School Infrastructure as a Catalyst for Pedagogical and Collaborative Change: A Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article reports on an interesting study and defines a research gap that it attempts to fill. It is written clearly and is easy to read. 

Here are some suggestions for improvement;

• what you mean by infrastructure is not clearly defined. If you for example would build on definitions by Star & Ruhleder (1995), who include technological, organisational and social factors, and Guribye (2015) who argues for including pedagogical factors in educational environments, your arguments could be clarified and also more nuanced. 
• Conceptual framework - I find figure 1 almost impossible to read and I wonder what it actually adds in its current form. Why not use the conventional triangles in CHAT and then also clarify aspects that you add (contradictions/tensions & learning loops) and how they relate to the activity system. 
• There is a lack of references in the methodology section - particularly p 6 - 7 (from Research Design). Explain what you build your choices on. 
• Consider including the survey questions and interview guide as appendixes so that the reader can understand them. 
• In the section on data analysis you write that quantitave trends were corroborated and expanded upon using qualitative insights - were there aspects that came up in the interviews that was not shown in the quantitative data? Or was that not considered?
• Ethical considerations - you write that you took steps to minimize potential conflicts of interest - how was that done? References to others?
• Research findings - in this section the headings are a bit confusing to me - are these themes that came up in the thematic analysis of the interviews or in the survey or in the document analysis? Clarify where the findings come from - which data and analysis. It is not either clear if all headings are on the same level or if some are subthemes in an overarching one? 
• I miss the document analysis in the findings - what did that add to the study? For example, were the pedagogical approaches that the infrastructure supports according to your study planned for ahead or not? Are there reasons in the documents as to why teachers did not have a say in the process? 
• In your excerpts you appear to sometimes add excerpts from different interviews. Does that not imply that you have made an analysis of the data in order to put them together? To me, this is not usually done in excerpts and would need some clarification - why and how was this done. In some excerpts (for example top of page 9) you appear to add comments in the excerpts - why? Should that not be part of the text?
• The summary of the statistical analysis comes last in the findings which I find a bit odd. Why is it placed there? Could it be included in the findings sections since a lot of it is repetition of what has been said earlier? Have the table earlier and reference to it when you write about the different numbers?
• In the discussion you write about the teacher-student relationship and supervision - since you have not talked to the students - how much can you actually say about this based on your data? Add more references to other studies to support what you write? Discuss why you did not include students and how that may affect the results?
• In your policy recommendations you make some pretty broad suggestions which may or may not be important in other settings (the first three suggestions). 
• Recommendation nr 6 is not something that you have written a lot about previously - add something on this if you keep it as a recommendation. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your constructive comments on our paper. Attached is for your necessary action on the paper.

Stephen Bolaji

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the writing is strong and well structured. The study is timely and foundationally strong. There are a few minor changes that would improve the paper as whole (see notes below), and the study would strongly benefit from more recent sources that demonstrate all of this is still relevant and accurate in post-pandemic schools. 

• Figure 1 is confusing and badly formatted. It needs to be edited for greater clarification of what you are attempting to demonstrate. 
• In the Introduction section, you note that"The effectiveness of school infrastructure is increasingly seen through its influence on teaching practices given the substantial role teachers play in student achievement" with several quality citations. Your latest citation, though, is from 2020. It may be pertinent to find a post-pandemic source to see if this still holds true in 2025 after all that has changed in education post-pandemic. 
• Similar to above, your Statement of the Problem may benefit from seeking recent citations: "Despite substantial investments in educational infrastructure, there remains limited 
  empirical research on how school design influences teacher practice a key driver of stu- 
  dent achievement" Has there been any change to this since 2020?
• In lines 181-182, you use the word "increasingly" but then share just two sources, one of which is again from 2020. You will want to find a more recent source that demonstrates this is a continuing trend and is, in fact, increasing. 
• In lines 190-196, you justify the methodology by arguing that combines modalities in ways that other studies have not--which is intriguing. However, you may want to add information here as to why this approach is effective or what it allows that other studies do not and/or provide safeguards as to how broadening the scope does not detract from depth.
• In lines 349-351, you use the world "overwhelmingly" for a figure of 70.5%. While this is a judgement call, it does not seem to be an accurate descriptor.  This is especially odd when the word "significant" is used later in the paper to describe a figure of 100% (line 392) and the word "majority" for a figure of 94.1% (line 417). 

Author Response

See the attached 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf