Newton-rooms as an arena for learning: some preliminary results

Norway has major challenges with regard to both recruitment of pupils into science and technology (STEM) subjects, as well as pupil results within the same subjects (Nilsen & Frøyland, 2016; Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2014, 2016; Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2015). The Norwegian education authorities have for more than two decades initiated several measures to improve the situation. Part of these measures include cooperation with the business sector to promote interest in STEM subjects within compulsory education (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2015). One example is the work initiated by the foundation FIRST Scandinavia, comprising a cooperation with school owners and businesses, to provide a practice-oriented approach to STEM education through so-called Newton-rooms. A Newton-room is a learning arena shared by schools in a municipality. The room has state-of-the-art STEM equipment, often sponsored by the involved businesses, for exploratory, investigative teaching and learning within STEM subjects. The school owners are responsible for the activities in the rooms, which are carried out by teachers who have received specific training regarding the 'learning modules' that are offered at the rooms. Typically, the pupils visit the Newton-room once or twice each school year together with their class. The class does preparatory work at the school before the visit, and also follow-up work after the visit. During the visit in the Newton-room, the pupils attend lectures provided by the Newton-teacher and work in groups to solve different practical problems. These activities are carried out in groups of two to four pupils, during which they make use of state-of-the-art equipment that is provided in the Newton-rooms, equipment that the individual schools are - usually - unable to fund on their own. The research presented here is part of a larger preparatory project entitled: Newton-rooms as an arena for learning and recruitment. The overarching aim of the project is to develop a research design for a large-scale project focusing on Newton-rooms as an arena for learning and recruitment. In the current paper, we focus on one part of this research design, the analysis of video recordings of the group activities in the Newton-rooms. We focus on pupils' social interaction and social organisation with a focus on cooperation and learning practices in the specific contexts of the Newton-rooms. Previous research indicates that we have a much better understanding of the social organisation in traditional, teacher-centred classes, than what we have of less teacher-centred, more task-based classes, regarding both large and small groups (Gardner, 2012). Nevertheless, there is still a body of research on peers' interactions and learning, especially on peers' language learning in groups. For example, peers involved in language learning and instruction have been shown to orient to and co-construct roles as the "teacher" and the "learner" (Lilja, 2014). Peers also employ similar interactional resources for learning in interaction, as is common in pupil-teacher interaction (Jakonen & Morton, 2015; Rusk, Sahlström & Pörn, 2017), and in forms of language play that are similar to form-focused language drills and teaching activities (Cekaite, 2006; Melander, 2012; Sahlström, 2011). Within this body of research, there is still room to expand the understanding of how specific practices in the locally situated contexts appear to afford learning in peer-to-peer situations. In the research reported here, we focus on how pupils orient to and co-construct roles in group work, and whether these roles are based on negotiations of locally relevant STEM knowledge when solving the problems and completing the tasks. That is, the focus is both on the social organisation of the group, as well as the epistemic relationships that are oriented to, and made relevant, in the immediately local contexts of the Newton-rooms.