Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown Harm Pre-Schoolers Learning in Portugal? Yes, but with Variations Depending on Socio-Economic Status

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the minor concern I have about the paper is with respect to its title. Please consider changing it into a new one. The second part of the title sounds a bit obvious to me and it does not speak what the reader will gain by reading it.

Author Response

Dear Editor, thank you very much for considering our article for review. We thank the reviewers for all the time spent reading the article and the interest shown in improving it. In fact, the reviewers’ comments and suggestions allow us to improve our paper by adding 17 new papers to the manuscript and particularly adding 756 words to a brand-new discussion. We will respond point by point to the reviewers' comments and suggestions. For a better understanding of the document, we colored the reviewers' suggestions and comments in gray and the authors' answers in blue. Instead of using track changes in the manuscript, we decided to keep the same strategy between documents, that is, all new information in the manuscript added by authors is colored in blue.

REVIEWER 1

Dear Authors,

the minor concern I have about the paper is with respect to its title.

Please consider changing it to a new one. The second part of the title sounds a bit obvious to me and it does not speak what the reader will gain by reading it.

Author’s response:

Dear Reviewer,

First, thank you very much for taking the time to read our manuscript.

You’re right! In fact, the title doesn't detail what we do, but we wanted to make a catchy title!!! The use of catchy titles is the new trend in scientific writing and is highly used in journal articles with a high impact factor such as nature. We think that the title can capture the attention of the paper and look at the abstract the reader can understand what it is about in more detail.

In any case, thank you very much

Reviewer 2 Report

Did the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown harm pre-schoolers learning in Portugal? Yes, but with variations depending on socioeconomic status

22/09/2022

The number of studies carried out during the pandemic trying to analyse the effects of the pandemic on different stages and facets of education has been really important. Many studies have analysed the consequences of the educational changes and all that these changes entail for teaching practice, and how different social classes or population factors have been more or less affected by these consequences. In this respect, I believe that the authors should not only try to make a more detailed review of the background in the literature, but also show more clearly the differential value of their study with respect to the studies already published on the effect of the pandemic.

Sometimes the procedure becomes somewhat obscure, leaving some questions unclear. Would it be possible to reproduce the evaluation procedure in another condition? Possibly not with the information provided.

What statistical package was used in the analytical treatment?

Figures should be more informative, essential information for interpretation is omitted. They deviate from APA recommendations. In addition, I believe that the information provided to try to explain what the figures represent and what the statistical analyses of the figures imply is not very informative.

I consider that the authors do not sufficiently and satisfactorily develop the conclusions in the light of the results obtained. The interpretations of the results are somewhat poor and the discussion in the light of the background and current literature is lacking. I believe that the authors should make an effort to highlight what these results add to the literature and to what extent the conclusions that the authors discuss can contribute to the literature. I think this is the major challenge that the authors should take up. Otherwise, the work could fall by the wayside of a purely descriptive study, clearly undermining the potential contribution it could make to the literature.

I believe that there are many more limitations beyond those pointed out by the authors, and I am sure that the authors are able to see more gaps in their work.

Kind regards

Author Response

Dear Editor, thank you very much for considering our article for review. We thank the reviewers for all the time spent reading the article and the interest shown in improving it. In fact, the reviewers’ comments and suggestions allow us to improve our paper by adding 17 new papers to the manuscript and particularly adding 756 words to a brand-new discussion. We will respond point by point to the reviewers' comments and suggestions. For a better understanding of the document, we colored the reviewers' suggestions and comments in gray and the authors' answers in blue. Instead of using track changes in the manuscript, we decided to keep the same strategy between documents, that is, all new information in the manuscript added by authors is colored in blue.

REVIEWER 2

The number of studies carried out during the pandemic trying to analyse the effects of the pandemic on different stages and facets of education has been really important.

Many studies have analysed the consequences of the educational changes and all that these changes entail for teaching practice, and how different social classes or population factors have been more or less affected by these consequences.

In this respect, I believe that the authors should not only try to make a more detailed review of the background in the literature but also show more clearly the differential value of their study concerning the studies already published on the effect of the pandemic.

Author’s response:

try to make a more detailed review of the background in the literature

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your comment. In fact, we decided to present the literature review more straight-to-the-point to create a cleaner and less cluttered argument. In fact, this procedure of creating a more fluid argument is more typical of studies in natural science, which argue that anyone who wants to know more about the topic should do broader research and not just read an article. Even so, and following your advice, we put some more studies in the introduction, in order to provide the reader with a better knowledge of the topic under study. Some articles that we thought of putting in the introduction ended up putting in the discussion to be able to discuss the results as suggested by you in the comment below. Thanks once again.

show more clearly the differential value of their study concerning the studies already published on the effect of the pandemic.

