CEREPS is a French acronym for “Conseil Européen de la Recherche en Éducation Physique et Sportive – The European Council of Research in Physical Education and School Sport.
Who is CEREPS
The council was founded as a non-governmental, non-profit organization (a.s.b.l.) in Luxembourg in autumn 2015. The purpose of CEREPS is to develop, to implement, to evaluate and to disseminate research on European level about aims and objectives of physical education, school sports and other physical activity in school contexts (PE)
A special interest of CEREPS is to monitor and to assess outcomes of curricular and extra-curricular PE and school sport inside and outside school in the local community (Active Schools). Quality in physical education and school sport are growing items of interest for parents, teachers, coaches and policy makers. However, research-based feedback is also essential for children and adolescents for their individual support and feedback to stay or to become more physically active for various health reasons and as a well-rounded individual with psycho-social qualities and cognitive benefits.
With evidenced-based research outcome of PE and school sport young people will achieve better life skills, will get more social inclusion and individual respect from their peers including self-esteem and self-efficacy in accordance with better learning outcomes at school.
Up today, many national and international associations in the field of PE, school and youth sport based in Europe do not have a special research council or research committee for monitoring and evaluation of teaching and learning in physical education and school sports.
In particular, national and international youth sport organizations in Europe working on grassroot or elite level face difficulties to link their offers and interventions with academic monitoring and evaluation measurements if there are no scientific consultants or any academic partners for support and guidance. But academic institutions and scientific associations in PE and school sports also need to verify their scientific concepts and theoretical assumptions through practical applications in different school settings about their promised impacts and aspired outcomes.
CEREPS serves as a partner for such organizations to be their think tank as a consultant to link gaps between theory and practice and to bridge practice and theory in education and sports. In recent years, various stakeholders (sport associations, schools, community offices, sport clubs, teacher associations and other) who set up projects in PE, school and youth sports have already reinforced such ties as “collaborative partnerships” with research units and university departments as linked partnerships on national, cross-national and EU-level.
CEREPS as a council of researchers and scholars across many European countries picks up relevant topics to improve the visibility and quality of PE and school sports as our programmes of annual CEREPS Summits since 2016 document (Summits). University institutes of PE and sport sciences, related research units inside and outside universities have become institutional members of CEREPS like more than 20 individual scholars joined CEREPS with their expertise.