The social evolution of academic disciplines is a story of a continuous differentiation process. New specialties and research institutions are constantly emerging. At the same time, older disciplines and sub-disciplines live on (Stichweh, 1994). In order to either establish oneself anew in the circle of other academic disciplines or to persist, it is necessary to develop and enforce a specific self-referential communication context: a self-image as academic research and teaching discipline that creates coherence internally and marks differences externally that make a crucial difference. In academic discourse, the notion of “disciplinary identity” has become established and is acted out across disciplines via a canon of common semantic strategies, topoi, and distinctions¹.

Following this general pattern, modern academic sports pedagogy in Germany, which evolved in the 1970s from the theories of school-based physical education (Theorien der Leibeserziehung), is a “normal” academic discipline (Thiele, 2013). Situated at the interface between educational science and sports science (Grupe and Krüger, 2007), the phenomena of sports, game and play, which function as a medium for teaching and learning processes in different social settings (such as schools, sports clubs, and non-formal scenes), form the center of its subject area (Meinberg, 1996; Prohl, 2013). The essential scientific epistemological program of German sports pedagogy docks right here: It acts primarily as a science of action “from practice and for practice” (Meinberg, 1996, p. 20) and aims at observing and describing the interrelationship of sports and education (description), explaining and better understanding the interrelationship of sports and education (reflection), examining and justifying the interrelationship of sports and education (legitimation) and orientating the interrelationship of sports and education along with practical recommendations (orientation) (cf. Prohl, 1994, 2006, 2013; Balz and Kuhlmann, 2003). Sports pedagogy is thus a normative academic discipline evaluating and discussing values, goals, and norms, as well as an empirical-analytical academic discipline conducting research using hermeneutic, qualitative, and quantitative-empirical research methods considering goals, actors, frameworks, and effects of school sports and physical education especially (cf. currently Thiele, 2018; Balz et al., 2020; Ruin and Stibbe, 2020).

Based on social systems theory, the following analysis draws upon this practice of German sports pedagogy as an academic discipline. Using the example of claim and reality, it examines the forms, functions, and consequences of a historically ongoing distinction in sports-pedagogical communication. For sports pedagogy, the analysis of the role of a central form-giving distinction of the discipline makes a reflexive contribution to its self-description and thus increases its “control complexity” (Luhmann, 2008, p. 137). The article thus does not fit primarily into an action-oriented (scientific) logic of sturdy and concrete application in educational working contexts. Instead, it attempts to sharpen–as an example–analytical observations of traditional problem constellations and dynamic system structures of sports pedagogy through disciplinary self-reflection to stimulate disciplinary communication. Additionally, for sociological systems theory, the study of sports-pedagogical communication marks an “esoteric” use case that demonstrates its empiric capacity as a method of analysis.

The role of distinctions in general for the “operation” of society is the subject of the newer sociological systems theory following N. Luhmann. A social systems theory offers a universal sociological theory that establishes systems as a social unit and determines communication as a basal social type of operation. Communication is formally defined as the communication of information that finds a social connection (Luhmann, 1984). Society in this sense denotes the ensemble of mutually accessible communications that ultimately phenomenalize and operationally chain themselves via communications in the form of verbal, physical, or written utterances (Luhmann, 1995b). Like all other functional systems, science exists as a context of communication that is continuously reproduced in the medium of professional publication. As contributions follow contributions referring to each other via citations, science reproduces itself as an autopoietic communication context (Luhmann, 1990; Stichweh, 1994), which in modern societies performs the function of a methodically controlled production of statements about world facts (Nassehi and Saake, 2002).

Scientific disciplines are thus conceived as (more or less) complex systems of communications that can be analytically investigated in their complexity, i.e., scanned for guiding routines of distinction and the constructions of problems and problem solutions carried out therein (Luhmann, 1984; cf. Körner, 2008). Distinctions direct the communication taking place in different disciplines, the application of which relates the informational value of a piece of information to specific selection horizons and thereby excludes other possibilities of information processing. Based on the theories of observation and society, distinctions can be interrogated about how “they are communicated with” (Luhmann, 1997a, p. 1123) and to which problem they appear as a solution in each case (Luhmann, 1997a). Against this background, systems theory offers an analytical tool for observing scientific communication regarding guiding distinctions and examining their function. The observation of form-giving distinctions, especially in publication-based scientific communications, points to the analysis of “cultivated semantics” (Luhmann, 1980, p. 19), i.e., semantic forms and themes fixed in writing, validated by repeated proving in communication, and related to major structural decisions of social systems. As cultural memories, these hold a “repertoire of distinctions” (Stichweh, 2006, p. 161) that is constitutive for the operative execution of communication, providing systems with a repertoire of reliable patterns with which they can permanently cope with problems of selection and connection of social practice (Luhmann, 1980). For empirical access, this means analyzing established distinctions and exploring the conditions “under which certain distinctions are more plausible than others” (Luhmann, 1995a, p. 176). Since early advanced civilizations, the media of analysis have been textualized, written communications, typical of the semantics of the systems in focus. The analysis perspective is directed toward the emergence, the perpetuation, the development (e.g., intensity, semantic variations, antonyms), and the social covariations of the chosen semantics.

