The making of national bodies :the institutionalization of physical education in Switzerland and Europe (19th-21st century)

Apolitical on the international sports scene, sport in schools has become a powerful tool for training (and controlling) young people at the service of the political projects of governments of all stripes.Compulsory at school since the second half of the 19th century in Europe, school physical education (“gymnastics”!) will see its contents defined by the States, but above all by the teachers responsible for the branch. “Academics” since the beginning of the 20th century across the continent, the training of future teachers of physical education has evolved a lot since the end of the 19th century. These transformations are the consequences of internal dynamics in the academic field, socio-politico-economic dynamics that the West is going through, but also transformations in the space of high-level sport, where the need for scientific knowledge explodes on the fringes of persistent political manipulation.A major turning point is the period which extends between the years 1990 and 2000, between the implementation of new para-university institutions of pedagogical training, the introduction of the so-called "Bologna" reforms and the beginning of a development of the sports field, calling for new skills on the part of its actors. Between these two dates, the main Western universities will introduce new courses in "sports sciences", with a gradual abandonment of an exclusive specialization in "physical education" in favor of teaching and research in the various basic sciences. , defining new orientations for training in adapted physical activities, in training, or in sports management.Within the framework of this collective project, our ambition is to explain the complexity of the processes leading to contemporary training in sports sciences. If it is not a question of creating arbitrary links between the pioneers of gymnastics at the beginning of the 19th century and the training courses in sports management which today make the success of institutes throughout Europe, it is clear that physical education is a particularly stimulating object which calls for new work on the borders of transnational dynamics and processes of national affirmation