Investigating the Association between Algorithmic Thinking and Performance in Environmental Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study where the authors explore the correlation between algorithmic thinking (AT) and educational achievements in the Environmental Study course during the early primary school years. They find a good correlation. However, they do not examine other underlying factors that may be measured. For example, IQ or g or general reasoning skills and reading comprehension. It is not clear from the study that AT is the one that explains performance in the Environmental Study.

My suggestion is to carry out an experimental design that allows separating these factors and thus be able to ensure that it is AT and not these other variables that explain the performance in the Environmental Study tests.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article describes well the study carried out and its results.

The article is of moderate interest, presenting very particular results from students of a very particular age.

It would be interesting, since it is about Algorithmic Thinking (AT) and Computational Thinking (CT), if they were taught some very simple AT and CT techniques. Or were they only assessed for their skills, which may be extremely different due to their young age.

Aspects to review:

Line 241: Figure legend. Incomplete.

Line 278 and 286: Almost good is not consistent with text: Approximately Good

Line 279: Reference to value 1 is missing

Line 286: In the table, consider placing the table in the same format as the previous AT\CU or CU\AT

Line 286: Table legend very poor

Line 323 and 342: Controversial! In my opinion you should not approach this topic in this way...

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting topic and the subject selection was focused on primary school students to test their computational thinking and algorithmic thinking via Jigsaw Puzzles and game design. I think this paper is valuable and contribute to the related studies. However, some suggestions were provided for the authors to improve or modify the manuscript.

1. The abstract should state the sampling method, sample size, assessment instrument, theoretical bases, data analysis method, etc.

2. Introduction. It should enhance the reason why chosen primary school students, and why the Jigsaw Puzzles and game design could estimate their computational thinking and algorithmic thinking. It seems to lack theoretical or related literature support.

3. Theoretical framework. The link between reviewed literature and the study topic was not strongly associated. It seems should be improved accordingly.

4. Materials and Methods. This section should clearly explain the procedures, control variables, observations, and how to eliminate the unexpected variable in more detail. What's the correlation between the puzzle game and the worksheet and how does it affects the assessment of this study? Further, if this is a quasi-experimental design, please provide a description of the distribution of experimental and control groups. Further, if there is a pre-test, the analysis method should employ covariance analysis, maybe ANCOVA accordingly.

5. Results. Please double confirm the parameters in Table 3 were correct. The explanation for diagrams 1 and 2 was not clear enough. Moreover, this point is the major part that should be clarify.

6. Some English grammar should be double-checked, e.g. Line 182, P. 4: "Thus, we ended up with 'a the sample' of 435 primary school students (superfluous words?); Line 346, P. 10: "relation to each one of the 'content' understanding" (missing 's'?)

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have read the added paragraph. While the authors acknowledge the stated limitation, I believe that they should at least point to concrete empirical strategies to rule out other underlying factors. They are not strange factors. It can easily be that those good students who are generally more advanced are also good at both tasks, and students with greater learning difficulties do not do very well at both tasks. It is very likely that this explains the correlation found. Information on the general performance of these students should be available in the schools and could be easily obtained. With that data, authors could determine whether or not this variable explains the correlation found.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

Thank you for your comments and suggestions, which we exploited in order to improve our article. Thus, in “5.2. Limitations and future research directions” we added the following sentence, which is highlighted in yellow in the revised manuscript:

“For example, a recent meta-analysis that examined 34 studies in a wide range of ages – from first-graders to fourth-year students - confirmed the association between CT and academic achievement and revealed that their positive link is moderated by culture, grade level, achievement indicators, and gender [88].”

Your suggestion to employ school records about students’ achievements could be effectively utilized if Greek schools had a unified evaluation system in primary schools. Due to the lack of such a system, we avoided using school records so to ensure the validity of our study’s results.

We remain at your disposal for any further clarifications. Any additional suggestions are more than welcome.

Best regards,

Kalliopi Kanaki & Michail Kalogiannakis

Emmanouil Poulakis & Panagiotis Politis

Reviewer 3 Report

The suggested modifications were corrected.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,   

We are very happy for having addressed your initial concerns. We would like to express our appreciation for your thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions, which we exploited in order to improve our article.

Best regards,

Kalliopi Kanaki & Michail Kalogiannakis

Emmanouil Poulakis & Panagiotis Politis

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I am very sorry that you cannot get the GPAs of the students. The result you obtained is interesting but it is not totally clear that the contribution of academic performance cannot be ruled out.