The emphasis of the observation program chosen here is the distinction between claim and reality, which has stimulated the (re)production of disciplinary contributions in sports pedagogy for decades (Körner, 2012)². The text media of choice are sports-pedagogical publications. The identification and analysis of the text corpus happened according to the following criteria:

- The publication focuses on the distinction between claim and reality or a semantic variation of distinction. The distinctions of theory vs. empiricism, ought vs. being, values vs. facts, wish vs. reality, idea vs. actuality, norms vs. facts, and normative vs. empirical statements function as permissible semantic variations. Excluded are publications addressing the relationship between theory vs. (sports-pedagogical and physical education) practice, i.e., the intersystemic relationship between the scientific and educational systems.

- The publication of the papers can be located during the period starting with the founding decision of the Section of Sport Pedagogy within the German Association for Sports Science (dvs) at the conference Research Concepts in Sport Pedagogy in 1987 in Bielefeld (Brehm and Kurz, 1987) to the present (2018)³.

- German publications that communicate essential disciplinary discussion lines, relevance settings, and research results in German sports pedagogy (Balz and Kuhlmann, 2003, p. 14) are included. Contributions from the proceedings of the annual conference of the Section for Sports Pedagogy (associated within the German Society of Sport Science/dvs), contributions from leading German sports-pedagogic journals (i.e., sportunterricht, sportpädagogik, Zeitschrift für sportpädagogische Forschung), contributions from other conference proceedings, collected works, and monographs were explicitly included in the analysis. The selection of publication organs was oriented toward publications that essentially aim at scientific communication (e.g., conference proceedings of the dvs-Section Sports Pedagogy, Zeitschrift für sportpädagogische Forschung), and publications that, in addition to scientific communication, are also oriented toward interfaces with relevant system environments, especially physical education, physical education teachers, or educational policy (e.g., sportunterricht, sportpädagogik).

- The inclusion and exclusion of publications from the Section of Sports Pedagogy conference proceedings and the selected sports pedagogy journals were carried out as a full-text survey. The search for publications from other conference proceedings, journals, collective works, and monographs was conducted by accessing BISp-SURF, FIS Bildung, ZBSport, and Google Scholar. The search terms combined words from the chosen guiding distinction with variants from the disciplinary setting (cf. sports pedagogy, sports didactics, physical education, school sports). In addition, literature lists and citations of the included studies were checked.

- The analysis of the text corpus followed a two-step procedure. In the rough analysis, the semantic variations of the publications included in the analysis were coded, and the core statements and line of argumentation of the texts were summarized. In the fine analysis, the roughly analyzed texts were grouped along with the semantic variations and transformed into a content narrative for each text group. The grouped content narratives were oriented toward the distinction of semantics vs. social structure and focused on the development, function, forms, media, and social-structural interrelations of the respective leading distinction variant of claim and reality.

The final analysis corpus comprises 212 sports-pedagogical texts: 69 contributions from the conference proceedings of the dvs-section of Sports Pedagogy, 69 contributions from professional journals, 54 contributions from other conference proceedings and collective works, and 19 monographs (cf. Table 1). A detailed overview, including the complete references, can be found in the Supplementary Material.

The research results show that the distinction between claim and reality is a significant category of difference in sports-pedagogical communication. The distinction is taken up constantly and in different forms throughout the time studied and is essential for initiating and keeping sports-pedagogical communication going. In the analysis corpus, three basic variations of the distinction emerge, which begin differently in time and continue to exist in parallel today with varying degrees of intensity and visibility.

At the core of functional analysis, there is the question for which problems specific communication contexts make use of these or those distinctions this way and no other as solutions to problems (Luhmann, 1984). The continuous bond of sports pedagogy to variations of the distinction between claim and reality is thereby especially an expression and consequence of a scientific discipline that sees itself mainly as a science of action (Meinberg, 1996, pp. 18–49; cf. currently Wiesche et al., 2016) and maintains, from this self-understanding, the social system internally while positioning it externally.

