Sports Didactics in Switzerland. Developments towards a Sports Science Discipline

In Switzerland, the development of sports didactics is connected closely to the history of the school subject physical education (PE) and teacher education. It is marked by a strong link between theory and practice as a result of the tradition of Swiss physical education manuals (part 1). Sports didactic discourses and concepts hence refer primarily to the action and competency orientation in physical education as well as to issues of assuring and developing instructional quality (part 2). Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a noticeable trend in the Swiss higher education context toward increasing institutionalization of sports didactics and increasing empirical study of sports didactic topics at the national level (part 3) as well as in internationally compatible research projects (part 4). On account of these developments in the past two decades, the Swiss sports didactic scientific community has been strengthened both in Switzerland itself and in relation to its international integration.