INTRODUCTION Physical education teachers face the daily challenge of accurately diagnosing their students` motor skills (Knudson, 2013). However, research has shown that PE teachers often lack a skill analysis competence (Ward et al., 2021). In a previous study (n=551) on PE teachers` approach to analyse their students` skills in the specific field of swimming, we found that in most cases the quality of information gathering is not sufficient to design swimming lessons linked to the students` individual swimming skills. The study showed that 63.8% of the participants prefer a diagnostic tool to support their information gathering. As a solution for school use, our research group has developed an easy-to-apply "Diagnostic Procedure for Swimming Skill Analysis (DPSSA)", based on the Assessment of Basic Aquatic Skills (ABAS; Vogt & Staub, 2020). By using this tool, teachers can easily conduct an initial classification during the first swimming lesson to get a direct insight into their learning group. In our current study, teachers were asked to use DPSSA at the beginning of their swimming lessons for diagnostic purposes. Afterwards they were asked to evaluate the manageability and the subjective value of the DPSSA. METHODS Qualitative, structured interviews in groups of two to four were conducted with German PE teachers from different backgrounds (n=14, 35.7% male, 71.4% primary school teachers, 42.9% did not study sport, 21.4% do not have a teaching diploma). The interviews were transcribed for double-coding and categorical analyses. RESULTS Preliminary findings show that using DPSSA helped almost all teachers to better structure their students` swimming skill analysis. Many teachers reported that DPSSA helped them to arrive at a more reliable judgement of students` swimming skills. Teachers agree that the students are motivated to perform the tasks. It was also mentioned that DPSSA is a good support for teachers with little experience. A more detailed analysis is currently processed. Additional findings will be added for presentation at the symposium. DISCUSSION The interviewed PE teachers seem to benefit from the support of a diagnostic tool like DPSSA. This hypothesis should be verified in a larger-scale quantitative online study. Further research can also be used to show whether the improved information gathering can also increase the adaptivity of swimming lessons.
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