active Life program. Study participants were parents of children participating in one of the 20 programs being delivered across Australia in five different states. Study participants were asked to complete two questionnaires developed by RLSSA and Griffith University. The first was completed upon registration, prior to the commencement of the program, and the second upon completion of the swimming program. The surveys included questions pertaining to participants’ beliefs, intentions, and behaviours relating to swimming activity and physical activity in general. The current study found an increase in behaviour for swimming activity, which was to be expected. Moreover, improvements to perceived behavioural control for general physical activity and swimming activity (results just falling short of conventional level of significance) were found. Although no other significant changes were found, there was a positive trend towards habit development for both behaviours suggesting that, over time, engaging in both swimming behaviour and physical activity became more habitual. The research incurred a number of disruptions and study limitations, the substantial one being the outbreak of COVID-19 early in the year. This resulted in the closure of all swimming pools across Australia for a number of months resulting in six of the 20 programs being cancelled. Furthermore, eight of the remaining 14 programs did not participate due to challenges in data collection with parents with limited English language skills. With this in mind, results should be interpreted with caution as they may not reflect true effects of the program.

Making Cultural Heritage Truly Inclusive – Prospects of Accessibility in Nordic Museums 11–12 October 2007, the National Museum of Finland.This article focuses on questions that emerged at the ”Making Cultural Heritage Truly Inclusive” conference, which was held in Helsinki on 11–12 October 2007. The theme of the conference was the Nordic principle of equality as seen in relation to the cultural heritage sector. The participants numbered about 140 cultural heritage workers from the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe. In addition to representatives of the museum sector, the invited speakers included future researchers and policy makers. At the conference, museums were seen as exerting a social influence. The first part of the conference examined accessibility strategies and the challenges and expectations they engendered in the projected Nordic future. The second part dealt with the potential of the shared Nordic cultural heritage for reflecting a multicultural society. The third part of the conference focused on future challenges, which were identified as including virtual communities for young people, and the importance of considering an ageing population. The conference was part of the Tillgänglig- hetsnätverk för museer i Norden (Accessibility networks for museums in the Nord- ic countries) project, which, over the past few years, has been creating a cooperation network to enable Nordic culture sector organisations that are interested in accessibility issues to exchange experiences.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe, discuss and analyze forerunner cases from three different decades in workplace concept development in Sweden and Finland and discuss the transformation over time to better facilitate management of office development and disseminate Nordic experiences.Design/methodology/approachThe reflecting paper is discussing the development of workplace concepts. It is based on case studies collected from 1980s to the new millennium. The reflection is based on the perspective of Nordic culture. The characteristics of the Nordic culture used in the paper are low power distance and individualism.FindingsThe evolution from “office as a city” to “city as an office” has taken place in both countries and Nordic cultural values have provided fruitful platform for them. However, the layer of organizational culture in the studied workplaces also has an impact on the development and implication of the concepts.Research limitations/implicationsThe selection of case studies is limited to two Nordic countries only. The comparison of all five Nordic countries could increase the understanding of Nordic culture and similarities and differences between the countries. The study could be deepened by a more thorough literature review including not only Nordic but also European cases.Practical implicationsThe dilemma of management when designing workspaces for the changing world is in that individuals increasingly choose where to work, when, with whom and how. Facilitating that freedom of choice is a balancing act in modern workspace design where people is a scarcer resource than space. It requires an active management that sees their facilities as a part of their system not as a costly box top put it in.Social implicationsEasy access seems to be the key to the workspace of the future when decision power shifts from organizations to individuals. Simultaneously, individuals need to take more and more responsibility and action to get their job done: the cases illustrate how this has been done and that the integration and interaction between office concepts and office work will need to be on business agendas.Originality/valueThe perspective of Nordic workplace concept development from 1980s provide the material for future development, without an understanding of the past one cannot understand the future.

National culture has been the topic of many papers and many researchers have attempted to explain the relative homogeneity of the Nordic countries. In this paper the research question is: “In relation to Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions where does Iceland differ in relation to the other Nordic countries?” A questionnaire was sent to students at the University of Iceland, School of Social Sciences. The total number of responses was 344 and since over 73% of participants were women the answers from men were weighted equal as the total number of answers from women. As a result the total number of answers was 498. The five dimensions of national culture were measured using VSM 94 and for relative comparison perceptual mapping was used. Iceland scored highest on all the dimensions except one where Finland had the highest score. Perceptual mapping shows that the Nordic countries are different from cultural perspective in relation to Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions. Sweden, Denmark and Norway seem to have more in common than Iceland and Finland and there is a difference between Iceland and Finland based on IDV on the one hand and MAS on the other. What Finland and Iceland have in common is the UAI dimension. Keywords Hofstede´s Cultural Dimensions, Nordic culture, VSM 94, Perceptual mapping.

