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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living

Sec. Physical Education and Pedagogy

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1679433

Multiteaching style and active reflection for swimming

Provisionally accepted
Gabriele SignoriniGabriele Signorini1Raffaele ScuratiRaffaele Scurati1*Damiano FormentiDamiano Formenti2Athos TrecrociAthos Trecroci1Giampiero MeratiGiampiero Merati2,3Roberto Del BiancoRoberto Del Bianco4Marta RigonMarta Rigon1,5Pietro Luigi InvernizziPietro Luigi Invernizzi1
  • 1Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
  • 2Universita degli Studi dell'Insubria Dipartimento di Biotecnologie e Scienze della Vita, Varese, Italy
  • 3RCCS Fondazione don Carlo Gnocchi, Milan, Italy
  • 4Federazione Italiana Nuoto, Rome, Italy
  • 5Universidad Catolica San Antonio de Murcia, Murcia, Spain

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A student-centred approach is widely used in team sports, but less so in swimming. A proper dosage of stimuli and a multi-teaching approach, where games can link understanding and motor competence, could lead to educational success. This study investigated the didactical, methodological, and personal competencies of swimming instructors and their relationships with children's actual and perceived aquatic competencies. Two hundred children and forty-four swimming instructors participated in the study. The Teaching Styles Questionnaire (TSQ) assessed the instructors' self-reported awareness of the teaching styles they use, which was compared to the experimenters' observations (as recorded by IESPES, SOFIT, and IFITS tools). The instructors' empathy and self-control were further evaluated, while two pictorial scales assessed the children's actual and perceived aquatic competence. TSQ confirmed the instructors' predominant use of monoteaching pedagogy, primarily characterised by linear (command and practice) styles (p < 0.001; W = 0.71). Even if swimming instructors exhibited general positive personal skills (empathy and self-control), a discrepancy between children's actual and perceived aquatic competence was found (p < 0.001; r = -0.83), with the latter overestimating the former. Conversely, the multiteaching approach of instructors directly correlated with didactic effectiveness (r = 0.64), empathy (r = 0.75), and children's actual (r = 0.63) and perceived aquatic competence (r = 0.65), suggesting that a multiteaching approach should also be used in swimming.

Keywords: perceived aquatic competence, actual motor competence, system thinking, Methodological competence, didactical competence, instructors' training, Psychosocial skills, dose-response

Received: 04 Aug 2025; Accepted: 23 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Signorini, Scurati, Formenti, Trecroci, Merati, Del Bianco, Rigon and Invernizzi. 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) or licensor 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.

* Correspondence: Raffaele Scurati, raffaele.scurati@unimi.it

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material