Connecting Classrooms with Online Interclass Tournaments: A Strategy to Imitate, Recombine and Innovate Teaching Practices
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author,
The relevance and scholarship of your paper are well developed and have strong theoretical foundations. Here you will find some of the commentaries toward the development of your manuscript:
1) The abstract contains the main information of the paper. It outlines the research problem and its relationship with the proposal of the study. Finally, it declares the main results and conclusions that enrich the discussion on teachers' challenges in the contemporary era.
2) The introduction is clear and consistent, considering research products from recent years. Minor observations are declared in the manuscript (some repetition of words and lack of references).
3) The literature review provides the key elements to understand the scope of the research problem. It derives in multiple reflections towards the societal expectations on the teaching profession and the changes that need to be addressed.
4) Materials and methods outline the structure of the inter-class tournaments. Even though there is a clear description of these educational contexts, some elements are missing, such as:
- Specific dates or periods in which these tournaments were applied.
- A strong methodological approach with qualitative theoretical references.
- A clear description on the analysis and interpretation procedures.
5) Results are well developed and clear. However, this section lacks of a deep description of the observed elements, due to its long extension.
6) I suggest to synthetize the fourth section in order to give a deeper discussion on results. The contribution of the paper needs to look into the theoretical discussion and its relationship to the results that were retrieved.
7) Conclusions present a coherent structure. However, the paper must address the future topics to be studied.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
There are minor elements to correct on the quality of English language. They are mentioned in the attached document.
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
Thank you very much for your time and dedication to reviewing the manuscript. I appreciate your opinion on the strong theoretical foundations.
I attach a file with the responses.
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
"Fourth, there is a clear division of labor at schools. Teachers teach their discipline, in which they have been educated." - this paragraph does not have quotations to support the claim, which is general, contrary to the previous paragraphs.
Same for this paragraph: "Seventh, there is a lack of textbooks and materials with integrated disciplines."
Same here: "Finally, teachers do not receive feedback about across-discipline integration from monitoring or evaluation systems."
"We use the data obtained from previous research on the effect on students´ learning on four inter-class games and tournaments for teaching integrated STEM."
The article could make it clearer the timing of data collection analysis on the four tournaments and how data was collected and analysed, specially when referring to the effect on students' learning. Besides that, data collected and/or analysed will not be available as Supplementary Materials?
The Discussion section does not bring back the state of the art identified in literature review and the theoretical background to enlighten the results.
Conclusions do not state limitations of the studies, nor future work.
"Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to it being a class session during school time." - can you explain better this statement. Was waived by whom?
"Review of classroom practices show" - shows
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
Thank you very much for your time and dedication to reviewing the manuscript. I appreciate your opinion and feedback.
I Attach a file with the responses.
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
First of all, I have to point out that this manuscript is an adjusted version (to fit better the scope of the Sustainability journal) of the preprint “Harnessing the Power of Online Inter-Class Tournaments to Imitate, Recombine, and Craft Innovative STEM Teaching Strategies” (https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202302.0192.v1) by the same author.
I prefer the title of the preprint version better because all four examples of inter-class tournaments were online. Therefore, I think the word “online” should be in the title.
The first part of the abstract is not clear.
The Introduction and the Literature review sections are too broad and not well connected to the title of this manuscript. Also, some parts are very confusing and unnecessary. My proposal is to start this paper from section 3.1. Inter-group play.
The Results section is mostly about misconceptions. Therefore, not related to the research questions. The research questions are to a certain degree answered at the end of the Discussion section.
Also, this manuscript is too long and doesn’t bring many new insights about online inter-class tournaments since all examples (four in total) were already published as separate papers by the same author.
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
Thank you very much for your time and dedication to reviewing the manuscript. I appreciate your opinion and feedback.
I Attach a file with the responses.
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Accept in present form
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
Thank you very much for your time and dedication to reviewing the manuscript.
I tried to better connect the references with the text. Also, I inserted a new section 3.3 as a response to the suggestion of another reviewer.
Best regards
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
In the new version of the manuscript, the author added some clarifications and adjustments based on my comments and suggestions. The paper is improved, but I still think that it is too long (the new version is even longer).