Excellent suggestion! Thank you very much, you are absolutely right! Although we state in the paper that the novelty of the study was to look into the impact of preschool lockdowns by evaluating cognitive and educational skills necessary for the transition to primary education, we had not explained in detail what our article does differently and what can our study bring new to the literature. Given this, we added more information in the introduction, see lines 149-163.

Sometimes the procedure becomes somewhat obscure, leaving some questions unclear. Would it be possible to reproduce the evaluation procedure in another condition? Possibly not with the information provided.

We understand your concern. In fact, reproducibility is one of the most important vectors of science, if not the greatest. We actually liked, instead of describing the tasks, to show/present the tasks. However, tasks are copyrighted and cannot be shared. Additionally, to allow replication in a different context, we added in the method section the possibility of contacting the authors and that, through a collaboration protocol, the materials can be shared. Thank you for your effort which made us think of an alternative (see lines 200 and 201)

What statistical package was used in the analytical treatment?

Thank you very much for drawing attention to this detail. We added this to the manuscript in the data analysis section(line 267).

Figures should be more informative, essential information for interpretation is omitted. They deviate from APA recommendations. In addition, I believe that the information provided to try to explain what the figures represent and what the statistical analyses of the figures imply is not very informative.

Sorry, we understand that these are not the typical graphs like those used in the analysis of variance or a classic analysis of central trends, however, they are the charts typically used in growth modeling. Still, the caption should have information about the bar, as they can be CI or Error bars. So, thanks for your attention and suggestion, this information has been added to all captions.

I consider that the authors do not sufficiently and satisfactorily develop the conclusions in the light of the results obtained. The interpretations of the results are somewhat poor and the discussion in the light of the background and current literature is lacking. I believe that the authors should make an effort to highlight what these results add to the literature and to what extent the conclusions that the authors discuss can contribute to the literature. I think this is the major challenge that the authors should take up. Otherwise, the work could fall by the wayside of a purely descriptive study, clearly undermining the potential contribution it could make to the literature.

Thank you very much. We think it is not fair to say that it is a descriptive study. However, we agree that the discussion and conclusions are underdeveloped, so we made a set of changes, discussing the fundamental points in greater detail. Additionally, we include a take-home message with a possible translation into the field (conclusions and recommendations section) of the results obtained in the present study. 756 words in discussion and 17 new papers cited.

I believe that there are many more limitations beyond those pointed out by the authors, and I am sure that the authors are able to see more gaps in their work.

Thank you very much, we've included in the manuscript additional methodological limitations (see lines 490-494).

Thank you very much for your time and your careful and rigorous review

Reviewer 3 Report

The article under review analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (mainly in terms of translation to telematic learning environments) on the development of literacy and mathematical thinking in a large sample of Portuguese schoolchildren. The main interest of the authors is to analyze the influence of the socioeconomic status of the schoolchildren on this impact. There is no doubt that there is an important number of publications along lines analogous to that of this work. However, I believe that the large sample size, the quantitative methodological approach employed by the authors, and the specific objective involving socioeconomic status make this article sufficiently original and rich in terms of results to be published in the journal. However, I am also of the opinion that it is necessary for the authors to carry out a major revision of the text in several respects in order for the paper to be published:

1. The 97% of the sample is made up of children over 6 years of age, so it cannot be said that they are preschoolers, as the title of the article assures. This should be made clear.

2. The study is methodologically quantitative, but neither variables nor hypotheses are defined. This fact hinders the presentation of the results and the reader's reading of them. I suggest revising the Materials and methods section in this regard.

3. I do not fully understand why the fact of having a stable place of study by the children is considered by the authors as a sociodemographic variable. This fact should be clarified, but it will probably be clarified when the variables are specifically defined.

4. The Graffar Index (GI) is explained after having computed data on it.

5. The literature review is, in my opinion, very sparse. It would be useful to increase it and, especially, to present the state of the art on the impact of the pandemic in preschool education. In this regard, I suggest some recent works that can be analyzed by the authors:

https://doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe12060048

https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13117

https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.1930936

6. I believe that the discussion should be strengthened by relating more abundantly the results obtained with the preceding literature. To the extent that the authors increase the literature review, this task will be facilitated.

7. I suggest including a brief section that establishes the main conclusions of the work and, if pertinent, recommendations that follow from the results obtained.

Author Response

Dear Editor, thank you very much for considering our article for review. We thank the reviewers for all the time spent reading the article and the interest shown in improving it. In fact, the reviewers’ comments and suggestions allow us to improve our paper by adding 17 new papers to the manuscript and particularly adding 756 words to a brand-new discussion. We will respond point by point to the reviewers' comments and suggestions. For a better understanding of the document, we colored the reviewers' suggestions and comments in gray and the authors' answers in blue. Instead of using track changes in the manuscript, we decided to keep the same strategy between documents, that is, all new information in the manuscript added by authors is colored in blue.

