Profile of the Department of “Physical Education and Teaching Research"

© Markus Jürgens

The Department of Physical Education and Teaching Research deals with sport pedagogical and sport didactical questions of movement, play and sports in childhood and adolescence. Education refers to formal learning processes, e.g. in schools, as well as non-formal learning processes, e.g. in sport clubs, and informal learning processes, e.g. in self-organized physical activities. A particular challenge represents the linkage of various learning modalities and places of learning within an educational network, e.g. regarding all-day schools.

Teaching refers to the staging of teaching-learning processes, especially in physical school sports. A major concern of the Department of PE and Teaching Research is to study possibilities and limits of support within this area. Focus areas are for example developmental support, individual support and the support of boys in sports. In addition, special emphasis is placed on the handling of heterogenous target groups in line with a sports pedagogy as a field of variety. This includes categories such as gender, ethnicity, social background and movement status.

Physical Education and Teaching Research is understood as an empirical social research, which finds application in both quantitative and qualitative methods, depending on the research questions. Key research areas are both the field of formal learning in school sports as well as in the field of informal learning such as skill and competence development of PE teachers. The Department of PE and Teaching Research is a member of the Centre for Educational Research in Sports and Exercise (CeBiS) and cooperates with numerous university and extra-university partners.

Overall, the Department's work priorities are:

  • Education and learning in sports,
  • Planning, execution and analysis of PE classes,
  • Methods in PE,
  • Gender-sensitive teaching,
  • Experiental education,
  • Skill and competence development of PE teachers,
  • Movement, play and sports in all-day schools,
  • Development of school and club sports.