MINT Talent Support in School Labs – New Perspectives for Gifted Youth and for Teachers of the Gifted

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Abstract

In the past decade some 300 extracurricular education facilities have been established in Europe, most of them in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The majority of these facilities are so-called ‘school labs’, their mission being to increase the awareness for mathematics, informatics, natural sciences, and engineering (MINT) and, correspondingly, attract young people to these faculties. The origin of this development is a pronounced and growing lack of engineers and scientists; the present (2012) engineers’ gap in Germany is about 100.000. Several of these school labs focus on MINT talent support, offering a diversity of special enrichment programs and projects to gifted and motivated students. The DLR_School_Lab Oberpfaffenhofen, operated by Germany's national research center for aeronautics and space, DLR, is a typical example of such a school lab devoted to both objectives of broad education and focused MINT talent support. The lab’s expertise has been gained in the past decade with approx. 18,000 secondary school students and about 50 enrichment projects for gifted students. MINT talent support means, on the one hand, institutions and measures for gifted students. In this paper examples of respective curricular and extracurricular activities will be described, emphasizing the special synergy of the Hector Seminar and the DLR_School_Lab. On the other hand, the role of talent supporters – especially teachers – is crucial in the process of attracting young people to the MINT disciplines. An example of good practice is the inclusion of the DLR_School_Lab in the ECHA advanced teacher education at the ICBF in Münster, which will also be addressed.

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