Formative Potential of the Development and Assessment of an Educational Escape Room Designed to Integrate Music-Mathematical Knowledge

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper provides a case study showing how the co-design of educational escape rooms can be used to motivate students of education to develop their competencies in mathematics and music. 
It is a very interesting approach worth popularization. However, the qualities of the paper are overshadowed by its methodological and language deficiencies. Therefore, I believe it cannot be published before some notable improvements are made.

The authors state "the main goals of this study" not in a proper way (e.g., "Stimulate schoolchild..." - stimulating anyone or anything cannot be a goal of research). The goals should be redefined according to what is actually the authors' research contribution. The goals also have to match the title and the contents of the paper (now they do not, for instance, they do not even mention music).
Why are the research questions stated in rows 302-304 rather than earlier in the paper?

The authors state also that "the evolution of the 5 cooperating student-teachers was made by annotations, questionnaires, interviews and deliverables", but it is not explained why the results regarding just one of the 5 students were presented in the paper - also, what were the reasons for the choice of this particular person (#4) and whether his/her evolution was similar or not to the others. Moreover, with such a rich background material ("annotations, questionnaires, interviews and deliverables"), why only few questionnaire items were discussed in the paper?

I do not really see much of connection between the first part of the Introduction and the rest of the paper. Yes, I see that the poor PISA results of Spanish students are motivating to improve the teachers' mathematical competencies but a single paragraph would be more at place than a full page with a big picture. Also, the notion of integrating mathematics and music is not described with adequate detail.
Similarly, in the later part of the paper, there is too much information on the realized project which is not essential to the reported research.

Some statements lack grounding in literature, e.g., r. 95: "As a consequence of the Bologna Process (...) aptitude-based perspective has been used to inspire the new curricula".

I seriously suggest a professional proofreading, because the language is in need of correction, primarily with regard to clarity and wording.
1. The intended meaning of many sentences is dubious, starting with the title ('music-mathematical knowledges': was not it supposed to mean knowledge from the areas of music and mathematics? and should it really be the "formative potential on the development" or rather "of the development"?) and abstract (who are "student teachers"? the standard meaning in English is students who teach other students, but in the paper, it seems, the term is used for students who are being educated to become teachers). It gets no better later, e.g., in r. 228+: "more than 200 scholars have already participated in the project (...) Up to 142 student-teachers have participated in line 2" - who are the scholars? does their number include the "student-teachers"?  All such ambiguities should be clarified. 
2. Some sentences are very long which makes their meaning blurry.
3. The singular form is used in many phrases where I believe plural should have been used, e.g. r. 49: "Concerning the **teacher’s** specific lack of mathematic knowledge".
4. There are some phrases stated in an awkward way, e.g., r. 259 "design criteria were established by the researcher" (who is "the researcher"?).
5. The are grammar errors, too, e.g., r. 18: "escape rooms, aims", r. 68: "students (...) should be motivated to develop **its**", r. 112: "Some authors reports"; r. 555: "Previous results [17] indicates".
6. Spoken forms ("doesn’t") are used for no apparent reason.
7. An interpunction uncommon to English writing is sometimes used, e.g., "-beyond textbooks-,", "-detected in the educational reality-".
8. An ellipsis (…) is used sometimes instead of "etc.".
9. There are also other language errors such as missing, e.g., "stablishing", "stablish", or superfluous letters, e.g. "Restult".

Figure 1 should be translated to English.

Author Response

We really appreciate the reviewer’s insightful, deep and valuable review. The authors also appreciate the information provided by the reviewer. Based on his/her comments a new version of the manuscript is submitted. Attached, reviewer #1 can find a detailed response to his/her review.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind consideration. Attending to reviewer #2 “english style” appreciation, I’ve carried out a complete proofreading with a major criticism. Several grammar errors were presented in the original document (some just typos, some others due to bad grammar skill).

Some of the detected mistakes were derived from my Spanish way of thinking: sentences in Spanish trends to have a “core idea” and a long sequence of minor ideas. I’m conscious that English style requires shorter sentences to be comprehensible enough. I’ve do my best to rewrite the long “Spanish-like” sentences to a more English-style sentence. Hopefully, the manuscript would be more comprehensible in this new version.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have to correct the following items:
- Line 82 "University of Cadiz" change to "a Spanish University".
- Line 109 "J. Torres", the reference must appear in brackets [] with its corresponding number.
- Line 595 is missing an end point.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind considerations. We’ve included additional literature to provide grounding for some statements (specially, concerning to the discussions about the bologna process, PISA score and TEDS-M report). We’ve also reviewed all the issues detected by reviewer #3.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

