ALFAC – Aquatic literacy for all children
The ALFAC project is a partnership between researchers, educators and institutional stakeholders from Europe aiming to improve the quality of aquatic education. It addresses the educational challenge of improving aquatic literacy (AL) levels of children aged 6-12, to better protect them from the dangers of being active in water environments, and to motivate them to engage in water-based activities both now and later. The ten full partners come from seven countries with different drowning accident rates and are involved in water education. In each country, a network of associated partners has been formed to be as close as possible to the pedagogical and structural issues. All partners are representative of the different types of organization and curriculum that can be found in Europe in the teaching of “can swim”. This diversity will allow the results of the ALFAC project to subsequently benefit worldwide. The ALFAC consortium aims to create diagnostic and pedagogical tools to raise the AL level of children:
- Creation of a tool to compare national strategies for aquatic education.
- Creation of a battery of tests to measure children's water literacy levels in terms of motor skills, knowledge, attitude and motivation.
- Creation of an international database to identify country strengths and weaknesses.
- Creation and experimentation of a pedagogical toolbox to identify, in the field, the level of aquatic literacy.
