Employing Robotics in Education to Enhance Cognitive Development—A Pilot Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for submitting the manuscript. A few recommendations:

1. There could be sub sections in the current long introduction in order to enhance the clarity (e.g., the context, the literature etc.).

2. The methodology could be strengthened by including an overarching research design (i.e., the theoretical/conceptual framework, the research questions etc.).

3. The results need to reflect how they have addressed the research aims and/or research questions. 

4. The discussion could be enhanced by highlighting the significance of the study (e.g., to what extent the study has impacts on teaching and learning). 

5. There is no limitation of study, possible future study and a conclusion being mentioned. 

6. The manuscript needs professional editing service. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In my point of view, the main weakness of the document is the literature review. Since this topic is important, I suggest expanding it with a review of papers that have focused on the implementation of robotics in education. For example:

Seckel, M. J., Breda, A., Farsani, D. & Parra, J. (2022). Reflections of future kindergarten teachers on the design of a mathematical instruction process didactic sequences with the use of robots. EURASIA J Math Sci Tech Ed, Volume 18, Issue 10, Article No: em2163, https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/12442.

Seckel, M. J., Vásquez, C., Samuel, M., & Breda, A. (2022). Errors of programming and wnership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training. Education and Information Technologies, 27(3), 2955-2975. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10708-8

Seckel, M. J., Breda, A., Font, V., & Vásquez, C. (2021). Primary school teachers conceptions about the use of robotics in mathematics. Mathematics, 9(24), 3186. https://doi.org/10.3390/math9243186

Authors should be more analytical and critical of the reviewed literature and treat to identify What does this say about the theme/subject/object to research? What we can learn from these studies? What is next? what should we still investigate? What remains to be known? Since this has not been done, the research questions are not fully justified. I suggest that this be explored further. For that, the research questions are not articulated to a research problem nor are they justified in the research literature.

The results section is quite analytical and sufficiently detailed. However, the discussion section it is limited, but should also discuss with the reviewed literatura.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the revised manuscript. A couple of minor things:

1. It will be great if you could emphasise the significance/impacts of this study;

2. It will be nice to proof read the whole manuscript to enhance the readability.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the positive feedback and the minor comments.

Reviewer's comments:

1) It will be great if you could emphasise the significance/impacts of this study;

We emphasised the significance of our study by adding a paragraph in the discussion (lines 413-417) and in the conclusion (452-457).

2) It will be nice to proof read the whole manuscript to enhance the readability.

We proof-read the manuscript ones again and tried to enhance the readability (see parts written in red).