As we can read in the introduction (line 59-70), the main goals of this study can be summarized as: - Stimulate schoolchild’s capacities to employ mathematics in a variety of contexts: thus solving the “isolation” of the mathematic knowledge by connecting to other curricular disciplines; - Student teachers are a part of the solution: didactic-mathematical knowledge of future teachers deserves a specific treatment, so their “math-phobia” is not extended to their future students; - Student teachers and schoolchild’s “math-phobia” has to be treated, because no knowledge can be built over a bad relation with the discipline. Thus, students (as well as student-teachers) should be motivated to develop its mathematical competencies in the frame of an integrated curriculum. Taking into account that this paper is about an empirical study, this kind of objectives do not make sense. It could be the great objectives to achieve as a consequence of the study, but not something that we can obtain directly through the results. The main objective of the study presented in the paper should be something like to study the didactic suitability of an educational escape room, through the possibility of curricular integration and the professional development achieved by a specific student teacher. The lack of suitable research objectives question the clarity of the paper, although the structure of the paper is according to what is expected.

The theoretical framework focus some main subject of the paper, although is too summarize and no problematic. For example, when it is presented several features of curricular integration approach, the authors did not established a relation with the particular case considered in the study. Which are the ones respected in the particular educational escape room considered in the study? Why these features were chosen? In which theoretical framework is based?

The methodology option is adequate to what we assume that there is the objective of the study. The authors explained all the project, but I question if this option is the better one. Why not to focus in the part 1, related with the study presented in the paper and describe with more detail the different phases of the process? It could be much more informative and clear for the reader. For example, how long has the educational escape room? Who participate? How much students? Which were the age of these students? Which king of tasks they solve and connected with which mathematical subjects?… The reader has general guidelines, but nothing in concrete to understand this particular case of educational escape room. The information included in the beginning of the “Results and discussion” section better fits in the methodology. In the section of the methodology, we cannot see any information related with the processes collecting and analysing data. It is during the results that some theoretical framework used in the analysis is slightly presented, what seems to be not adequate and take space to the analysis itself.

The way that the analysis has been made is different from it is expected. The data is insufficient and when exists, the analysis is made mostly in the legend of a figure (figure 3). What is really the proposal made by the “student-teacher” is very vague, although it seem to be the focus of the paper. We know that “The original proposal is composed by 3 “missions” to be accomplished by the players during 45 minutes EER experience” (line 389-390), but we only have access to one task. Even for this one, which were the learning objective of the task? Which were the students’ and student-teacher role? Moreover, several dimensions of analysis considered in this section are not supported in evidence. For example, “We consider that the proposed experience has an optimum degree of emotional suitability due to the originality of the proposal, the multi-disciplinary approach and the game-based-learning perspective. However as no implementation of the proposal was possible (due to the COVID pandemic), this item could not be properly assessed (lines 464-468). Even when some evidence is shown (Table 1) the analysis presented is not made with detail. In this case, for example, the table is shown and one global sentence is made: “Meaningful changes in the perception of this student are evidenced. Particularly, her vision of the mathematic knowledge seems to have evolved from an algorithmic-centered perspective to a perspective where reasoning, strategy development and hypothesis/discussion dynamics are much more relevant (lines 537-540). From which information of table 1 is it possible to infer this result?

As the results are not based in evidence presented in the paper, all the conclusions are not sufficiently supported. Moreover, not all the conclusions are supported in the results. It is not evident in what bases the authors may say that “three main obstacles to overcome in order to develop/apply EER” (lines 574-575).

Author Response

Reviewer #4 is absolutely right on most of his/her appreciations. A major revision of the manuscript has been delivered, specifically:

• The goals of the study have been redefined.
• The background has been better defined and the motivation has been better supported (references have been increased from 45 to 58).
• To provide clarity and to better support discussions, new figures and tables have been included.
• Additional empirical data have been included and discussed in the manuscript, this has been used to better support the conclussions.

The authors would like to thank reviewer #4 for his/her time. We've made an effort to fit to the reviewer's report, particularly, we've extensively review the english style. Attached, reviewer #4 can find a detailed response to the provided remarks.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All the issues mentioned in my first review were adequately addressed.

I believe the paper can be accepted in its current form.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors improve in a relevant way the first version of the paper, namely on the way the objectives of the study are presented, the development of the theoretical framework, the information included in the methodology section, and even in the inclusion of evidence in the results. However, in this last section the evidence is yet insufficient. For example, where is the evidence that permits to enunciate the result "the mentoring program has been proven as useful for developing students' professional mathemtical knowledge?