Integrated STEAM Education for Students’ Creativity Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper explores the relationship between iSTEAM tasks and students’ creativity development.

The study is based on sound theoretical framing and a clear methodology to determine creativity enactment.

The results are clearly written and provide detailed examples to support the claims.

My one concern is whether your study can answer your research question. While your results fully support that students showed creativity in the five areas with this task, it does not necessarily show how the task developed that creativity as differences in effectiveness of the groups could be due to pre-existing levels of creativity which were just exposed by the project itself. To prove the activity itself developed or impacted a change in level of creativity, there would have to be measures over time to show the change.

With this in mind, my one recommendation would be to revise your research question to ask what you actually explored –student levels of creativity while using digital competencies in iSTEAM education didactic tasks.

 

 

There are a few minor typos in the document that would need to be fixed before publishing (e.g., p. 6 line 261 "All filed notes" should be "All field notes").

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to express our gratitude for the insightful comments, comprehensive suggestions, and constructive criticism on our manuscript, and for the opportunity given to revise and improve it. The manuscript was thoroughly revised, including a substantial number of changes, especially in results and discussion sessions, that the authors hope will meet the Reviewer’s expectations.

Please see the attachment with point-by-point response.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Minor edits:

·      For Yakman, the print version of the model is STE@M without using the sigma. Also, it would help to give the reader a brief description of the model and how it differs from STEAM, particularly the point about it being integrated and not an added category.

·      In Line 90, the authors use iSTE(A)M. How is that different than/similar to iSTEAM? Why the parentheses?

·      At Line 94, the authors state “opposing views” when it seems they are discussing a range of views that show STEAM does not have an agreed-upon definition.

·      Line 133, is it supposed to be “Adjective Check List?”

·      Line 134, is “creative” supposed to be capitalized?

·      In Lines 155-160, it is not clear why the authors are echoing the claim of (an)other author(s) about self-confidence and “courage to take risks” in homogeneous groups since it is not clear that is related to creativity given that many things (including comfortability in a heterogeneous group) depend on a supportive classroom environment. The argument here seems unrelated and overgeneralizing considering the section is about the benefits of creativity.

·      Line 189, capitalize Zoom.

·      Author(s) may want to decrease the font size of Table 1 to fit better. Right now font size is larger than the manuscript font size.

 

The author(s) should clearly state their framings of iSTEAM and creativity. There is good literature that states how other studies have defined them, but it is not clear what aspects the author(s) are utilizing for their study and why. This is especially important given the limitation of data only being collected by observation and tasks. How was creativity limited since students could not all be observed as they worked or how it could have been influenced by others?

 

In the methods, it is stated that field notes were made based off audio records, but it is not clear where/how audio was taken (e.g., whole class instruction, individual students, small groups). It is not clear how this was used for data triangulation since it is still considered an observer measure. Also, how many researchers were observing? How is it possible to follow all students doing all those practices of creativity? It is also not clear what the video records were of. Were they solely used to see student work or were there videos of the students working? Also, how were practices attributed to individual students versus the team? Since students are collaborating, this has implications for how students approach a creative problem. How were students grouped? If homogeneously, then the claim made earlier in Lines 155-160 could have an implication. If the unit of analysis was the group, was a practice noted when one student enacted or more than one? Or was it different depending on the measure?

 

The results need major revision. The results were difficult to follow for me. I was expecting the results to be organized by the dimensions of creativity. Rather, it was more narrative with the task and descriptive of how the task may have contributed to creativity. In other words, it is not evident how the data was analyzed and then organized to feature the ways students were creative. I would also help to organize the quotes from the students as support for each construct rather than all at once. It also seemed to try to justify STEM practices. Mainly, there was too much trying to be reported without a focused organization.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to express our gratitude for the insightful comments, comprehensive suggestions, and constructive criticism on our manuscript, and for the opportunity given to revise and improve it. The manuscript was thoroughly revised, including a substantial number of changes, especially in results and discussion sessions, that the authors hope will meet the Reviewer’s expectations.

Please see the attachment with point-by-point response.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors did a great job of addressing all the concerns I had with the original version. The results are much easier to connect to the analysis and the research question. There are a few minor grammatical errors in the added portions. For example, Line 164 says, "...students can also need a...," which maybe should omit the "can." In Line 585, it says, "de," but I think it was meant to be "with." Other than that, great work.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are glad that the alterations improved the article. Thank you one more time for your report that allowed us to perform those changes for the better.

Regarding your new comment:

"The authors did a great job of addressing all the concerns I had with the original version. The results are much easier to connect to the analysis and the research question. There are a few minor grammatical errors in the added portions. For example, Line 164 says, "...students can also need a...," which maybe should omit the "can." In Line 585, it says, "de," but I think it was meant to be "with." Other than that, great work."

These and other corrections in grammar and typos were corrected, and marked in pink.

Best regards,

The authors.