The Impact of a Sustainable Progressive STEAM Program on Primary School Students’ Critical Thinking Dispositions and Mathematics Achievements

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a paper regarding the impact of a STEAM project on primary school student's critical thinking dispositions and academic achievements.

The authors document adequately the research gap. However, it is important to report on the changes in educational systems in respect to STEAM education worldwide in the theoretical part.

For the mathematics education community, it is not clear what is content of the intervention program and why it is expected that students' CTD and mathematics achievement will improve. Why do the authors treat the four classes of students as two control groups and two experimental ones? What did the control classes do during the expreriment?

Give information regarding teachers' training.

Please provide examples of the tests used. What does the mathematics test evaluate?

The authors conducted split-pilot Anova. In my perspective, a multiple analysis of variance would be more appropriate as the examined variables are correlated. The tables provide too many information. The authors should focus on the main findings. In general, the paper is too technical for mathematics education audience. Bring to the fore the innovative aspects of the intervention. 

The results should be discussed in respect to their contribution to the literature. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The objective of the article is to know the impact of a sustainable progressive STEAM application model (SP-STEAM Model) in 5th grade students in critical thinking and mathematical achievement. The article presents an appropriate methodology for this type of research.

STEAM allows students to see the problems they face from a broader perspective, and that they can think critically and solve problems.

Their results show that the STEAM application had significant effects on students' mathematical achievement and development of critical thinking. The experimental groups will score significantly higher compared to the pre-test results and compared to the post-test results of the control groups. While the control groups either remained the same or showed no significant change in terms of all seven facets of CCTDI. Similar effects were also recorded for mathematical performance.

This is well known, but it reinforces the trend in this area.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study is to understand the impacts of a STEAM-related model on students' thinking and achievement. I see a potential for publication. Please use the suggestions below to improve the manuscript.

Line 53-54 ".. to test the impacts of a sustainable progressive STEAM model on primary school students’ CTDs and their academic achievements regarding mathematic." academic achievement would be too broad to be narrowed down to mathematics achievement. I suggest that justifying such a shift is needed somewhere before the RQs.

Line 53-64.  the optimum way of practice of STEAM education in the current educational sySTEAM of NC and its effects on academic achievement and thinking quality of individuals are unknown --> educational sySTEAM of NC ? and how does it matter to other contexts? since we also want to see how generalizable the reserach findings would be goying beyond this reserach context

Line 96. in terms of their mathematic achievements?  I did not see the research focused on mathematics achievement until the second research question. I would like to see the authors explain why and how the authors think of academic achievemen only as mathem achievement before the RQs.

Line 58. "educational sySTEAM." I noticed this term multiple times. I wonder what you have in mind when you use this term. What do you mean by that? Where does it come from? How is that word helping us understand SP-STEAM model?

I might want to know what the SP-STEAM model looks in terms of what teachers wre trainged to do as they work with students. This is because the purpose of this research is to investigate the impacts of the model on thinking and achievemnt and lacking the details of the model in which teachers trained may not fully help others see its applicability. I suggest the authors describe what the teachers did who trained in the model and connect teaching to thinking and learning along with the model itself. And model itself needs to be explained more in terms of what teachers and students did.

In discussion, the authors need to provide more details regarding each discussion point. For example, line 413-415 reads "What we have learnt from the results of this research is that children can achieve well if they are provided with opportunities to use their potentials. Collaboration, joy of learning, teacher motivation, within the framework of STEAM applications, also play key roles." I feel like this paragraph abruplty appears without conneting to any findings regarding " joy of learning, teacher motivation". Where was such a finding mentioned in the findings section? Literature review did not mention anything about " joy of learning, teacher motivation."

Throughout the manuscript, use mathematics or mathematical instead of Mathematic definition, whichh is a less common word for mathematical.

Make Figure 1 bigger to see words (inner, middle, and outer core, and instructor) in the figure.

Typos

-Line 110. For the later- -> For the latter, 

-Line 231. agaist

-Line 274. consistent use of the word, mathemtic.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a significantly improved version of the paper. It would be important to explain the Five phases of classroom instruction based on a particular example. The existing description of Figure 2 is theoretical and difficult to follow. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you so much for your invaluable comments and effort for the betterment of this manuscript. I have added an example of classroom instruction covering sessions. Please see the latest version of the manuscript. 

Best regards. 

Reviewer 3 Report

I see much improvements that make the manuscript clearer. Thank you for the work. Here are my comments to improve the manuscript.

