The Evaluation and Fidelity of an Interdisciplinary Educational Programme
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Congratulations on the work and effort you put into the study; it was inspiring and interesting to read. I attached a document including some minor language issues which I detected and you may want to address.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for your appreciations, we made the changes suggested by the reviewer, based on their comments. In addition, the English language has been reviewed by an expert.
Line 18: The results show that the teachers who adhered assiduously and to the educational programme – please rephrase: something seems to be missing after “and” or, alternatively, you may want to remove the conjunction “and”.
This line has been changed.
Line 49: One of the main characteristics of this pedagogical model is that it presents some 49 fundamental elements that differentiate it from other methodologies – avoid redundancy
We have deleted the phrase to improve understanding.
Line 54: Another of these elements - suggestion: another element…
This line has been changed.
Line 110: Fidelity of the implementation of educational programmes – In order to avoid the repetition of the preposition ”of”, I would suggest ” Fidelity in implementing educational programmes”, or ”Fidelity of educational programme implementation”.
This line has been changed.
Line 162: please remove comma after ”force”.
This line has been changed.
Table 1 (Page 6) I would make the headings parallel; i.e. I would start with the same part of speech. For example, in the “Teaching strategies” column, I would change “Promotes social interaction” into “promotion of social interaction”, and “assign tasks” into “task assignment”. Using a consistent part of speech gives more structure and makes the information easier to follow. Also, in the description of the teaching strategies, the subject is not always clear. “The teacher” is mentioned in three descriptions, but not in the other ones. Please observe the subject – verb agreement (”structures” instead of ”structure”).
We have changed the table in order to do it more understanding and taking into account all comments.
Thank you.
Reviewer 2 Report
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the fidelity of the implementation of an interdisciplinary educational program and to examine the differences between the teaching strategies and interpersonal teaching styles used by teachers who apply an active methodology and those teachers who use a conventional methodology. The topic is interesting, and there are shortcomings as follows:
1. Please redefine the objectives of the study in a clear way one by one so that readers can understand it well.
2. If possible, please add literature review summary, by identifying the research gap as well.
3. Please check the reliability and validity of the surveyed data.
4. The authors are encouraged to present the representativeness of the sampling data.
5. If possible, the authors are recommended to check the robustness of the results.
6. The limitations should be addressed in the last section, and the implications should be highlighted as well.
7. The author should proofread the paper to remove possible errors, i.e., grammatical errors, punctuation marks, and spelling mistakes.
Author Response
. Please redefine the objectives of the study in a clear way one by one so that readers can understand it well.
The objectives of the study have been redefined to facilitate readers' understanding (Lines 184-189).
- If possible, please add literature review summary, by identifying the research gap as well.
A brief summary of the main research gap that our study aims to address, as indicated by the literature reviews on TPSR and AB, has been added (Lines 125-129 and 182-183).
- Please check the reliability and validity of the surveyed data.
Related to the validity of the data collected, we would like to specify that it depends on the building of a solid research design, the choice of appropriate methods and samples, and the conduct of the research carefully and consistently, which is precisely what is intended carry out in this study. Regarding the instruments used, it is important to indicate that they have all been previously validated, having included the reference of the original paper where this process occurred, so it is assumed that the instruments are measuring what they indicate are measuring, which are the perception of the autonomy support style and controlling style of the teacher, as well as the strategies of responsibility and physical activity used by the teacher in class every five minutes, the general behavior of the teacher and of the students at the end of the lesson. For the interobserver confidence of these last three variables, the total agreement index was calculated from the number of agreements divided by the agreements plus the disagreements. For the rest of the measurements, McDonalds’s omega was obtained.
- The authors are encouraged to present the representativeness of the sampling data.
The sample has been selected non-randomly, so its representativeness cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, the data are not representative of a population and cannot be generalized to the rest of the participants who have these characteristics. This aspect has been added in the limitation paragraph (lines 603-605). However, it is important to indicate that: a) the groups do not differ systematically from other class groups, since the class groups that the educational center initially formed have remained intact, and b) it has been verified in the pretest that there were no differences between the starting groups, so that the selection (although it is not random) does not influence the differences detected between both teaching methodologies.
- If possible, the authors are recommended to check the robustness of the results.
Non-parametric procedures have been used (Mann-Whitney U test and the sign and Wilcoxon signed-rank test) which are more robust than the parametric procedures and the results are, therefore, robust to non-compliance with the assumptions of lack of normality and homogeneity.
- The limitations should be addressed in the last section, and the implications should be highlighted as well.
The limitations and implications of the study have been addressed in the last section (conclusions) (Lines 603-632).
- The author should proofread the paper to remove possible errors, i.e., grammatical errors, punctuation marks, and spelling mistakes.
Proofreading has been done considering the reviewer considerations and the new ideas included in the manuscript.
Thank you to the reviewer
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
After carefully reviewing the revised manuscript, the authors have addressed most of the prior comments.
