Prof. Dr Horst Biedermann has been Rector of the University of Teacher Education St Gallen (Switzerland) since 2016. Prior to this, from 2011 to 2014, he was Professor of School Pedagogy (W3) and Director of the Centre for Teacher Education at the European University of Flensburg (Germany) and, from 2014 to 2016, an O. Univ. Professor of Empirical Educational Sciences at Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg (Austria). He obtained his PhD in 2006 and his habilitation in 2011, with teaching qualifications in Educational Sciences and Educational Psychology, at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). In his habilitation project, he examined the professional development of trainee teachers, developing the concept of ‘professional learning nuclei’. In addition to professionalisation in the teaching profession, his research focus involves issues relating to lecturers’ professional ethos, the digital transformation and its negative consequences for children and young people, as well as educational processes in the fields of politics and ethics.

Roland Messmer: Dr. phil., sports scientist and educationalist. Professor of Sport and Sports Pedagogy at the University of Teacher Education of North-Western Switzerland (FHNW).

Studied sport (Diploma in Physical Education and Sport Teaching), pedagogy, psychology and history (lic. phil.). PhD in General Education on the effectiveness of teacher training at the University of Bern. Habilitation in Sports Science on the modes of thought and action of physical education teachers at the University of Oldenburg. From 1989 to 1999, he was a teacher at a secondary school and, from 1994 to 1999, a research assistant at the University of Bern. He subsequently became a lecturer in Educational and Sports Sciences at the University of Bern and at the FHNW University of Teacher Education, Basel.

From 2018 to 2024, he led the SNSF project EPiC-PE: Effects of Professional Competencies of PE teachers on teaching and student performance (in co-operation with the St. Gallen University of Teacher Education and the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport, Magglingen). Since 2024, he has been co-director (together with Katja Schönfeld) of the UPiS project: Teaching Practice in Sport, which is also funded by the SNF. His research focuses on sports didactics, its epistemological approaches and its fundamental questions of teaching and learning. The areas of interest included in the conference theme – the professional competences of physical education teachers and higher education didactics – also fall within this context.

His research projects, which examine the actual content of sports pedagogy (Pedagogical Content Knowledge, PCK) and teaching practice, can also be situated within this context. Methodologically, he can be associated with the Hamburg School of Case Work and one of its further developments, Narrative Inquiry. He is currently spending a research semester at the University of Hamburg, where he previously studied as an Erasmus student some time ago.

Further information can be found on the website of the professorship of Sport and Sport Didactics in Adolescence: www.sportdidaktik.ch

Professor Dr Claudia Steinberg has been Head of the Institute for Dance and Movement Culture at DSHS Cologne since April 2020. She was previously a senior academic advisor at the Institute of Sport Science at JGU. From 2008-2011, she completed her doctorate on the topic of student perspectives in the content area "Gestalten, Tanzen, Darstellen" at the Institute for School Sport and School Development (DSHS) and received the DSHS Young Talent Award in the "Humanities and Social Sciences" category for her dissertation in 2012. From 2010-2020, she taught and researched at the Institute of Sport Science at JGU Mainz, where she completed her habilitation on the topics of aesthetic-cultural education and digitalisation in sport education research. Her research focus is on empirical teaching research, the development of domain-specific research tools in dance, and the consequences of digitalisation in the field of cultural education and sport. Her research is currently focussing on digital higher education. She has received several highly competitive third-party funds, including for the BMBF-funded joint projects "KuBiTanz-"; "#digitanz"(lite.digitanz.de/) and "#vortanz"(vortanz.ai/#/de) and is a member of the joint project^ComeSport. She cooperates with research groups from the fields of educational research, communication design and computer science and has recently published an academic records book on "Tanzvermittlung & Tanzpädagogik" with utb