Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment to the Authors

Thank you for submitting your work on STEM teacher professional development and spatial ability. Your study addresses an important topic, and the combination of Lesson Study with spatial ability instruction represents an interesting approach. However, the manuscript requires substantial revision to meet publication standards. The main concerns involve methodological limitations that affect the interpretation of your findings, particularly the need for clearer acknowledgment of what conclusions can and cannot be drawn from your single-group design. Additionally, the manuscript would benefit from restructuring to improve clarity and ensure all sections work together coherently. I have provided comprehensive revision suggestions in a separate document that offers specific guidance for strengthening each section. With careful attention to these recommendations, particularly regarding appropriate framing of your findings and methodological transparency, your research could make a valuable contribution to the literature on teacher professional development in STEM education.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions; the corresponding corrections and clarifications are provided below.

Introduction section

Point 1: Added a clear description of Latvia’s educational context, curriculum reform (Skola2030), and teacher preparation structures.

Point 2: RQs presented directly after problem identification and before background/justification.

Point 3: Identified specific gaps: spatial ability underemphasized, LS under-researched in Latvia, weak evidence of teacher-to-student transfer. Explained the contribution despite being a small-scale study.

Method section

In line with comment 4, we have reframed the study as exploratory and descriptive, focusing on documenting the implementation process of the CPDL/TPD solution rather than making causal claims about its effectiveness. We explicitly acknowledge the study’s limitations (small scale, absence of comparison groups, and context-specific scope) and present the findings as formative evidence to inform future development.

Results section

Point 7: We appreciate this important point. The Results section has been substantially revised to remove all causal claims. Phrases such as “caused,” “led to,” or “resulted in” have been removed or rephrased.

Point 8: We acknowledge the reviewer’s concern regarding the qualitative analysis. However, in this study the purpose of the teacher interviews was not to develop a fully elaborated qualitative thematic framework but rather to document teacher perceptions in relation to predefined PD impact levels (Guskey’s model). The analysis therefore focused on categorizing responses as aligned or non-aligned with the intended outcomes. While this does not constitute full thematic analysis, it was appropriate to the exploratory and descriptive nature of the study and aligned with the research questions.

Point 9: The corrupted reference to RQ2 has been corrected

Point 10: Statistical results are now reported with effect sizes, confidence intervals, and explanatory notes about scale meaning. The focus has shifted from p-values alone to a balanced presentation of both statistical and practical significance.

Point 11: All interpretation has been removed from the Results section and reserved for the Discussion. The Results now objectively report descriptive statistics and test outcomes only.

Discussion section

The Discussion was reframed to emphasize the exploratory, uncontrolled nature of the study, remove causal claims, acknowledge validity threats, scale back contributions, and clarify that findings are descriptive and context-specific rather than generalizable.

Conclusion section

The revised Conclusion now frames the study as formative and exploratory, providing descriptive insights into implementation processes and teacher perceptions, while clearly acknowledging its limitations and the need for future, more rigorous research.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is well written and clearly articulates the purpose of the research, the connection to previous literature, the aims of the research, the methods, the data collected, the results, and implications. The author(s) have offered a way for teacher professional development to be conceptulized and have offered a way to enhance student spatial ability in the early grades. Linking efficacy of teacher professional development directly to gains in student learning is a key component of the article. Often, gains in student learning can be implied or inferred, however this study shows a significant result.

The combination of foci on both visualization and teacher professional development was well balanced and both concepts were clearly outlined and explored in the study. Developing both elements fully helped make sense of the results in context and supports the potential impacts of teacher professional development for specific, and general, learning gains.

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for the valuable comments!

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study is based on a timely and relevant topic in education, and the results could be of value to the literature. Other researchers and practitioners could be referred to in the research literature, method, and results in this regard. The topic of the study is timely and significant for the field of educational research. The literature review is ample, which places the study within a strong theoretical framework. The methodological procedure is described clearly and systematically. The results are helpful as they show the tendency in the discipline.

Conceptual discussions are redundant, and theoretical foundations could be condensed. It would help increase the transparency of the article if the authors had provided a more comprehensive structure to describe how the data were collected and analyzed. Comparisons with previous studies should be strengthened, and implications for the international context should be discussed more. The text is readable enough, although it contains somewhat long sentences. The phrase could stand to be a bit looser and less formal. Readability of figures or tables can be enhanced, and more convincing visual information would help.

 

Author Response

We appreciate this feedback. In the revised manuscript, we have condensed the conceptual and theoretical sections to avoid redundancy, strengthened comparisons with prior studies to better situate our findings within the existing literature, and added a dedicated discussion of the implications for the international context, highlighting both parallels and differences with related research beyond Latvia.

The Methods section has been revised to provide a clearer and more comprehensive description. We also edited several passages to reduce overly long sentences and adjusted the phrasing to make it less formal and easier to follow.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is worthy of publication with very minor additions I would recommend to the authors.

The research is very important as vast funds and effort are poured into increasing the quality of teaching, and the research is one of few that searches for the true real life feedback in the classroom.

The authors did an excellent job in the research itself and in its presentation.

My only two minor recommended additions would be as follows.

The spatial abilities platform at https://rif4you.eu/ is very interesting but the general educator that will read the article will not necessarily go to the website (as I did) and even if she does, to be really immersed in the platform there are some administrative steps that may discourage the reader. So, I would propose some example of use to be integrated into the article.

More substantively, the authors present some interesting results, like the difference in impact by grades (first, second and third) (lines 463-476). The authors hint there at their explanation, but it would be perhaps better to give a more comprehensive author's explanation in the discussion section.

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s interest in the RIF platform. While we agree that examples of use could be informative, we decided not to integrate additional task descriptions in this article. Our aim was to focus on the implementation of the CPDL process rather than provide an in-depth description of the platform itself, which is already documented and accessible online. We have therefore kept the reference to the platform as the primary source for readers who wish to explore its tasks in detail.

We thank the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. In the revised manuscript, we have expanded the Discussion section to provide a fuller explanation of the observed differences across grade levels, outlining possible instructional, developmental, and contextual factors that may account for the variation. These interpretations are presented cautiously, in line with the study’s exploratory nature.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have adequately addressed all the concerns raised during the initial review. The revised manuscript is now suitable for publication in its current form. 

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for their positive evaluation and for the constructive feedback provided during the review process, which has helped us to improve the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf