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Recently, a student in a Maricopa County, Arizona area school district drowned during a physical education class, resulting in a heightened awareness of school aquatics safety guidelines. The goal of this study was to use Wenger's idea of nurturing a Community of Practice (CoP) with the existing physical education CoP at GFJRHS (school pseudonym), to examine the current curriculum and enhance the program and safety standards. The study duration was a five-week period; the participants were 7th grade males. This action research addressed the following questions: 1.)To what extent does the new swim curriculum increase students' (a) self-efficacy for swimming, (b) self-efficacy for water safety, (c) perception of swim skills, and (d) perception of water safety skills? 2.) How, and to what extent, do students value different observational learning techniques presented during the swim unit? 3.) To what extent does the new swim curriculum increase students' swimming capabilities? 4.) How does working as a Community of Practice influence implementing an enhanced swim curriculum? 5.) What challenges and improvements do participants report during the enhanced curriculum? A triangulation mixed methods design was used to determine whether observational learning techniques and mini aquatics safety lessons incorporated into the curriculum improved students' swimming ability, self-efficacy, and safety knowledge. Pre-and post-test swim assessments, pre- and post-test surveys, focus group interviews and researcher journal observations provided data for the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to integrate the strengths of the varied forms of research. Cronbach's coefficient α was computed for the reliability of the survey and a multivariate repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether the new swim curriculum increased students' self-efficacy for swimming, self-efficacy for water safety, perception of swim skills, perception of water safety skills, and swimming capabilities. Results of this study indicated students' self-efficacy and perception of water safety skills increased, students' ability and perception of swimming skills increased, students valued all observational learning techniques, and teachers felt that functioning as a CoP was crucial to the process.
ContributorsJonaitis, Sean (Author) / Wetzel, Keith A (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann D (Thesis advisor) / Darst, Paul W. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014