Associations of Classroom Design and Classroom-Based Physical Activity with Behavioral and Emotional Engagement among Primary School Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript titled “Associations of Classroom Design and Classroom-based Physical Activity on Behavioral and Emotional Engagement Among Primary School Students” investigated the associations between accelerometer assessed classroom based physical activity and task-focused behavior and attitude towards school among students in open learning spaces and conventional classrooms. The authors found that open classroom design was associated with attitude towards school, but not with task-focused behavior and physical activity was not associated with either. This is an important topic given the international focus on physical activity and school academic outcomes. However, I have some concerns around the constructs and methods that need to be addressed.

General comments

The authors define school engagement as a multidimensional construct including behavior, emotions, and cognitions. However, the authors only explore and measure behavior and emotions. The literature suggests that this multifaceted approach to engagement is crucial for exploring how attempts to alter context influence all three types of engagement and determining whether outcomes are mediated by changes in one or more components (Fredricks et al. 2004). The multifaceted approach allows us to understand the complexity of children’s experiences in school and to design more specifically targeted and nuanced interventions. The authors need to justify why they did not use the “Student Engagement Instrument” or another similar measure and only explored two of the three dimensions of school engagement.

Fredricks, J.A.; Blumenfeld, P.C.; Paris, A.H. School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of educational research. 2004;74(1):59-109.

The authors use the gold-standard measure of physical activity, accelerometers. However, they do not use the device to its full potential. One of the main advantages of using accelerometers is the ability to accurately classify activity into light, moderate, vigorous and moderate-to-vigorous. There is some evidence that difference intensities of physical activity have different relationships with school engagement (Owen et al. 2016). The authors have this data and could examine whether the intensity of activity is important for school engagement.  

Owen, K. B., Parker, P. D., Van Zanden, B., MacMillan, F., Astell-Burt, T., & Lonsdale, C. Physical activity and school engagement in youth: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Psychologist, 2016;51(2):129-145.

Structural equation modeling was used to explore the complex relationships between physical activity, type of classroom and school engagement. This is a very strong and sound analysis technique, however, I am not sure that it addresses the research questions. Have the authors considered whether classroom based physical activity could moderate the association between classroom type and school engagement? Interestingly, children in the open classrooms were not more active than children in the conventional classrooms, this needs to be discussed. Also, the clustering of children within classes and schools needs to be accounted for in the analysis. Socioeconomic status should also be adjusted for, school level status at a minimum.

The implications of this research for future research, policy and practice are underdeveloped. A much stronger and extensive treatment of implications for theory and for future research needs to be included in the discussion.  

Specific comments

Page 2, lines 79-81: “In addition to various physical and mental health benefits, habitual physical activity has positive relationships to cognitive functioning among youth, while classroom-based physical activity has a positive impact on academic-related outcomes and students on-task behavior [13, 14, 30, 31].” The first two references need to be moved to the first part of the sentence as they refer to the physical and mental health benefits. Also, the authors need to be less definitive about the effect of classroom physical activity on academic related outcomes as there is some contradicting evidence.  They could say “There is evidence that” or “Physical activity could have  a positive relationship”.

Page 3, lines 99-109: The authors need to provide more information about the classroom lessons. Were they all mathematics lessons? Were they all same time of day? Taught by the same teachers? These things need to be described and possibly controlled for.

Page 3, lines 99: Why were these schools chosen? Are they representative of the schools in the provinces?

Page 3, lines 130-140: What accelerometer cut points were used to define physical activity? As mentioned earlier, why were different intensities of physical activity not classified using evidence based cut points?

Page 7, lines 266-277: This study is cross-sectional and should not be used to corroborate findings from experimental studies that integrated physical activity into classroom lessons.

Page 7, lines 269-277: The authors state that they did not find an association between physical activity and engagement and this might be due to the already active promotion of overall school-270 based physical activity in Finland. This needs further thought and discussion; just because the students are already active does not mean that the relationship disappears.  

Page 8, lines 291-300: The authors describe the limitations to this study, however, student reported time on-task is another limitation that should be noted, as a lot of studies in this field use observation to assess time on-task. The cross-sectional nature is mentioned; however, this should be the first main limitation as the study is trying to build on mostly experimental studies in this field.

Author Response

We thank you for your valuable work as reviewer. You have highlighted importance of our topic, with strengths and limitations of study well and justified way. We have now addressed your concerns around the constructs and methods. 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors did an experiment in order to confirm/refute hypothesis and were able to give the adequate background, the description of the experiment, data analysis, results and their experience limitations and the conclusions. This is a very nice paper, well written and with clear aims, background and discussion. 

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your valuable work as reviewer and for your overall positive feedback.

Reviewer 3 Report

1) it could be detected a self selection bias in those who gave consent and those not. Only 50% of students were selected in each classroom. have the authors considered student medical background as the presence of ADHD or other common mental disorders?

2) two traditional classrooms versus 1 open space classroom give more weight to the first type. How the authors consider this unweightened sample?

3) Authors argue that results can be influenced by the Finnish program for physical activity at school. But the difference among school employed in the analysis is not considerated. Do all the schools adopt the physical acivities program in the same way? are there significant differences in the activities performed during the week?

Author Response

We thank you for your valuable work as reviewer and for your valuable feedback. We have now responded for your questions. See detailed responses below.

1) We thank you for highlighting the potential self-selection bias. We have now addressed this in the discussion:

Line 364-370: As recruitment of this study was based on voluntary participation, there is a risk for volunteer or self-selection bias meaning those students and their parents that were interested in physical activity, school engagement and learning spaces were most likely to participate in our study [58]. As only approximately 50% students in participating classes volunteered, our sample does not necessarily fully represent all students and particularly those with low interest in the topic of our study.

We would like to clarify, that researchers did not select students for participation and instead recruitment was made on voluntary basis. We have clarified this as follows:

Line 112-114: Schools were chosen first on voluntary basis first by permission of principals and teachers, after which students were recruited.

We have not considered medical background as the presence of ADHD or other common mental disorder and have now addressed this as limitation.

Line 270-272: Furthermore, we have not considered participants medical background in presence of conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, influencing academic achievement and potentially also school engagement [59].

2) We have considered this now in the discussion.

Line 343-347: Furthermore, our sample size of 15 classes and unbalanced design, that included one school with open learning space and two schools with conventional classroom, reduces statistical power and possibilities for clustering students’ children within classes and schools for using more sophisticated approach such as multilevel structural equation modelling [56].

3) Schools and municipalities have high freedom over implementation of program there may be significant differences in the activities performed during school week that we not controlled in our study. We have included this now in discussion.

Line 312-315:  As schools and municipalities participating in the program implement their own plans to enhance physical activity during the school day, mostly during recess and academic lessons [55], there may be significant differences in the activities performed during school week, that were not controlled in this study.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for addressing the points I raised. I am satisfied with the changes made and think this paper will make a substantial contribution to the field. 

Reviewer 3 Report

the paper has been improved