Drawing as a Space for Social-Cognitive Interaction
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article is a very interesting piece of work. It negotiates the potential of drawing in the socio-cognitive dimension, through appropriate academic approach. It is certainly worth publishing.
The authors have done wonderful work. After doing a thorough and cummulative literature research they carry out a case study, which they describe and justify. The findings they conclude are very interesting, with regards to self-awareness and socialising. Perhaps, the limitations of the study can be stressed more clearly.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Comments: This article is a very interesting piece of work. It negotiates the potential of drawing in the socio-cognitive dimension, through appropriate academic approach. It is certainly worth publishing. The authors have done wonderful work. After doing a thorough and cummulative literature research they carry out a case study, which they describe and justify. The findings they conclude are very interesting, with regards to self-awareness and socialising. Perhaps, the limitations of the study can be stressed more clearly.
Response: We kindly appreciate the reviewer comments to our work and we do agree with the reviewer's concerns. Therefore, we have stressed more clearly this study’s limitations of the study (please see, the section "Summary and Implication", 6th paragraph, 1st line).
Reviewer 2 Report
Congratulations on the work.
It presents a more detailed and complete way on how to use drawing as a tool in the teaching-learning process.
The question remains whether this strategy will result in a class with several students..
This study opens the door to other investigations that could be very interesting, such as using this methodology with younger children (primary school) to address abstract concepts for them, such as the study of microorganisms (something they cannot see).
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Comments: Congratulations on the work.
It presents a more detailed and complete way on how to use drawing as a tool in the teaching-learning process.
The question remains whether this strategy will result in a class with several students..
This study opens the door to other investigations that could be very interesting, such as using this methodology with younger children (primary school) to address abstract concepts for them, such as the study of microorganisms (something they cannot see).
Response: We kindly appreciate the reviewer comments and suggestions and we have stressed some of the possibilities that this study opens for research in the section "Summary and Implication" (please see, 6th paragraph, 4th line).
Reviewer 3 Report
It was intriguing that this timely study employed the ‘we-space’ concept to understand social-cognitive interactions that happen in the collaborative drawing. The interesting point of this interpretation was that collaborative drawing affords various modes of members’ representations, including gestural representation. The examples the authors selected illustrated the features of collaborative drawing. I have a few significant concerns about the current form of the manuscript.
- Matching between the research question(s) and the findings
It was difficult for me to fully engage the research question “how drawing shapes the social-cognitive interaction within a we-space,” stated line 94 on page 2. The authors provided three findings as drawings’ roles 1) forming a we-space 2) enabling collective thinking 3) ensuring effective communication. I was not sure your findings were the answer to the research question. For example, for the first one, did the authors assume that collaborative drawing is a we-space in the introduction section? If then, how this assumption is related to the first result? Perhaps, you may want to specify the questions and respond to the revised question. You illustrated some features of we-space in collaborative drawing in the first result. I think you can utilise it to articulate your findings. The current RQ and the heading of the first result need further specification. The second result seemed reasonable however it also requires more of a specified research question. For the third one, I am wondering about the meaning of effective communication in your study.
- Specifying the methodology
I am curious how did the authors draw the findings of this study. The authors stated that “critical examples indicative of the distinctive roles of drawing emerged.” I think that the method should be elaborately presented to show the analysis process with a particular analysis method. On the other hand, since this study focused on students’ gestures during their drawing activities, it seems the roles of the gesture may need to be elaborated to illustrate the functions of gestures. I would like to see further elaborations of the research method section.