The article under review analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (mainly in terms of translation to telematic learning environments) on the development of literacy and mathematical thinking in a large sample of Portuguese schoolchildren. The main interest of the authors is to analyze the influence of the socioeconomic status of schoolchildren on this impact. There is no doubt that there is an important number of publications along lines analogous to that of this work. However, I believe that the large sample size, the quantitative methodological approach employed by the authors, and the specific objective involving socioeconomic status make this article sufficiently original and rich in terms of results to be published in the journal. However, I am also of the opinion that it is necessary for the authors to carry out a major revision of the text in several respects in order for the paper to be published:

1. The 97% of the sample is made up of children over 6 years of age, so it cannot be said that they are preschoolers, as the title of the article assures. This should be made clear.

Sorry if this information is not clear. The participants are not actually preschool students, they are students who were evaluated at the beginning of primary school (grade1). However, they did preschool during the lockdown, so when we evaluated the impact of the pandemic, we evaluated the effect that lockdown had on the last year of preschool. Specifically, if the skills that students should master at the beginning of primary are underdeveloped due to the lockdown in the last year of preschool. However, because it might not be clear, we decided to put a more detailed description in the purpose section. So, when the reader reads the method, he already has the idea of what was done because he has already read it above.

2.  The study is methodologically quantitative, but neither variables nor hypotheses are defined. This fact hinders the presentation of the results and the reader's reading of them. I suggest revising the Materials and methods section in this regard.

Thank you for your suggestion, however, as you know, the use of the objective/aim/purpose is more advisable when it is an exploratory study and when the methodological and analytical design is more complex. The definition of closed hypotheses is highly limiting in a methodologically complex and broad study since from the methodological point of view, hypotheses are statements that we can only confirm or refute (Although many authors erroneously say that they partially confirm the hypotheses- A hypothesis obeys the all or nothing rule). If the reviewer does not mind and considering that we are methodologically more comfortable with the objective (purpose), we would not formulate the hypotheses.

As for the definition of variables, we apologize, we report to the style of longitudinal analysis where we describe the variables that we introduce in the model. We did this since we are not dealing with a factorial plan that has only one IV and DV. Even so, for a better reading of the article, we will create a new section at the end of the data analysis that will systematize all the variables and their role in the study. Thank you so much for your suggestion. We think the introduction of this section will increase the understanding of the paper.

3 . I do not fully understand why the fact of having a stable place of study for the children is considered by the authors as a sociodemographic variable. This fact should be clarified, but it will probably be clarified when the variables are specifically defined.

Thank you very much, I think it will now be clarified with the inclusion of a section that systematizes the variables. Thanks again for your suggestion above!

4 . The Graffar Index (GI) is explained after having computed data on it.

Thank you very much once again! GI appears in the Sample section and it is only explained in the Materials section (which is where it should be). We decide to include a brief link between sections( See line 173) and a brief description in the introduction(see line 147).

5. The literature review is, in my opinion, very sparse. It would be useful to increase it and, especially, to present the state of the art on the impact of the pandemic in preschool education. In this regard, I suggest some recent works that can be analyzed by the authors:

https://doi.org/10.3390/ejihpe12060048

https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13117

https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2021.1930936

Thank you very much for helping us with the literature search, in fact, one of the articles you suggested was essential in the restructuring of the article.

6. I believe that the discussion should be strengthened by relating more abundantly the results obtained from the preceding literature. To the extent that the authors increase the literature review, this task will be facilitated.

Thank you very much, in fact, we wanted to make a paper more straight to the point, however, with your help, we took the literature again and made a much more complete discussion. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

7. I suggest including a brief section that establishes the main conclusions of the work and, if pertinent, recommendations that follow from the results obtained.

Thank you very much again for your suggestion, in fact, we have added a new section to the article called Conclusions and Recommendations.

Thank you very much for allowing us to improve the article, especially by discussing and crossing our results with the existing literature.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I am pleased to see how the manuscript has improved substantially through the editorial process.

Many of the concerns raised in the previous revisions have been addressed to a greater or lesser extent.

Some of the concerns that still need to be thought about are:

Figures are still not properly formatted. Following APA recommendations, figures should be understandable with the information they provide. This requires that they have a descriptive title or caption and that both figure legends and figure axes have labels to facilitate understanding. As an example, in Figure 2, the reader, on observing it, has no information about what the ordinate (y) axis represents and could only infer from the values the abscissa (x) axis. This is easy to solve and facilitates the understanding of the manuscript.

Best regards

Author Response

We decided to follow your suggestion to increase the readability of the article. We appreciate all the comments and valuable inputs. His intervention as a reviewer greatly improved the article. Thank you so much

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion, the authors have responded satisfactorily to the comments. In fact, my main doubts about this article have been clarified by the answers provided by the authors. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable contributions to the article.