Young Scientists with Talent

Young Scientific Talents is a training and support program in science education aimed at preschool and elementary school teachers, with the goal of promoting scientific research practices. Promoted by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRi), the Barcelona City Council’s Institute of Education, EduCaixa, and UVic-UCC, the project has been running since the 2013-2014 academic year and has gradually expanded to several areas of Catalonia, such as La Garrotxa, Girona, Tarragona, Lleida, and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

The program offers free, officially recognized training courses for teachers, combining updates on scientific content with authentic scientific teaching proposals. Each edition focuses on a cross-cutting theme in the science curriculum, with the aim of unifying and bringing coherence to content that is often taught in isolation.

The sessions provide resources, experiments, and methodological guidance to help teachers implement research-based learning and modeling methodologies in the classroom. This approach aims to help children learn science through practice and experimentation, just as scientists do: by observing, experimenting, discussing, and developing models to understand natural phenomena such as the human body, astronomical phenomena, and physical phenomena such as sound, heat, light, or changes in the landscape.

In addition, the program has its own publications that compile experiences, activities, and theoretical foundations for science teaching, and are available in open access to facilitate dissemination among teachers.