97 The importance of reflection and evaluation for progressing toward the elite level 5 use of reflection during training sessions, is a fundamental characteristic of swimmers who are on track to becoming elite swimmers. In addition to reflection, another notable SRL subprocess that seems to be typical for swimmers who are on track to reach the elite level is evaluation. We found that among highperforming swimmers, those who demonstrated more improvement within a season used evaluation processes after training more frequently compared with those who showed less improvement. Here, it is important to note that all high-performing swimmers demonstrated similar performance levels at the start of the season, but differed in their performance progression during the season. Consequently, their performance levels varied at the end of the season. Though advanced progressors tended to score higher for reflection, self-efficacy, and speaking-up (negligible effect sizes) and lower for planning and effort compared with less advanced progressors, evaluation was the only SRL subprocess that reached significance. Therefore, performance progression within a season seems to be related especially to evaluation after training, which is striking. According to Zimmerman (2000), evaluation is a subprocess of reflective thinking that is related to the result (selfjudgement) rather than to a standard or goal (self-reaction). In particular, evaluation refers to the ability to assess both the learning process and the result achieved after task execution (Jonker et al., 2010b). The assessment of training outcomes in light of attainment goals may be a crucial starting point for further improvement. Swimmers who evaluate their training outcomes more frequently after training may, as a consequence, be better able to correct for weaknesses in their training program, and make appropriate adjustments in their training behavior or goals, thereby, achieving greater improvements during a season. In essence, evaluation processes may contribute to more effective learning. A striking finding is that the meta-cognitive processes related to differences in the swimmers’ performance levels and progression occurred during the same phase of the SRL cycle, namely the self-reflection phase. However, reflection and evaluation processes relating to daily training sessions, as measured in the present study, were assigned to different moments in time (before, during, and after training). These observations highlight two key points, namely the prominent role of the self-reflection phase in the SRL cycle relating to performance development and the dimension-transcending nature of SRL. Hence, we are well aware that swimmers may also use the same SRL subprocesses during other phases of the learning, training, or developmental processes (e.g., reflective processes after training and evaluative processes during training) that we did not measure. In light of our assessment of the swimmers’ engagement in SRL before, during, and after training, we concluded that those swimmers who are on track to reach the elite level not only engage more frequently in SRL subprocesses during training (reflected, for example, in higher reflection scores) but also post-training (reflected, for example, in higher evaluation scores). Therefore, we suggest that the capacity to derive more from training may extend beyond the actual training time spent in the pool.
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