Background: Drowning is the leading cause death for children ages 1-4, and second only to motor vehicle crashes for children and youth ages 5-14 (CDC, 2012; 2016). Protecting children and youth from drowning requires a set of water competencies, including, but not limited to, self-rescue, the safe rescue others, and effective prevention (Cummings, Mueller & Quan, 2011; Salomez & Vincent, 2004; Stallman et al., 2017; Thompson & Rivara, 1998;). There is evidence that water safety education can help build the water safety knowledge and skills to bolster these competencies among children and youth (Solomon et al., 2013; Petrass and Blitvich, 2014; Wilks et al., 2015; Turgut, 2016). In Michigan little is known about the water safety education efforts of schools, the water safety knowledge levels of teachers, and teachers' willingness to participate in future water safety education.Purpose: This study aims to, identify the current water safety education and swimming efforts of Michigan K-12 teachers and their schools, identify the water safety knowledge levels of K-12 grade Michigan teachers, and explore the influence of teachers' background factors, water safety knowledge, risk perceptions, past behavior, attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC), on intentions (INT) to teach three 30-minute water safety lessons through an extended model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Methods: To achieve the purposes of this study an online survey was sent at random to over 200 public, private, and charter schools across Michigan resulting in 238 teacher participating in the surveys. Correlations were run between background factors, water safety knowledge and water safety education efforts of teachers and their schools. Teachers' experiences with drowning and rescue, along with their perceptions of Michigan's beach safety flags were explored using content analysis. Finally, a path analysis was utilized to analyze the influence of ATT, SN, and PBC on INT to teach water safety.Results: The final sample of 184 teachers represented over 80 schools, and closely matched the greater population of Michigan teachers. Results revealed that opportunities for students to participate in water safety education and swimming in Michigan schools are extremely limited. Only 13% of schools provide swim lessons, 11% provide water safety education in the classroom, and 3.4% of teachers teach water safety education lessons in the classroom. Although teachers accurately identified effective prevention efforts and drowning risk, they averaged just 50% correct on water safety knowledge questions and had incorrect perceptions of Michigan's beach flags. Teachers had favorable attitudes toward water safety education, yet low INT to teach water safety. The path model based on TPB exhibited excellent fit (RSMEA .000, CFI = 1.000, TLI = 1.000 and SRMR = .000), and SN was found to be the sole predictor of teacher intentions (B .486 p < .001). Conclusion: There are very few opportunities for students to participate in water safety education and swimming in Michigan schools, and the water safety knowledge of Michigan K-12 teachers was generally low. Teachers value water safety education and believe it can be an effective way to help keep students safe in and around the water. However, teachers do not feel that teaching water safety education is a responsibility of their job or an expectation from school leadership. Additionally, teachers feel that they lack the support, competence, and resources needed to teach water safety lessons. Subjective norms were found to be the sole predictor of teacher's intentions, highlighting the important influence of the social and cultural factors, cultivated by important referents, on teacher's intentions to adopt new curriculum like water safety education. Teachers value the expectations of their principals more than any other referent, and curricular expectations are ultimately shaped by standards set at the state level. Therefore, policy may be a key factor in the cultivation of teacher's normative beliefs. There are several other water safety paths forward for Michigan schools, paths that move toward providing better opportunities for students to develop the water competencies needed to help keep them safe in and around the water.
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