Lines 35-36: STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) --> STEAM ususally stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics. I understand the defintion of the STEAM was offered in a paragraph starting with line 65. If STEAM is an approach, then the acronym seems confusing.

Lines 49 and 51 "STEM education" and "STEAM applications", respectively: STEM and STEAM seems interchangeable but commonly STEM and STEAM are not the same acronym. How do the authors distinguish STEM from STEAM? Why do the authors need both? According to your definition " STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)", they are the same. The authors may provide how they distinguish or why they use both acronyms interchangeably. 

Lines 37-38: STEAM oriented educational programs are considered as inevitable parts for helping primary school students gain CTDs and improve their mathematics skills [32]. --> their mathematics skills are one of the skills regarding multiple disciplines. The current sentence seems to not consider other disciplinary skills. 

Lines 62-64: Therefore, the nature of STEAM and its applications for betterment of education and for expected transitions of societies should be understood well in order to know where to start the paradigm shift to occur. --> what do you mean by "the nature of STEAM"?

Lines 69-71: There are many different studies that revealed the strong bound between STEAM education, critical thinking and mathematics achievement, yet most of them are theoretical supports that need to be empirically tested [18,29]. --> I agree with this statement; however, still I am not convinced of why mathematics achievement matters, not science, engineering, or technology, if STEAM is an "interdisciplinary" approach. 

Page 8 has the Table 1. I woud like to know why the authors put the table after explaining the approach and how the table is related to Figire 2 (or SP-STEAM)

3.2. teacher training process

Where is the first aspect or facet or issue? Line 217 and 220 suggest there is the first one, but I could not see it. The first sentence of the section 3.2 may be related to the first one?

Line 220- "The third issue about the teacher training program" uses the term issue. I do not understand why "help teachers create lesson plans to cover the expected outcomes" is an issue. It could be facet, which is used to indicate the second aspect of the process.

Line262 and 294: "STEAM education models" and "the progressive STEAM education model," use the shortend acronym (SP-STEAM like line 225) consistently throughout the paper. 

On Page 26 (Figure 3), 3 examples of the mathematical test are offered. I found that they are all related to measurement. The authors also said in line 379, "The final version of the mathematics test included 25 items coreesponding to the subject matters covered by the 14 weeks of time throughout the experiment." We also know in Table 1 on page 9 that students study operations with natural numbers, fractions, percentages, decimals, geometry, and measurement. The examples are solely related to measurement. I suggest that the authors provide different test examples regarding different domains (for example, one from natural numbers, another fractions, another data collection, and another measurement). If the 14 weeks focus on certain domains, then provide different examples regarding thosw domains within the 14 weeks.

Line 532-538: "Not only in Turkey but in other countries of the world researchers have produced similar results about the use of STEAM education. For instance, it is significant with numerous studies carried out at different countries in the world that appropriate applications of STEAM education improve academic achievements of students at every respect, and those studies reported positive increments in science, technology and mathematics achievements of primary school learners in comparison to non-STEAM education forms of teaching and learning [38,40,42,43]." Then what is the new contribution to the field? I wonder whether and how the authors see the stury contributes to the field. 

Reading the manuscript, I looked for any descriptions regarding how the authors know the teachers in experiment groups implemented what they learned in the teacher training (built on SP-STEAM model) with fidelity. Research on teacher learning and teaching practices suggest that the degree of fidelity varied greatly from teacher to teacher. How do the research team know the teachers taught their students in the way they got trained? I consider answring this question is crucial because the findings of this study is building on assumption that the teachers taught in the SP-STEAM way (Figure 2) with fidelity. And it further suggest whether it can be generalizable to "the population (N=1200-1500)" (Line 303 ). But the degree of fidelity is not clear in the manuscript. 

FYI, I acknowlege the paragraph starting with lines 552. The paragraph seems to show the authors are aware of the fidelity ("the applicator teachers who were provided with in-service training regarding the correct application of STEAM in experiment groups"). I am not sure what this paragraph suggests. The paragraph led me toask myself a question: Is this that the authors do not have clear evidence of the degree of fidelity? What is your answer?

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you so much for your intense review of our manuscript. Your suggestions had significant effect on the refinement of our work. 

Please the attached word file that includes responses to your suggestions. 

Best regards 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your efforts to improve the manuscript. I understand the rebuttals you made to respond to my comments and suggestions.