Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology

Research Hub: Talent Development

What is the aim of the Research Hub Talent Development?
The Hector Research Institute places a special emphasis on researching talents and competencies, as well as their optimal development—a field that remains underrepresented in the German research landscape.

How can schools benefit from this Research?
Adequate talent development is as essential for a fair and effective education system as the support of educationally disadvantaged students. Our research contributes to this in many ways. The scientific monitoring of the Hector Children's Academies and the Hector Seminar further enables the direct integration of scientific findings into practice, allowing the development of gifted students to be tracked and supported over several years.

 

Recent Publications

  • ​​​​​​Schiefer, J., Stark, L., Gaspard, H., Wille, E., Trautwein, U., & Golle, J. (2021). Scaling up an extracurricular science intervention for elementary school students: It works, and girls benefit more from it than boys. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(4), 784-807. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000630
  • Trautwein, U., Golle, J., Jaggy, A. K., Hasselhorn, M., & Nagengast, B. (2023). Mutual benefits for research and practice: Randomized controlled trials in the Hector Children's Academy Program. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1530 (1), 96-104. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15074
  • Herbein, E., Golle, J., Nagengast, B., & Trautwein, U. (2020). Förderung von Präsentationskompetenz: Schrittweise Implementation und Effektivitätsüberprüfung eines Präsentationstrainings für Grundschulkinder. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 23, 83-120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-019-00923-y

Selected Projects

Hector Children's Academy
The Hector Children's Academies offer a specially designed enrichment program for particularly gifted and highly gifted primary school children in addition to their regular school curriculum. The program is scientifically monitored by the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF) and the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology.

Hector Seminar
The Hector Seminar provides a voluntary and supplementary enrichment program for highly gifted high school students in the Nordbaden region, with scientific support and monitoring from the Hector Research Institute.

Wissenschaftliche Begleitung des MINT-Exzellenzgymnasiums Bad Saulgau
The goal of the scientific evaluation is to determine to what extent the intended selection process succeeds in identifying and recruiting suitable students for the MINT Excellence Gymnasium in Bad Saulgau and to assess which elements of the selection process are particularly predictive of future academic success.