Two Design Principles for the Design of Demonstrations to Enhance Structure–Property Reasoning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript is certainly interesting and I commend the authors for preparing a clear, concise research article on the utilisation of teacher demonstrations in the chemistry classroom, focussing on the learning of properties of materials. 

I'm not entirely sure this would represent a novel contribution to the literature, particularly with respect to the first design feature of the intervention, namely to compare a POE with an OE (Observe-explain) approach to demonstrations. The POE is a fairly standard approach to teacher demonstrations (as the authors themselves say), so to suggest that they 'designed' an approach to incorporate a predict step into the traditional teacher demonstration seems a bit over-the-top. Could the authors more explicitly describe what is novel or original about this study. 

I know this journal does publish a great breadth of topics, but I do slightly wonder why this has not been published in a chemical science discipline journal. The explain this, perhaps the authors could explore the generalisability of their findings a bit more (beyond the brief mention in  page 18). How are these results of interest to anyone beyond middle-school science/chemistry teachers? What implications are there for teacher instruction, within other sciences? Outside of science where the POE pedagogical strategy perhaps will not be as well known? 

The introduction section perhaps could have also explored the affordances and constraints of a teacher completing a demonstration for something that could be completed as a student hands-on, inquiry-focussed activity. I raise this because the description of how the POE for molecular compounds was eventually undertaken (page 7 (lines 259 onward) feels more like a student practical activity (with some teacher involvement) than a teacher demonstration. Perhaps the authors could explain in more detail how this still represented a teacher demonstration, but it does seem to involve a lot of hands-on involvement (which would not be the case in a teacher demonstration, either due to the hazardous nature of the substances, or there not being enough for a whole class student experiment). 

The quantitative analysis is sound, but the level of statistical analysis is scant. A 't-test' is mentioned at some point, but what it is referring to is vague. 

I commend the authors on the level of English in this manuscript. I only noticed a couple of matters, one of which may have been part of the blinding process. 

Line 195 has ?? as the school type. Is this because the type of school is blinded?

Line 206, I believe you mean incorporated, instead of elaborated.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a well written interesting document.

I do have a few minor remarks:

A

I do not have a chemistry background and find it sometimes difficult to understand the referrals (mostly well-done):

[71] this

To overcome these problems [111]: I am not sure about “these”. Does it refer to the two questions or to the last sentence?

“We think that these characteristics [123]” Maybe it is possible to make it explicitly clear what characteristics. You didn’t mention the world.

[226] each of these sub- 226 stances.  The metals?

B

Table 2 hard to read . Alignment top would be better I guess or a blank line between the rows.

C Is Sally a real name? If yes mention that see agreed to use it; and if not mention that it is fictive.

 

D

Sometimes you make strong statements.

“ This indicates that Sally increased her proficiency [480]“ is quite strong. Do you know for sure? Maybe a word to soften it?

[532]” This increased their proficiency in structure-property reasoning.”

 

Succes

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors present an interesting study whose objective is to evaluate two design principles for the development of structure-property reasoning in the context of demonstrations for teaching chemistry. The demonstrations involved the properties of metals, salts, and molecular compounds. The SPR instrument was used as a pre-and post-test to understand the effects on structure-property reasoning. The manuscript is written in a very clear and interesting way. The study method is described in an appropriate way. The summary and conclusion are supported by the content. The work presented remains original since, in terms of plagiarism assessment, only about 5% of this document consists of text more or less similar to the content of 159 sources considered as the most relevant. The largest section with similarities contains 70 words and has a similarity index of 87% with its main source.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 12: The authors present an interesting study whose objective is to evaluate two design principles for the development of structure-property reasoning in the context of demonstrations for teaching chemistry. The demonstrations involved the properties of metals, salts, and molecular compounds. The SPR instrument was used as a pre-and post-test to understand the effects on structure-property reasoning. The manuscript is written in a very clear and interesting way. The study method is described in an appropriate way. The summary and conclusion are supported by the content. The work presented remains original since, in terms of plagiarism assessment, only about 5% of this document consists of text more or less similar to the content of 159 sources considered as the most relevant. The largest section with similarities contains 70 words and has a similarity index of 87% with its main source.

Response: We thank the reviewers for their compliments regarding the study and the manuscript.