Learning to Become a Science Talent

Abstract

The article focuses on the concept of talent and its enactment in a science talent program. The article investigates how students become a particular kind of knowing subject through their participation in a science talent program at the Mærsk McKinney Science Centre in Denmark. Drawing on concepts from new materialist studies (Latour 1993; Blok & Ellgaard Jensen 2009; Fox & Alldred 2017) the article explores the relationship between the possibilities for distribution that are offered to the participants, and the ways in which the participants respond by centering and decentering within the talent network (Mialet 2008, 2012). The study contributes to our understanding of, how the increased focus on talent development in many national educational systems influences basic preconceptions of what a science student is and how the knowing subject in society should treat science, by looking into the micro-politics of talent development.