The Institute of Sport Didactics and Physical Education focusses on a wide range of topics related to school sports in both teaching and research. School sport encompasses not only physical education (PE) but also extracurricular activities within the context of all-day schooling, such as sports trips, after school sports clubs, movement-based learning, or support programmes. These formats complement and deepen PE teaching and furthermore create time and space for specific educational potentials - free from the school system’s curricular constraints and organisational requirements. However, only PE itself reaches all children, offering unique opportunities as well as challenges. As part of PE, educational and developmental processes can be initiated that go far beyond motor learning and mastering individual sports. These unique processes can contribute not only to personal development with regard to social responsibility but also help to foster a self-determined, physically active and healthy lifestyle. To ensure that all children, regardless of their individual needs and diverse physical conditions, have equal opportunities to participate, qualified PE teachers are needed who employ didactic and methodological concepts that are both effective for learning and sensitive to diversity. Based on this, our institute conducts theoretical and empirical research about educational and developmental processes with a focus on the following areas: digitalisation, health-related concepts, the influence of sport on personality development and body image, teacher professionalisation – particularly regarding professional perception in PE teaching – and the promotion of collegial cooperation.