A new method to determine microbial (bacterial and fungal) activity in various freshwater habitats is described. Based on microbial reduction of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to dimethyl sulfide (DMS), our DMSO reduction method allows measurement of the respiratory activity in interstitial water, as well as in the water column. DMSO is added to water samples at a concentration (0.75% [vol/vol] or 106 mM) high enough to compete with other naturally occurring electron acceptors, as determined with oxygen and nitrate, without stimulating or inhibiting microbial activity. Addition of NaN(3), KCN, and formaldehyde, as well as autoclaving, inhibited the production of DMS, which proves that the reduction of DMSO is a biotic process. DMSO reduction is readily detectable via the formation of DMS even at low microbial activities. All water samples showed significant DMSO reduction over several hours. Microbially reduced DMSO is recovered in the form of DMS from water samples by a purge and trap system and is quantified by gas chromatography and detection with a flame photometric detector. The DMSO reduction method was compared with other methods commonly used for assessment of microbial activity. DMSO reduction activity correlated well with bacterial production in predator-free batch cultures. Cell-production-specific DMSO reduction rates did not differ significantly in batch cultures with different nutrient regimes but were different in different growth phases. Overall, a cell-production-specific DMSO reduction rate of 1.26 x 10(-17) +/- 0. 12 x 10(-17) mol of DMS per produced cell (mean +/- standard error; R(2) = 0.78) was calculated. We suggest that the relationship of DMSO reduction rates to thymidine and leucine incorporation is linear (the R(2) values ranged from 0.783 to 0.944), whereas there is an exponential relationship between DMSO reduction rates and glucose uptake, as well as incorporation (the R(2) values ranged from 0.821 to 0.931). Based on our results, we conclude that the DMSO reduction method is a nonradioactive alternative to other methods commonly used to assess microbial activity.

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.

Background: Throughout history, the teaching of water activities in our country has gone through various methodologies. Issue that in several cases was and is usually explained in a restricted way, mainly depending on the physical contexts where they develop and in them, attending to issues related to the number of students and teachers, available materials, and infrastructure, leaving aside teaching, and the different methodological ways to implement it. Objectives: This qualitative study set out to know and understand the methodologies used by teachers who teach aquatic activities in physical education in public schools, in the eastern area of Montevideo, Uruguay. Method: The research used two procedures: first, it made twelve non-participant observations of the classes of four teachers in the pool (three each), second, four semi-structured and in-depth interviews were conducted (one with each teacher). Results: The conclusions of the study reveal how teachers conceive of teaching, almost synonymously, swimming and aquatic activities, showing the same ways of teaching when it comes to a different object of study. Regarding the methodological, the observed panorama is quite homogeneous, characterized by analytical proposals, typical of traditional methods for teaching the sport of swimming. It is also observed, the majority use of descriptive and explanatory techniques, where decision-making is closer to the teacher than to the student. Conclusions: The conclusions reveal how teachers conceive of teaching, almost synonymously, swimming and aquatic activities, showing the same ways of teaching when it comes to a different object of study.

This article is an attempt to analyse the link between the condition of city environment and availability of water in Darjeeling city. Darjeeling, located in the Eastern Himalayan Region of India, is such a city which faces acute water scarcity in most part of the year, except during monsoon. The city cannot use ground water directly, and there is no river as source of water as well. It only uses spring water and rain water. The climatic condition and local environmental conditions have higher control over the availability of daily water. This article analyses the city’s 100-year climatic conditions as well as the condition of vegetation cover and built-up areas using NDVI and BUI methods, respectively. The present study explores that the deterioration of natural environmental conditions and increasing demand from both the permanent population and transitory population accelerate the intensity of water scarcity. Measuring the fluctuation of discharge (during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon period), the paper discusses how except in monsoon, most of the spring’s discharge gets reduced and increases the level of water stress in the city. Using quantitative methods, this empirical study explores that the loss of vegetation and haphazard constructions have enormous impact on the fragile hill ecosystem and reduce the rate of infiltration of water in the sub-surface zones, thus reducing the discharge ultimately. Therefore, the study recommends immediate actions to protect the city environment and to revive those springs for the city’s water security.

This paper outlines a different approach to generating the data for Vmax and Tt estimation with the Wright-Hobbie [1] method of measuring heterotrophic activities in aquatic environments. To be certain that the incubation times chosen are appropriate for all concentrations of substrate tested, and to increase the precision of the kinetic parameter estimates, we have adopted the approach of using kinetic plots derived from independent time-course studies performed at each concentration of substrate and analyzed by non-linear regression analysis. In keeping with our interest in the impact of acidification on aquatic microbial activities, we have applied this approach to the sediments and water column of the acid-stressed Silver Lake.

Introduction: According to some authors, aquatic environment offers advantages for motor development, which can be used from the first months of life. The current research reviewed support physical exercise in water is favorable for the neurodevelopment of the baby. At present there are few studies with a scientific methodology that have developed a physical activity programme in babies in the first 3 years of life. Therefore, in this study, an aquatic physical activity programme will be performed to check how it affects the sensorymotor development and affectivity of healthy babies in their first years of life.Objectives: To determine the relationship between physical activity in water and the development of psychomotricity in healthy babies in their first three years of life.Material and methods: A case-control study was accomplished with 74 infants in the intervention group and 71 in the control group. The programme is carried out twice a week and lasts for 20 min in the water. It starts at 3 months and lasts three years of age. The activity is performed in the therapeutic swimming pool of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario of Granada. In the first trimester, between the 3 and 6 months of life, we join in the adaptation to the aquatic environment, the interrelation between the babies and their parents, the first motor skills, supine and prone positions, flips and the beginning of sedestation and dives. In the second trimester, between the 6 and 9 months of life, we intervene on displacements and crawling. And in the third quarter, between the 9 months and the first year of life, we participate on the equilibria-imbalances, displacements, standing, march and dips. The second and third year will be carried out group aquatic activities to encourage, through play, motor skills in the water.Expected results: Aquatic physical activity improves neurodevelopment, sleep and affectivity in healthy babies.

Spatial-temporal variation characteristics and coupling coordination of the “water resources – water environment – water ecology” carrying capacity in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area