Interdisciplinarity in Teacher Education: Evaluation of the Effectiveness of an Educational Innovation Project

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all I would like to congratulate the authors for the initiative to continue promoting and investigating the improvement in teaching.
In this case I would like to make the following structured recommendations:
In the introduction:
- In Table 1, it would be necessary to specify all the acronyms that appear in the table since some are not specified such as ID, PBL, NAM, as it is recommended that no abbreviations appear in the table title. It is recommended to review the following tables when in the same situation.

In Methodology:
- Between lines 172-176 Why were no equivalent groups made? What was the reason?
- In study 1 section participants, how were these participants recruited and were not different ones recruited? It would be necessary to specify it to clarify the reader.
- In the study 1 section participants, Could you explain and argue for the information of the readers, why was not a random assignment between the different groups? as well as having composed the 2 groups with the same number of men in each of them.
- It would be necessary to indicate in methodology the statistical calculations carried out in the study
- In study 2 section participants, why was this school selected and not another?
- In study 2 section participants, the numbers of the students do not agree between the data provided.
- In the study 2 section participants, why the test group has a much higher number of men than women and the control group has a higher number of women than men? This large difference between groups jeopardizes the interpretation of the results.
- In study 2 section participants, which they indicate on line 378-379, why is it performed only on TG?

Discussion:
- From line 410 to line 443, there is no reference that supports the comparison between the results of this study with other results, so the essence of the discussion is poor since there is no comparison in these lines.

Conclusions:
- The conclusions section is interspersed with the discussion section in the topic it deals with, the limitations are included ... it is recommended to review and rewrite the conclusions section and joint discussion of the 2 studies with the structured information in each of its parts correctly.

Author Response

Dear colleague, we appreciate the work that has gone into the review, which highlights the key strengths of our study and the constructive feedback which has helped us to improve the article.

The attachment includes the changes we have made to the original, based on the recommendations and suggestions made by yourself and the other reviewer who has taken part in the peer review.

Furthermore, as requested by the journal’s editor, we have responded to each of your comments and have tried to give a detailed response to the questions raised and justify the changes that have been made. We hope these are in line with your requirements.

We are at your disposal if anything needs clarifying.

Kind regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall impression

 

This study of the efficacy of a discreet interdisciplinary project in Spain for promoting in disciplinary practices in preservice teachers and evaluating the outcomes for students is very well designed and mostly clearly written and reported. It engages with an important area of teacher education and school-based practice and fills a gap in the literature. The writers are to be commended for the thoroughness and clarity of their work. I believe this will make a strong contribution to the field.

 

But there is some work to do for the authors. The most notable is the lack of contextualisation of the project. For non-Spanish readers the situatedness of the project in this setting and its policy framework are not fully clear. In addition, there is a tendency for the language in places to be vague and lack specificity. For example, the specifics of the improvements in learning of the participants (pre and post) needs to be explained in more detail. Also, the writer should outline early in the paper the structure and purpose of the research design (which I really like actually). In the conclusion there needs to be greater discussion about how Study 1 and Study 2 operate together. Finally, the writers need to moderate their claims on the basis of such a small sample size, and point to what additional research on a larger scale is needed.

 

Below, specific suggestions to improve the manuscript are offered.

 

Specific feedback and suggestions

 

