Preschool Class Children and Grade One Pupils’ Questions about Molecules from a Digital Interactive Session at a Culture Center in Sweden

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.  Introduction

The paper starts with a brief introduction to the study context, continues with a presentation of other studies concerning (a) children’s understanding of molecules and (b) children’s questions as a teaching tool, and ends with the study’s RQs. The authors seem to draw on a socio-cultural framework and recognize the role of imagination in learning science in early childhood. It would be nice if they could enhance the presentation of their theoretical framework and appeal to recent works on play worlds in science education  (see, for instance, Fleer and her colleagues). Moreover, they may need to consider adding some more bibliography in English (one-third of their references are written in Swedish).

 

2.   Methods

The study's method and the participants' selection (13499 children, who came from 515 classes taught by 1321 teachers) should be stated explicitly. The sample size was very high, and that was very good. What about the sampling technique and the sample’s representativeness?

Concerning the data of the study, i.e., the questions about molecules posted via the chat tool, one might wonder whether these were children’s authentic questions, questions “put in the children’s mouths” by the teachers, or even questions of the teachers themselves. For instance, some questions categorized in the theme “Molecules as constituents” may sound a little bit out of 6-7 year-olds league (e.g., Does energy consist of molecules? Does electricity consist of molecules? Does light consist of molecules? Has the vacuum no molecules?).

This wondering may be further enhanced by lines 380-385 (see Limitations of the study). The 1^st sentence (lines 380-382: “Among the limitations of the study, the authors acknowledge that access to the interaction between the teacher and the children is missing because of the circumstances of digital chat that only allowed access to the online text.”) may be interpreted as “We don’t know who asked the Qs and how.” Moreover, the 2^nd sentence (lines 382-383: “Therefore, validity of the data is low and does not allow for generalisation of the results to the rest of the population. ") may also sound problematic. This sentence starts with “Therefore”, which connects it to the 1^st sentence like this… “We don’t know who asked the Qs and how” and “Therefore the data validity is low”. This reasoning should be avoided because it focuses on the study’s internal validity, which is a prerequisite for every study regardless of whether the researcher aims to generalize or not. The sentence continues with the issue of generalization, an issue that concerns the study’s external validity, but the core problem lies in internal validity. In sum, the authors need to elaborate on how they present the limitations and avoid giving the impression that their results are not internally valid.

 

3. Results

The Results section is usually organized according to the study's RQs. In other words, the authors may consider having two subsections in the Results: (1) Results about RQ1 and (2) Results about RQ2. Right now, the RQ2 results are not presented in the Results section. If the authors wish to present the didactic implications in the “Discussion”, they may need to consider dropping RQ2, which is about these: the study would aim to address the current RQ1, and the findings about it would be discussed in the “Discussion” not only per se but also regarding their didactic implications.

 

4.  Discussion

In the “Limitations of the study,” apart from the issues already addressed in previous comments (see Methods), there is a reference to the fact that the study’s results cannot be compared to the results of a similar study in which children of different age participated physically in a similar activity and data where gathered in a different way. I’m not sure about whether this should be considered as a limitation of the study under review. It is just a different study with a similar topic but a different approach.

 

5. Conclusions

Here, the authors appeal only to the didactic implications. Aren’t there any conclusions from the current RQ1 results on the type of children’s questions?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The use of the English language is very good.  Please have a look at a few minor things:

Line 25: “chemical phenomenon”:  you better change it to plural

Line 32: “It is also known that crisis a child encounters…”: you better rephrase (e.g., “It is also known that the crisis a child may encounter …”)

Line 73-75: “What distinguishes the children's answers here is that they express a linguistic awareness, and there are correct concepts such as surface tension.”Could you explain it a little bit better? What exactly do you mean by “linguistic awareness” and by a “correct” understanding of “surface tension” by preschoolers?

Line 88: “The researchers discuss the children's movement in the tension field between “as if” and which it is as an "embodied abstraction.”: you better rephrase (the second part of the sentence is hard to follow)

Line 97-99: “It is also relevant when teaching takes place through digital forms to investigate how children perceive different content and what questions they ask about the content.” Why is that?

Line 138: it repeats line 137

Author Response

Introduction: three articles in English have been added.

Method: a sentence has been added clarifying that the teacher typed the questions that children asked.

Results: RQ2 has been eliminated.

Discussion: the limitations of the study have been reformulated.

Conclusions: the results from RQ1 have been added as well as the didactic implications.

Quality of English language: the minor mistakes have been corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for submitting this paper. It is very well written and an interesting read.

You set the context well in the introduction which I appreciated as I am not familiar with the Swedish education context. I have a few comments which I would like you to address.

1. Page 1 (lines 28-34) you are talking about transitions to school and mention a 'crisis'. This is a very emotive word. Please tone it down and use something like 'any difficulty a child may encounter....'. 

2. It is unclear how the questions were asked. It is clear that questions were asked using a chat function on the online class. However, were questions asked by the children themselves or by the adults who were with them typing in the children's questions?

Both of these options are somewhat problematic. If children were typing questions themselves, how did you account for the cognitive demands on this? Did the children know how to type in the chat box? If adults were typing the children's questions, how do you control for them paraphrasing or making sense of the question themselves? If children were recording questions into the chat, this would be more appropriate. Please clarify and then later discuss the implications of this methodology choice.

3. It becomes clearer (I think) later in the paper that it was adults typing into the chat. I think there is a very real likelihood that the adults could have been paraphrasing, combining questions from multiple children. Was any training given to the teachers in how to use the chatbox to record these questions? Did they know that they must enter questions verbatim? 

4. The study, I assume, was conducted in Swedish. The paper is in English. What process for translating the questions was followed? 

5. Thematic analysis does not require you to mention how many comments were made in each theme. Please remove all mention of number of comments fitting themes, see line 264 as an example. You have opted to use a qualitative analysis method, so stick with it and don't try to quantify the themes. 

Please revisit the paper in the light of my comments. 

Author Response

1. Page 1 (lines 28-34) has been rephrased following your advice.
2. How the questions were asked in the chat has been clarified.
3. It has been clarified in the text that the teachers typed the question that each child formulated one at a time.
4. The issue about the translation from Swedish to English has been addressed in the text.
5. The number of times each question was mentioned has been removed from the thematic analysis, as suggested.