Youth Development

Learning & Understanding

By David Speechley, SwimEd

Good swimming instruction is a complex task which should be based on providing a learning experience suitable for a complex brain. To maximize the learning experience, a connection needs to be made and maintained between the Instructor and a student.

Instructors of Swimming and Water Safety should have a good understanding of methods to gain and hold someone's attention. The benefit is that students will better acquire the information instructors provide them. This will equate in the swimming pool to better swimmers and quicker results. Your ability as an instructor is best measured by the amount of learning that takes place.

Attention is the ability to focus. Younger children tend to be only able to focus on one topic for no longer than a few minutes thought this improves with maturity.

Unwanted behavior can arise as a result of boredom, the lack of a challenge in the task set, being challenged beyond what you think are your capabilities, or external factors.

Whichever it is, the first step for an instructor is to determine what may be the cause. If a number of students are "misbehaving," I suggest you review your own instructing strategies firstly as the most likely cause. Remove or decrease as many distractions as possible: use demonstrations with verbal explanations and give students plenty of time to do what they are seeing and hearing about. All pupils should be kept busily working within a zone of physical ability and mental capacity. Time on task is important, but the quality of this work is equally vital.

Instructors should keep "turns" short and frequent. more experienced instructors use many small progressive steps which expand their students capabilities whilst maintaining the student's confidence. If larger steps are taken, a student may be pushed beyond their comfort zone and respond by exhibiting "bad behavior." Similarly, a student left unchallenged, waiting whilst others have their turn will soon find something to relieve the wait time - again unwanted behavior.

Ask others the question - "5 Learn to Swim children in a class for half an hour, how much time should each student receive?" The responses will be anything from 5 minutes (allow time to mark the role, get them in and out, get equipment, etc. - therefore 30 minutes minus 5 minutes becomes 25 minutes, divided by 5, equals 5 minutes each) to 30 minutes (all 5 children working all the time with no breaks). Obviously the answer is somewhere in the middle.

There should be time for group drill revision, group practice, new tasks, observation of others, rest time, individual feedback and correction.

We all should be getting up around 20 minutes per students as a standard of which 2 to 3 minutes should be skill specific individual feedback in a positive environment.

Look critically at your own performance and you may understand why your class behaves (and swims) the way they do.

We learn through our senses:	We remember:
1% Taste	10% of what we read
1.5% Touch	20% of what we hear
3.5% Smell	30% of what we see
11% Hear	50% of what we see and hear
83% Sight	80% of what we say
	90% of what we say and do
Variable factors which affect learning are:
Environmental distractions	Noise
	Movement
	Other student's behavior
	Parents' presence
	Facility
Pedagogy	Language level, number or complexity of instructions
	Skill level inappropriate
	Prior experiences such as fear
	Instructor's skills, actions, beliefs and abilities
	Student's mental attitude and self-appreciation
	Class size, time on task, opportunity for practice
	Feedback and motivation
	The task being taught
Extraneous	home/school/life issues