Maria Calsamiglia

With a PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Minnesota (USA), she has been a science teacher in lower and upper secondary school for over 14 years. She has also designed and directed the Young People and Science programme of the Catalunya Caixa Foundation (now La Pedrera Foundation) and coordinated the sciences and mathematics (CiMs, from the Catalan) excellence programme of the CELLEX Foundation (CiMs+CELLEX). The Aula Escola Europea educational centre (where she implemented and coordinated the international upper secondary school) and the Jaume Vicens Vives Secondary School took part in the CiMs-CELLEX programme. The international upper secondary school follows a holistic approach to education and takes into account the importance of personal and social skills for the achievement of deep significant learning with a global outlook that is rooted in the learner’s experience.

Between 2018 and 2020, Maria Calsamiglia took part in a European Research Council (ERC) project addressed to defining indicators of socioemotional skills, and to designing a methodology for the integration of their development in active learning classroom environments. Pentabilities, a programme which she co-founded, was the result of this project. At the present time Maria Calsamiglia is the head of the Pentabilities Project, one of the three educational support programmes promoted by Fundació Bofill. Additionally, she coordinates the Research Classroom Project (Aula Recerca) and acts as an advisor in the STEM area at the Horitzó School.