to the Centre for Educational Research in Sports (CeBiS)

At the closing event of the Days of Teacher Education at Münster Castle, students of physical education pedagogy and didactics presented the teaching materials they had developed on the theme “Strengthening Democracy – Shaping Education.” Through podcasts, posters, and practical teaching resources, they demonstrated the diverse role of democracy education in the context of physical activity, play, and sport.

As part of the Bundesliga bewegt Club Calls organised by the Bundesliga Foundation (formerly the DFL Foundation), Prof. Dr. Nils Neuber gave a presentation on democratic core competencies in children’s physical play. Under the title “Children in Charge!?”, he highlighted the unique potential of sport for democracy education and presented empirical findings on both guided and unguided physical activities, demonstrating how democratic participation can be fostered through children’s movement and play. He also shared key insights from the Münster Democracy Festival 2025.

The Willibald Gebhardt Institute hosted the international CEREPS Summit at the Franz Hitze House in Münster. More than 60 researchers, practitioners and representatives from politics and sport discussed current developments in youth sport in schools and sports clubs, including topics such as physical activity promotion, inclusion and all-day education. The Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Münster contributed to the planning and organisation of the international conference through its Physical Education and Teaching Research unit.

In the BMBF project ComeSport, the Education and Culture in Sport and Education and Teaching in Sport departments are developing training courses for teachers on the subject of social media and body image in physical education. A meeting with other project partners has now taken place at Leipzig University. The first training sessions have already been tested.

At this year's Research Day of the Centre for Educational Research in Sport on 11.09.24, Brigitta Höger (Pädagogische Hochschule Oberösterreich) presented her exciting research on the perspectives of young people on sport-related social media offerings. In addition, Marion Golenia and Kathrin Aschebrock (AB Bildung und Unterricht im Sport) from the project Quality in all day education presented current results on participation opportunities in primary schools, comparing the children's perspective with that of adults (teachers and OGS staff).

The “Quality in all-day education” (QIG) project, which was conducted by the department of Physical Education and Teaching Reseach in collaboration with the Reinhard Mohn Foundation (RMS) has now been successfully completed. Under the direction of Dr. Marion Golenia and Kathrin Aschebrock, a modular online questionnaire instrument was developed and tested. The tool helps all-day schools to optimize the quality of their work in the areas of learning time, participation and room design.

As part of Prof. Nils Neuber's project seminar "School sport and democracy", students carried out practical research projects in schools and sport clubs. Over the course of several weeks, they worked on topics such as participation in performance assessment, children's rights in school sport, federalism in the education system and democratic education throughout the day. They have now presented their results in a poster session and discussed them with external guests.

The 37th annual conference of the sports education section of the German Association for Sports Science took place at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen under the title “Limits and dissolving boundaries in Sports Education”. A total of four days were spent discussing issues of social disadvantage, non-professional physical education, the digitalization of school sport and much more. The Institute was comprehensively represented with the departments of education and culture in sport, physical education and teaching research and sport psychology.