As a science of (educational) action, academic sports pedagogy in Germany inevitably hangs on the drip of the theory-practice problem⁶. It relates to this differential relationship by “on the one hand receiving its authoritative problems and impulses from practice and [.] on the other hand, wanting to have an impact back on this practice” (Meinberg, 1996, p. 20). The (self-)chosen location thus sets standards and orients the day-to-day operational business of the discipline toward tangible services for the societal environment. Access to the distinction between claim and reality proves to be an essential ingredient in this model. Although sports-pedagogical action science is indisputably committed to the logic of the scientific system, however, by integrating a distinction into scientific perspectives of knowledge that directly and timelessly refers to the targeted life worlds across topics, it masters its claim of action science with on-board means. Also, it makes itself attractive for structural coupling offers in many ways.

Scientific communication is per se a transitive business where one has to communicate to keep the business going (Körner, 2008). Within the system, the thematization and processing of the difference between claims and realities constantly ensure that the information communicated via publications finds further connection and that the social system of sports pedagogy endures. It does not matter whether normative claims and empirical realities are discussed within themselves or against each other, too much or too little, together or separately, one-sided or about one another, systematically or unsystematically, on this or that topic, etc. The publications revolve around differences, where meaning is amplified, which stimulates the production of further publications and thus guarantees the autopoiesis of the discipline⁷.

Externally, the distinction between aspiration and reality supports the practical orientation inscribed in the disciplinary self-concept. It prepares the pragmatic relevance structures of sports-pedagogical research and significantly organizes identity-forming environmental references as well. On the one hand, the positioning takes place within the scientific system, e.g., (a) as a delimiting marker vis-à-vis other sports science disciplines (for example, the discourses about the position of sports pedagogy within sports science, cf. Kurz, 1992; Scherler, 1992b); (b) or the claimed interpretive sovereignty of sports education concerning physical education and sports-related youth research (Scherler, 1993b; Gerlach, 2009), or (c) as a “bridge” that enables adaptation to scientifically legitimizing the practices and trends of other scientific disciplines (for example, the “realist turn” or the orientation toward the concept of competence in pedagogy and educational science). On the other hand, the access to claims and realities offers valuable starting points for structural interconnections with the non-scientific environment of sports pedagogy, above all as proof of usefulness on sports, school, economic or political terrain (e.g., the multifaceted formulations of expectations in, for, and through sports or the dynamic adaptation of sports pedagogy to the evidence-based legitimization of school subjects demanded by educational policy). In this context, claims centrally refer to constitutions of assimilated realities of the political agenda, spearheads of empirical educational research, or the mainstream of disciplinary communication. In this respect, realities are characterized by orientations of assimilated claim attitudes of scientific operationalization of phenomena, relativization of pedagogical norms, and increase of practical action relevance (e.g., Thiele, 2018).

In self-descriptions of sports pedagogy, expectations are fixed, projections are formed, and connections are stimulated, which typically revolve around the unity and future of the system and claim differences for this purpose (Körner, 2012). The difference between claim and reality plays a supporting role as a historically and synchronically recurrent distinction of sports-pedagogical communication. The distinction is expressed in three basic variations, which develop in stages, mostly in opposition to each other, persist until today, are present in the central discussion lines of the discipline, and contribute significantly to the existence and evolution of sports-pedagogical communication. The function and adaptive use of the distinction are particularly evident in the debate over the legitimacy of school sports. At the moment, when traditional normative patterns of legitimation no longer carry or are politically questioned, sports-pedagogical science switches to an increasingly systematized empirical turn, presenting empirically researched views into sports and sports teaching practice as a solution⁸. However, the approaches of sports-pedagogical empiricism of the normative have addressed the relationship between claims and realities on a methodological level and have essentially interpreted the connection in strategic research terms. An empirical research perspective motivated by basic theory, which systematically leads the relationship work from an epistemological foundation via methodological derivations to a concrete methodology, thus also encountering a sports-pedagogical norm of the empirical in a reflected way, is missing so far and could initiate the next evolutionary stage of sports-pedagogical research.

