The leisure context, a forgotten topic of sport pedagogy?

According to the changes of the society that occurred during the last decades of the 20th century, new sport operators grew in an answer to the modified expectations of the people. In parallel to sport clubs, many other structures began to invite people to move in agreement with defferent values: independent non market associations, private compagnies, non organized free sport. While analyzing themes of Sport pedagogy research, it seems that physical education is the major focus (55.6%) of the papers presented in the ARIS's conferences while studies focused on coaching represented only 18.7%. On the other hand, researches that are analyzing the teaching-learning process in leisure sport are surprisingly seldom even there are more studies aiming to better understand how physical activity can be increased in communities, for example. After a shor description of the evolution of the sport structures and the development of the current array of operators, a second section focuses on the motives of participants. The next part underlines the specific ompetences of the physical educators involved in the leisure sport sector. The final and main part proposes an overview of some studies that has been achieved in this area at the University of Liege. The conclusion provides some recommendations for researchers.