Teacher Perspectives on Teaching the STEM Approach to Educational Coding and Robotics in Primary Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for allowing me to review, "Teachers’ Perspectives on Teaching the STEM Approach, Educational Coding and Robotics in Primary Education." Studies on integrated STEM using interdisciplinary partners are timely and important. The problem is clear and the case study methods are used well. The quotes in the findings add to the value of the work.

Suggestions for improvement - 

1. In the abstract, what is "beneficial?" Please be more specific in the abstract about what was found in the study. The abstract should reflect more specifics of the study.
2. Provide a clear definition of "integrated STEM" (and explain if it is one that the authors create or if it is used from another source).
3. Provide a clear definition of "interdisciplinary" (and explain if it is one that the authors create or if it is used from another source).
4. Conduct another review for integrated STEM and interdisciplinary partner articles and add them to the literature review, as new articles (and handbooks) are constantly being published. It is not about the number of articles included, but instead about the timeliness of the works.
5. Add a clear theoretical framework that is consistent with a qualitative methodology. What lens (or framework) was used when analyzing the data? I suggest reading this article for reference: Koro-Ljungberg, et al., 2009, Educational Researcher - DOI: 10.3102/0013189X09351980.
6. I suggest changing the word "understand" in the general objective. What does it mean to "understand?" The objectives are much more specific, and if those could also be used to create research questions, they would add to this article.
7. Provide a clear definition of the "STEM approach" used in the Materials and Methods.
8. In the analysis, it would help this reader to see what "fit into a category" versus what "did not fit into a certain category." Can you provide examples?
9. The discussion section needs additional attention. For example, more detail about the implications of this work could be added. 
10. Add limitations of this work. I suggest a separate section or at least a paragraph. If this study was repeated, what would the author(s) change?

Overall, this is a quality study, and it requires some additional details for clarity.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, an interesting paper as the STEM Education is an area receiving increased attention during the past two decades not only within the educational but also the commercial and the entertainment field (e.g., Odeh et al., 2013; Zervas et al. 2014; Lasica et al. 2016).

To improve this manuscript, authors should:

Clearly indicate how many interviews have been conducted, 2 or 7 (Line 197). If 7, why do they mention the statements only from two teachers? As a qualitative researcher, I understand that we do not quote all responses given by the subjects, but only those that overlap with the needed information to the greatest extent. The author needs to mention the sample selection, thus expanding to the stage of presentation of research results.

I have doubts about the ethical aspects of this research as the authors do not mention it. Were teachers informed of the interview's open nature, their ability to steer the conversation toward issues they viewed as important, and that their opinions, information and statements were treated as factual and correct, and that can withdraw from the interview at any time without any judgment?

Authors should include limitation section because in studies, like this one, based on deliberate sampling, the interpretation of results is limited to the cases studied and generalisations are not valid.

Although this research study does not claim universal representation, the findings may be significant to educational practices.

Author Response

The number of participant interviewees has been better specified. Two teachers were interviewed out of a total of 7. The number of interviews is explained in section ‘2.3.3. Localization of the data sources’ and under the sub-heading ‘Semi-structured interview’. The two teachers were interviewed twice, before and after the training. The reference to the two teachers interviewed has been added to the results section.

Each and every one of the ethical aspects indicated by the reviewer has been included, as indeed they were in the written informed consent and they were also explained verbally.

Some limitations of the study have been included at the end of the Discussion and conclusions section.

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of implementing STEM in early childhood education is a relatively new one. Robotics, algorithmic thinking have been implemented in many countries as elementary content for the first stage of education. The article is therefore timely and important from a pedagogical perspective and the development of the information society. Taking into account the validity of the subject matter covered in the text and the compatibility of the study with the profile of the journal. However, the study requires some changes, which are described below.

1. The summary needs a thorough reworking. The executive summary is very badly structured. I suggest at the beginning to put the purpose, the justification of the subject matter taken. Then write the methodology used, place of research, the sample, the research tool used. Then the summary should be very brief but to the point, presenting conclusions and briefly recommendations for practice. Abstract is an article in micro perspective. It must encourage readers to read the whole text.
2. The research problem should be defined in the form of a question. It should be clearly defined. Subsection 2.1 must contain one or more research problems. They may take the form of a question. Must contain the variables that will be measured. Research questions admittedly come later. Perhaps section 2.1 should be described as the general research objective and research assumptions. In two places the same thing is described only with different detail.
3. Point 2.2 should be completed. What specifically is being researched: pupils' opinions, behaviours, creations? This must be made clear.
4. In section 2.3 it is worth describing the paradigm of qualitative research. Did I understand correctly that the research is aimed at gathering knowledge that is not currently sufficiently described? Do they fit in with grounded theory?
5. Graphic number 1 should be supplemented, for example, in the results section with a diagram showing the relationality between the distinguished categories. It may be that on the basis of teachers' statements a relation (dependence) between phenomena emerges.
6. The text should include a subsection on the limitations of the methodology adopted. It should be placed just after the discussion section.
7. The results section could use more citations to justify the emergence of a category.

