Natação enquanto conteúdo da educação física escolar

Abstract

Swimming, initially an essential skill from ancient times, has evolved over the years to become a comprehensive sport recognized for its ability to positively impact human development. This study starts from the question: How has swimming as a content of school Physical Education been studied? aims to investigate and analyze how the production of knowledge has been dealing with the sport of swimming. To achieve this, examining its historical, social and cultural aspects, while identifying the benefits associated with its practice. The methodology used in the study was a bibliographic review, with a qualitative approach, from a social perspective, based on the contributions of several authors. The search was carried out on the SciELO, Google Scholar platforms and the UFRPE repository. The search descriptors were “Natação AND Escola” “Natação AND Educação Física”, resulting in a range of 5 and 20 works found for each term. However, after a detailed evaluation, only 5 of these works were considered relevant to the topic, meeting the established inclusion criteria, such as analyzing academic works and scientific articles published between 2015 and 2022, in Portuguese. The results obtained highlight that starting swimming early provides significant benefits in several dimensions of development and health. These include advances in psychomotor development, strengthening social and emotional relationships, promoting self-knowledge, emotional regulation, muscle strengthening, improving circulatory and respiratory health, postural correction, among other aspects. In summary, the skills acquired through swimming in childhood result in a notable improvement in quality of life, considering the cumulative benefits throughout continuous practice. It became evident after analyzing the articles, that although the practice of swimming plays a crucial role in the psychomotor and social development of different age groups, its practice is not available to all children, most schools do not offer this content in School Physical Education, justifying this by the lack of adequate facilities in schools, making its implementation difficult. Despite these challenges, there is gradual progress in integrating this sport into the school environment.