- Reviewing relevant pieces of literature and discussion based on the review
The abstract introduced distributed cognition and embodied cognition. In the introduction section, the authors provide a relevance between distrusted cognition and drawing activities while there were insufficient descriptions of embodied cognition. The authors may need to provide a review of the recent works of embodied cognition and provide further discussions based on the reviews of distributed cognition and embodied cognition in the last part of the study.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1: It was difficult for me to fully engage the research question “how drawing shapes the social-cognitive interaction within a we-space,” stated line 94 on page 2. The authors provided three findings as drawings’ roles 1) forming a we-space 2) enabling collective thinking 3) ensuring effective communication. I was not sure your findings were the answer to the research question. For example, for the first one, did the authors assume that collaborative drawing is a we-space in the introduction section? If then, how this assumption is related to the first result? Perhaps, you may want to specify the questions and respond to the revised question. You illustrated some features of we-space in collaborative drawing in the first result. I think you can utilise it to articulate your findings. The current RQ and the heading of the first result need further specification. The second result seemed reasonable however it also requires more of a specified research question. For the third one, I am wondering about the meaning of effective communication in your study.
Response1: We thank the reviewer for the suggestions. First, we want to clarify that we did not assume that collaborative drawings is a we-space, instead we hypothesized that creating a collaborative drawing would create an opportunity for establishing a we-space, a genuine shared-action space where learning potentially would occur. We have reformulated the last paragraph of the introduction section to make our argument more clear (please see, Introduction section, 6th paragraph). Second, we reformulated the research questions in accordance to the reviewer suggestion. We rewritten the research questions in the form of a goal that we believed better specifies the purpose of the study and help to structure the findings (please see, 6th paragraph, 3rd line). In addition, we changed the headings of the findings (please see, 3rd section "Findings and Discussion") in order to better highlight what we will be showing and how it respondes to the aim of the study. Third, regarding to the reviewer comment on "the meaning of effective communication" in this study, we have replaced the term "effective communication" to "simplifying communication”. The term effective communication is complex and can be conceptualised in various way concerning the different theoretical frameworks, for instance social-cognitive or language frameworks. For instance, Sfard and Kieran (2001) have argued "that communication is effective if it fulfils its communicative purpose, that is, the different utterances of the interlocutors evoke responses that are in tune with the speakers’ meta-discursive expectations". Thus, an effective communication conceptualized in this way is closer to what we designate as a we-space, that is a space of joint attention and mutual cooperation, in which individuals interacting joint forces to achieve an interpersonal understanding in order to have their work done. In this paper, we refer to the more common use of "communication" as the conversation occurring between two individuals, and we are looking for the role of drawing in making conversation easier.
Point 2: Specifying the methodology: I am curious how did the authors draw the findings of this study. The authors stated that “critical examples indicative of the distinctive roles of drawing emerged.” I think that the method should be elaborately presented to show the analysis process with a particular analysis method. On the other hand, since this study focused on students’ gestures during their drawing activities, it seems the roles of the gesture may need to be elaborated to illustrate the functions of gestures. I would like to see further elaborations of the research method section.
Response 2: We wish to make this manuscript as clear to an outsider reader as possible, therefore, we considered the reviewer’s comment and we further elaborated on the description of the modes of interaction analyzed (please see, Table1). We have also clarified how the episodes presented in the manuscript were selected (please see, in subsection "Data collection and analysis" 2nd paragraph, 8th line).
Point 3: Reviewing relevant pieces of literature and discussion based on the review: The abstract introduced distributed cognition and embodied cognition. In the introduction section, the authors provide a relevance between distrusted cognition and drawing activities while there were insufficient descriptions of embodied cognition. The authors may need to provide a review of the recent works of embodied cognition and provide further discussions based on the reviews of distributed cognition and embodied cognition in the last part of the study.
Response 3: We kindly appreciate the reviewer’s comments. In accordance, we have provided a further description of embodied cognition based on the current and relevant literature and we have rewritten parts of the introduction section to clearly elaborate our rational (please see, paragraphs 3-5). In addition, we have rewritten parts of the Summary section, and we provided a more clear and elaborated discussion of our findings from the perspective of distributed cognition and embodied cognition (please see, paragraph 1 and 2).
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you very much for your great effort to respond to the comments. I think that the manuscript has been significantly improved in terms of clarifying the research questions and the following results, the methods, and the discussion. I think this piece of work has the potential to provide insight into the utilisation of collaborative drawing in educational fields including science education. I am very pleased to recommend the publication of the current form of the revised manuscript in Education Sciences.
