In search of children’s talents and excellence in the S&T domain. A competence oriented analysis of basic schemes and development of tools for assessment of talent and excellence.

The main objective of this research is to develop tools to assess competence/talent/excellence in children in the domain of the ‘understanding of the physical world’ with a focus on Technical systems. This project rests on the new paradigm on competences and the concept of deep-level-learning. The educational context will be provided by the project ‘Village-at-School’ which rests on the principles of an ‘open framework approach’. Critical incidents will be collected and analyzed to identify basic schemes underlying ‘competence’ in relation to the W&T area. These will provide the building bricks to compose a pilot version of an instrument that will go through further stages to reach the criteria with regard to reliability and validity. The tool will be used in an intervention study to explore the impact of the model 'Village-at-School'.