With the presented analysis of the function and consequences of the historically ongoing distinction between claim and reality within sports-pedagogical communication, the present study contributes to a systems-theory-based self-understanding of the discipline. The access to descriptions of the system within the system conceived in this way can thereby stimulate worthwhile repercussions and consequences for systems theory and academic sports pedagogy:

In terms of systems theory, the application to sports-pedagogical communication offers a case study of the empirical nature of systems theory (Körner, 2011; Nassehi, 2012). In this regard, the empirical case points to claims vs. realities as a cross-system drive of modern societies (see Münch, 1995 for moral discourses). Academic sports pedagogy thus functions as an example of how modern society generates dynamics through claim formulations at which it can regularly fail without depleting the distinction in the process and ceasing its core operation. Unachieved goals and disappointed expectations form the starting point of new effort and fixed components of the autopoietic script (Körner, 2008).

The analytical access to semantic and social structures proves to be empirically productive and thus joins a series of systems theory-informed research in the social sciences. However, while Luhmann conceives semantics thereby as “never constitutive but always subsequent operations” (Luhmann, 1997a, p. 883), this interpretation certainly provokes critical connections and alternative designs in the new work on systems theory (e.g., Stäheli, 1998). Stichweh (2006), for example, suggests four possible types of interrelation that also situate semantics in lockstep with, formative of, and before social structures. In this context, the analysis of the distinction between sports-pedagogical claims and realities instead points to a case in which social-structural aspects of the system (e.g., organization, profession) and semantics grow apart hand in hand in a differentiation process (Stichweh, 1984).

As an observation of observations, the systems theory approach offers the possibility of contributing to the reflexive self-understanding of sports pedagogy (as an academic discipline) in a systematic, theory-guided way, thus, supporting the regularly self-initiated location determinations of the discipline (e.g., Scherler, 1989; Schierz and Thiele, 1998; Prohl, 2013; Thiele, 2013; Gissel, 2020) in the sense of an increased “control complexity” (Luhmann, 2008, p. 137).

The access to structuring structures opens up specific theory-guided connections to research into sports-pedagogical culture, which has been dealt with in a rudimentary way. The distinction between claim and reality is used to look at specific forms of communication and meaning construction in a discipline that shapes culture as an identity-giving entity. Inherent problems and programs are transmitted and transformed in the collective memory and habitus of sports pedagogy. The disciplinary markers of difference and variations in the determination of relations appear as conventionalized cultural techniques that seek to increase or perpetuate the discipline's ideological, discursive, and practical efficiency. How the sports-pedagogical subject culture makes itself what it is through divergent, complementary, or reflexive modes of these distinctions, goes hand in hand with the observation of identity-forming belief and value systems, patterns of discourse and justification, and modes of function and processing that are continuously confirmed but hardly reflexive. For a more differentiated investigation of disciplinary cultures, central studies of science research and university socialization research are available (e.g., Huber and Liebau, 1985; Knorr-Cetina, 2002; systems theory connections for a more fundamental investigation of the “form of culture,” see Baecker, 2003). To date, conceptual connections to the intensity of subject-specific cultural self-reflection are only recognizable in sports-pedagogical research in rudimentary forms (e.g., Schierz, 2009; Thiele and Schierz, 2014).

The study understands itself to be a first, nationally confined explorative insight into a particular form of disciplinary self-observation and describes this self-observation practice using a concretely guiding distinction. The explorative character of the study necessarily entails limitations offering future opportunities for scholarly follow-up. First, due to the necessarily coarse-analytical grid for the overview-like contouring of basic forms and functions of the identity-forming distinction, a fine analytical focus that can examine specific varieties or research approaches in a more differentiated way seems worthwhile⁹. The system-theoretical foundation of the study offers a promising set of tools for refined analyses. Since communication is system-theoretically understood as selection process, publications in the scientific system necessarily update the selection from a room of alternative possibilities. Future analyses could e.g., trace the careers or networks of selected key publications. In addition, Luhmann distinguishes not only medium and form but also meaning, which is assigned by the system. An analysis along the dimensions of meaning could therefore be revealing. Second, including additional scientific texts (e.g., sports-pedagogical/didactic textbooks) and additional sources (e.g., scripts, position papers, research proposals, job advertisements, networks) will open different possible perspectives from which to research the systematic investigation of subject-disciplinary identity formation and communication. Third, the analysis focuses on the designation and difference marking of “claim and reality” within sports-pedagogical publications as a semantic phenomenon. In this interpretive context, the transfer to other guiding distinctions (e.g., theory vs. practice)—which, latently, partly map significant and related identity markers—or further national contexts is likely to open up further fields of study from which the forms, functions, and their intended or unintended consequences can be observed.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

DJ and SK conceived and designed the study. DJ collected, organized and analyzed the data, and wrote most of the paper with substantial contributions from SK and ES-P. SK and ES-P continually supervised the paper and critically revised the full manuscript. All authors provided feedback on drafts and approved the submitted manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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