1. “Furthermore, they will do this in the most effective manner by integrating knowledge [2–5] as working in a competent way requires the interrelation of knowledge.” This does not make sense. Needs to be rewritten.
2. “However, these are insufficient given that in the preservice teacher education study plan all the specific teaching for different subjects in the primary curriculum appears as different courses.” There is a need for a little more contextualisation of this material for those not familiar with the Spanish curriculum and teacher education programs. Perhaps there needs to be a small section describing these particulars.
3. “various authors regret the lack of empirical studies”. The word “regret” is too emotive. Please temper your language.
4. “Interdisciplinary (ID) Educational Innovation Project”, As for point 2 above there needs to be explanation for the reader about what this project is. This need not be too long—just one or two sentences.
5. You describe the history and particulars of the Interdisciplinary (ID) Educational Innovation Project, but how does this material fit with the identification of the issues in the previous section? Clearly, you need to identify the purpose of the project and its rationale. It sits in the document without any real explanation.
6. “To evaluate the effectiveness of the Educational Innovation Project”. Effectiveness for what? Clarify the target of this effectiveness and point back to your identification of an education problem noted earlier in the paper.
7. “but they have objectives and methodologies that give them their own identity” need a little more explanation. Not sure that the word “identity” is the best choice to describe a research approach.
8. Section 3.1.1. How were participant selected? Just a brief mention is necessary.
9. “the educational legislation was checked”. Which legislation? In Spain? National? Provincial? Please clarify and contextualise.
10. The use of the word “good” in your results section is problematic. Not sure what that word means as an indicator and in what is a quantitative study this is too imprecise.
11. The reporting of results for Study 1 and Study 2 ae done in a sequential order with their own discreet discussion section. This structure to reporting of the data should be made more explicit earlier in the paper. I like the structure but why have you chosen to present it this way?
12. In the discussion section you state the following: “All of the preservice teachers have improved their knowledge integration, interdisciplinary teacher education, assessment of a teacher’s role as a manager of interdisciplinary activities, assessment of the museum as an educational resource and the perception of the activity’s potential for primary school children’s learning.” Improved how? You need some qualitative judgements here. In terms of the educational problem that you have set up, what can the preservice teachers do now that they could not do before and what skills have developed?
13. While you offered some discussion about the “testimonials” I found this quite superficial, especially given that there is quite a richness in this data. I suggest that a little more discussion of the meaning of these testimonials is undertaken. Also, how does this qualitative data link back to the quantitative data? Lots of possibilities here.
14. “The whole group’s improvement can be a result of the design used to form the Test and Control Groups.” This is taken from the discussion of Study 2. The improvement is not due to the research design. Please clarify and rewrite.
15. The discussion section in 3.2.4 is quite pleasing to read. There is discussion of the results and there is discussion of the limitations of this research. I think it might be best to separate them. In addition, n=7 for Study 2 hardly constitutes a statistically valid sample size. You should note this in the limitations and qualify your remarks with the idea that the sample size is merely suggestive or generative rather than conclusive.
16. “deeper learning than one using conventional instruction” What do you mean by deeper learning? How would you characterise it? Why do you think there was deeper learning? This is a pivotal outcome of your research that you do not pay enough attention to.
17. Your opening paragraph in the conclusion section is rather too confident about the efficacy of the Educational Innovation Project. Not sure you can make your claims so strongly, given your findings and your sample size. I would suggest that you qualify your conclusion here with a recognition that it is suggestive rather than definitive.
18. The conclusion needs more overt discussion of the connections between Study 1 and Study 2. This was not really addressed to any large extent, merely implied.
19. “The difficulties that were encountered, the results that were obtained and the limitations that have caused these, have highlighted a series of conditions which would help to introduce the necessary changes required to achieve more flexible curriculums in a planned and systematic manner, thus enabling different subjects to be included in teaching.” I find this writing rather vague and lacking specificity. You need to illustrate each of your ideas here with an example from the findings.

Author Response

Dear colleague, we appreciate the work that has gone into the review, which highlights the key strengths of our study and the constructive feedback which has helped us to improve the article.

The attachment includes the changes we have made to the original, based on the recommendations and suggestions made by yourself and the other reviewer who has taken part in the peer review.

Furthermore, as requested by the journal’s editor, we have responded to each of your comments and have tried to give a detailed response to the questions raised and justify the changes that have been made. We hope these are in line with your requirements.

We are at your disposal if anything needs clarifying.

Kind regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

We appreciate all the modifications made by the authors that have considerably improved the study. Even so, there are some aspects of the work that must be taken with caution but that have been specified as study limitations, making it clear that the results must be taken as a caution and a pilot study for future studies, improving the limitations present in this study.
It would be necessary for me to give a clarification or argue why you make this statement: "as these are more representative of the Spanish education system", because in Spain there are many schools and there will be many representatives. If it was chosen for convenience, it would only be specified.

Congratulations on the study

Author Response

Dear colleague, we appreciate all the comments you have made on the article throughout the process, which have helped us to improve the current version of the article.

We are pleased with your positive assessment of the changes made.

Following your last recommendation, we have included in line 525 your suggestion to indicate that the school that participated in Study 2 was chosen by convenience sampling. Our previous reference to the public school being selected for the study because it was more representative of the Spanish educational system was imprecise. We prefer not to lengthen the article by talking about the different types of schools in Spain. In this instance, Public schools are those that have the highest number of students of the ages required for the study, which explains why we chose a public school that belonged to the network of schools that collaborate with the university to carry out this study.

Thank you for your advice.

Best regards,

The authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your lengthy explanations and thorough rewriting of your manuscript. My key concerns have now been addressed and I enjoyed reading the final document. However, perhaps the limitations section in the conclusion could be removed and the limitations described earlier could be reduced in length. While it is important to acknowledge the limitations of the study, you would be best to focus on your results (what you can say), rather than what limited the study. 

 

Author Response

Dear colleague, thank you for all the comments on our article during the publication process. Your comments have helped us to improve the current version of it.

We are pleased with your positive assessment of the changes made.

Following your last recommendation, we have removed the list of limitations from the conclusions section. However, we have re-located the limitations that did not previously appear in the article to the corresponding sections of both Study 1 and Study 2. As it could be noticed, we have created the limitations section also in the Study 1 to establish an appropriate framework for this piece of information. The text that includes these limitations has not been lengthen as the information corresponds to some modifications of the article suggested by the reviewer 1.

Thank you for your advice.

Best regards,

The authors