The conceptions and practices of lesson planning promoted by institutions for teacher training in the German speaking part of Switzerland have been influenced by the German tradition of general “Didaktik”, especially with respect to the question on how to deliberately and responsibly select the content of lessons (e.g., Klafki, 1958, 1994). Lesson planning beyond the question of selecting content, however, has strongly been shaped by a genuine Swiss tradition of general “Didaktik”. Hans Aebli (1963, 1983) was among the first to develop a system of lesson planning based on Piaget's constructivist psychology and later work in the tradition of a cognitive-constructivist view of learning and instruction. Aebli's conception focuses on the nature of the knowledge to be constructed, the full sequence of learning functions necessary to arrive at well integrated and usable knowledge, and on basic forms of instructions through which processes of knowledge construction can be initiated and assisted. Based on a content analysis of the teaching materials currently used for the purpose of lesson planning in three Swiss teaching universities we will present the core issues and underlying conceptions of lesson planning and relate these to established authors in the German and Swiss tradition of general “Didaktik”.