Fostering gifted students in physics

Abstract Awakening, recognizing, and fostering gifted students is a challenge in science education that teachers should address for the purpose of a comprehensive STEM support. Several models and strategies are known for promoting giftedness. This article discusses to what extent a format such as the Physics Olympiad is at all suitable to meet the desiderata of educating the gifted. Furthermore, we focus tasks for the promotion gifted students are presented, which were developed in th context of pre-service teacher training courses at the University of Vienna. The tasks as well as results on the students’ learning processes will be presented.