Lived experiences of first-year physical education students learning to swim

Abstract

Drowning is the leading cause of child death in the world (World Health Organization, 2017). With over 300 000 drownings per year globally, people from low socio-economic backgrounds living in rural locations are most vulnerable to drowning (Willcox-Pidgeon et al., 2020). Obstacles that have an impact on learning how to swim includes motivation, fear, accessibility, and social constraints (Olaves et al., 2019). First-year education students who are studying the Human Movement Studies (HMS) elective at the University of Pretoria are required to pass the water activities section in their practical module (University of Pretoria, 2020). However, there are some students who are not water safe when starting the HMS elective. In this qualitative autoethnographic case study, the impact of learning to swim lived experiences on the perceptions that first-year education students had towards swimming are identified and explored. Through purposeful sampling, a sample group of students were identified. Of this initial sample group, 34 volunteers participated in an online questionnaire and 10 volunteer participants were interviewed in focus group interviews. Photovoice evidence of photographs taken during the module were used as the third set of data. In the data analysis of the collected data, four common themes were identified: fear, swimming ability, adaptation, and perception. According to complex learning theory (Light, 2014), this learn-to-swim process can be understood in terms of adaptation, social learning, and interpretation. This study concludes that the students’ lived experiences of learning core aquatic and swimming skills contributed to their perceptions of swimming becoming more positive.