The “Idola” of Sport Pedagogy Researchers

This paper's thesis is that idola conceptiones (conceptional fallacies) form an important block for the progress of sport pedagogy research that is relevant and useful to physical education practice. This viewpoint is elaborated in four consecutive steps: (a)Contribution to the improvement of practices should be the central commitment of researchers in sport pedagogy. Consequently, the knowledge-constitutive interest of a researcher should be in line with the action interest of the practitioners involved in the investigated practice. (b)The question of the compatibility of the knowledge-constitutive interest of the researcher and the action interest of the practitioner is decided at the level of conceptual assumptions. (c) Sport pedagogy researchers should make their conceptual assumptions explicit so that practitioners are enabled to check whether the researcher's staning points fit their own starting points. (d)Present sport pedagogy research too often fails to be based on clearly explicited and consistent conceptual assumptions and consequently runs the risk to produce mere information instead of useful knowledge.