A Newton-room is a learning facility shared by schools and kindergartens in a geographical area. The rooms are owned by school owners and are equipped with state-of-the art equipment for STEM education and teachers with specific training to teach the modules that are offered in each room. Each module builds on competence aims from the national curriculum in the relevant subject or subjects. Pupils do preparatory work before coming to the Newton room for a specific module, for instance on Energy, on Robotics, or perhaps on Aurora Borealis, and they continue work after the visit when they are back at school. The current research project cooperates with the foundation First Scandinavia, which is the founder and owner of the Newton-room concept and an international network consisting of researchers from IPN, Kiel, Germany, and University College Copenhagen, Denmark. The primary objective of the project is to develop knowledge of how group work in an activity-rich and inquiry-based learning environment can be designed to facilitate deep learning in STEM subjects. The secondary objectives are: to understand how roles and knowledge are constructed and negotiated in the social interaction of group work, and how this process affects student-student cooperation and deep-learning opportunities; to identify how content, resources, and tasks in Newton-modules are best designed to support deep-learning processes; and to determine how school activities, both before and after Newton-Room visits, can enhance Newton-Room group work and deep-learning potentialities. The project applies a research design inspired by Lesson Study and makes use of video observations, video-stimulated recall interviews with Newton teachers as well as qualitative interviews with visiting pupils and their teachers. The project is an integral part of the research group Learning in Interaction at Nord university.