Overall, the article is well structured. However, it requires some amendments to improve the readability of the methodology adopted.

 

Author Response

1. The summary needs a thorough reworking. The executive summary is very badly structured. I suggest at the beginning to put the purpose, the justification of the subject matter taken. Then write the methodology used, place of research, the sample, the research tool used. Then the summary should be very brief but to the point, presenting conclusions and briefly recommendations for practice. Abstract is an article in micro perspective. It must encourage readers to read the whole text.

We have reworded the abstract considering all of the Reviewer's suggestions

2. The research problem should be defined in the form of a question. It should be clearly defined. Subsection 2.1 must contain one or more research problems. They may take the form of a question. Must contain the variables that will be measured. Research questions admittedly come later. Perhaps section 2.1 should be described as the general research objective and research assumptions. In two places the same thing is described only with different detail.

Subsections 2.1 and 2.2 have been grouped together, at the same point, and now include general research assumptions. In a subsequent subsection, the research questions are broken down by following the steps that León and Montero (2015) proposed for case studies, as was indicated in the manuscript.

3. Point 2.2 should be completed. What specifically is being researched: pupils' opinions, behaviours, creations? This must be made clear.

The general objective includes what is being investigated: the impact of the training process for teaching through an integrated STEM approach, with educational robotics in the EPO stage.

Among the specific objectives, the clearly nuanced categories were not measured as variables: conceptual changes in teachers, the attitudes of both teachers and students, from the teacher's point of view, and personal difficulties, benefits and damages, professional student and teacher approaches, both in classroom practice and in the view of the teacher.

4. In section 2.3 it is worth describing the paradigm of qualitative research. Did I understand correctly that the research is aimed at gathering knowledge that is not currently sufficiently described? Do they fit in with grounded theory?

We have tried to improve the description of the research paradigm. It is nevertheless worth stressing that we never started with Grounded Theory, but rather with a qualitative case-study paradigm that examines behaviors and beliefs in meaningful enough terms for the participants to interpret the intrinsic meanings of STEM and what it meant to them and to learn from their points of view.

5. Graphic number 1 should be supplemented, for example, in the results section with a diagram showing the relationality between the distinguished categories. It may be that on the basis of teachers' statements a relation (dependence) between phenomena emerges.

The conditional matrix has not been included because there is no central category around which all the categories and subcategories revolve, typical of Grounded Theory. A category chart has previously been included

6. The text should include a subsection on the limitations of the methodology adopted. It should be placed just after the discussion section.

The limitations of the study have been included at the end of the Discussion and conclusions section.

7. The results section could use more citations to justify the emergence of a category.

Additional quotes from the interviews have been included to illustrate the categories.

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors, please consider these suggestions:

Abstract - needs to be improved, please mention also results of your research.

Line 17: It is not true, please rephrase.

Line 19: not only today, for many years.

Line 59-108: Please discuss more deeply also teaching methods, for example, use of modern interactive teaching methods (for example Peer Instruction, Interactive lecture demonstrations, just in time teaching, P&E method, cooperative problem solving, inquiry-based learning etc. See for example here:

1. Hake, R Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physicscourses. Am. J. P. 1998
2. Hockicko et al. Development of students’ conceptual thinking by means of video analysis and interactive simulations at technical universities European Journal of Engineering Education, 2015.
3. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1463739
4. Nemec, M. et al. Application of Innovative P&E method at technical universities in Slovakia. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technolog y, 13(6), 2017. 10.12973/eurasia.2017.01228a
5. ME Sanders, STem, stem education, STEMmania. 2008

Materials and Methods, results and discussion are excellently written.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Abstract - needs to be improved, please mention also results of your research.

We have reorganized the abstract considering all the reviewer's suggestions

Line 17: It is not true, please rephrase.

The quote has been clarified.

Line 59-108: Please discuss more deeply also teaching methods, for example, use of modern interactive teaching methods.

The characteristics of the teaching methods used in the BotSTEM project have been described in a general way. We believe that a further description would take readers away from its central focus. The references indicated in the text precisely describe the methodologies and can be consulted by readers wishing further knowledge.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The article meets all the requirements to be published. All comments from the first review have been taken into account. The text is part of an important issue related to STEM issues at the first educational level.