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Abstract
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Readers of the first two editorials may have noted the emergence of a "broken record" theme: Aquatics is the Rodney Dangerfield of academic fields. Aquatic scholars and studies just don't get any respect! I have often attributed this phe- nomenon to the fact that too few scholars really study swimming and aquatics for their own sake but more often use water and aquatic tasks as tools for investigating questions related to other disciplines (e.g., exercise physiology, biomechanics, motor development, learning). I also feel that too few aquatic scholars (myself included) have conducted sufficiently extensive or rigorous lines of inquiry devoted to aquatic research questions to allow us to deserve greater respect and recognition.
In my experience aquatic specialists have tended to be ultimate pragmatists, seeking answers from our own anecdotal experience rather than using more tradi- tional research approaches such as conducting well-controlled empirical studies. For example, when I served on advisory committees for revising Red Cross and YMCA of the USA learn-to-swim programs over the past 20 years, these groups mainly tended to use what I have termed the coffee-table approach. The many experienced members of these advisory committees (these committee members did have excellent credentials and extensive years of swim-teaching experience) essentially suggested revisions based on mutual experiences while we sat around a figurative "coffee table." Interestingly, the revisions often contained changes that are consistent with what most practitioners were currently using, which made retraining and widespread acceptance easier. Unfortunately, this approach often leads to perpetuating traditional and questionably effective practices simply because "that is the way we have always done it." I recall often having a strong sense that we needed to do some research on this idea before we put it into a nationwide program. Unfortunately, the timelines and demands for program revisions meant that we created the programs and hoped that at some time in the future perhaps someone would do the study to determine whether the approach worked or was the most effective method available.
In other, more empirically rigorous areas such as biology, environmental sci- ence, or psychology, practical programs are based more often on valid and reliable research studies. Before programs are instituted, either an extensive review of the existing literature is conducted or a series of studies is designed and conducted. As a result, such programs tend to produce effective results and concomitantly are better respected than some of our aquatic programs.
Language: en |