Investigative Activities for Statistics Learning with 1st Grade Portuguese Students
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Although the paper topis is interesting and it seems authors have really worked in this paper, I feel paper in its present form is not publishable and need a strong revision to be considered as a possible publication:
- First of all, Introduction seems a list of papers related to area but not interpreted, you cannot list some papers you need to extract information from them and then interpret them in the introduction. Moreove,r you begin by means of talking technology and there is no reference to technology in learning statistics (in which there exist several studies recent and old ones).
- Section 2 is correct as it present the investigation activities realted to statistics in classroom.
- Section 3, related to the method is the one that needs a revision in a deeper way as I think it is incomplete or not correct:
+ Which are the pretest and postest? Are similar? Are the same?
+ Which is the sampling method? Are there just 20 students in that classroom?
+ As it probably is the first time those students work statistics, is not trivial that they will improve? but is ist due to the classroom activities or due to other external considerations?
- Results and conclusion sections also needs some deeper studies, as for example, have you done any mean comparison? Are you considered all the errors as the same? I mean, it is the same to make a mistake counting than considering the mode, for example, incorrectly?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The title as well as the introduction raised expectations about your manuscript and research. The topic you are addressing would be a relevant addition to existing literature. Thank you for this valuable contribution. I will structure my feedback in (a) general remarks (these comments cover feedback applicable in the entire manuscript), and (b) specific remarks (feedback on sentence and/or word level). The specific remarks can include a quote from your original manuscript to refer to a specific section. The specific remarks will refer to page (emphasis added in boldface; e.g., 1.15/16) and row(s; e.g., 11.15/16).
General remarks:
The overall manuscript addresses relevant topics that are of great importance to our society. Thank you for addressing these. However, I am concerned about the overall quality of the work. Despite its potential, there are issues with coherence, punctuation, and concepts. Moreover, it is lacking crucial information (e.g., informed consent, methodological aspects). Whilst reading your work, I have a lot of questions that remained unanswered in your manuscript. Because the manuscript has potential I am willing to reconsider after major revision, emphasizing that it requires serious revisions.
Specific remarks:
p.1.5 You label it a teaching experience. It raises expectations, namely: a focus on teachers (rather than students)?
p.1.6 “in the learning of…” = in learning statistical topics? You use an odd phrasing. You might want to check literature on the topic to see how they phrase this. If you decide to phrase this differently, please apply it to the remainder of your manuscript. You refer to statistical topics later on in your abstract. Please keep this consistent throughout your work.
p.1.8 It surprises me that you focus on students rather than teachers. I would suggest to change the sentence listed on p.1.5. (e.g., by focusing on learning experience rather than the teaching experience).
p.1.11 “a test” is not informative at all. At this point, I have an assumption what the test might be about.
p.1.15 Avoid intensifiers such as “very”. Improve your argument. If you have a valid argument, you do not need to add these intensifiers.
p.1.16 “limitations typical of their young age” à Such as? List at least one example so the reader knows what this is about.
p.1.17/18 You label it data representation and organization here; however, you referred to it as only data representation activities in rows 15/16.
p.1.19 I see statistical competence as one of the keywords. I expect this concept to be discussion in the literature section.
p.1.26 It is unclear to what “these activities” refer to (you do not mention activities in the previous sentence; you speak of the subject and their thinking). Please correct the sentence.
p.1.30 Using the term “literacies” is concerning, especially since a plethora of literacies have been identified without a solid foundation (e.g., purpose, use, consensus).
p.1.32 Avoid back-to-back brackets: (x)[y] or (x)(y).
p.1.32/33 This is not a logical paragraph following the first one. Can you aim for more coherence?
p.1.40/41 To guide the reader, I would suggest to number the summary. Thus: (a) exploration and formulation of questions, (b) formulation….
p.1.43 The link between investigative activities and mathematics is assumed here and not made explicit. I would make it explicit to pose a stronger case. I would start presenting the topic of mathematics and then investigative activities.
p.2.57 I am not a fan of labeling another literacy (e.g., statistical literacy). It requires more explanation. You mention that it is the ability to understand, interpret and reason about information. Doesn’t that make it information literacy? This question illustrates the issues I have with referring to <concept> + literacy. In addition, you later mention the term “statistical reasoning”. This term, or concept, is one of your main concepts. Use one term and apply that throughout your manuscript.
p.2.61/62 You can number the RQs to structure your work a bit better.
p.2.66 “in a variety of ways” à Such as?
p.2.65–94 What is the goal of this section? You pose quite some definitions (or direct quotes). Do you need all of these?
p.2.95 Why do you capitalize the word “statistics”?
p.3.105–111 Why do you specifically refer to the educational system in Portugal? Is this where you conducted your study? If so, you might want to refer to it more generally, or you need to include the specific context in the title of your work.
Moreover, I am thinking if certain types of education might influence the embeddedness of investigative activities. For example, certain types of schools use a more holistic approach. Furthermore, have you examined the literature about inquiry learning? If not, I would advise to do so before revising and/or resubmitting your work. It might provide valuable information and, more importantly, reduces conceptual confusion if you explain the difference and/or similarities. It also increases how your work matches existing literatures/ research.
p.3.138 I would suggest to restructure your paragraph. In row 138 you refer to the phases of the investigative cycle, followed by a short paragraph about a different (albeit relevant) aspect. Combine the paragraph in row 149 and further with the information in row 138. At this point in your work, I am surprised you haven’t introduced the concept of inquire learning. I would strongly suggest to look into this to create more consensus and embeddedness in existing literature.
p.4.164 “According to several authors” à Insert the references after this. In addition, “several” refers to more than two authors. Rephrase or add more sources.
p.4.164–168 Structure the key moments with (a)…, (b)…, etc. Otherwise clear paragraph albeit I am wondering how it becomes clear that “you lose the meaning of the investigation”. This raises questions.
p.4.179–184 Aim for more coherence here. Why do you examine involvement? Are there differences between students in their involvement in investigative activities? Do you consider students’ cognitive and metacognitive resources? At this point in your work, I am not ready to read the method.
p.4.190 “Positive characteristics” à This description belongs in the results. You are assigning meaning to characteristics (by labeling them as positive).
p.4.193 You refer to students up until now. Label them students and use that consistently (do not label them pupils).
p.5.194 That is a crucial statement: “the class was not yet familiar with group work”. This also implies you need to implement some measure that displays this in some way. As a result, because group work hasn’t been use so far, you need to read into literature about group work. The sense of individual competition also shows that this is a crucial factor that might influence your findings. All of this is food for the discussion (I expect that this will be discussed there).
p.5.197–205 These are results. Why is this presented here? I also have no clue how you obtained this information from the students. Information is missing.
p.5 Something that you also need to check for is language. Most investigative activities are language heavy despite the use of visuals (graphs, tables).
p.5.209 That the students do the activity in groups of five should be introduced sooner in the paragraph. In addition, you need to provide more information about your sample (M age, SD, min., max.). etc. At this moment in your work, I do not have sufficient idea of your study.
p.5.213/214 The information you present here should be embedded in the theoretical framework. Moreover, it also raises concerns about your study. Why did you conduct your study with this specific age group? Why didn’t you include older students as well to compare?
p.5.method I miss an overview of the tasks and materials. You can add them to the appendix. Like I mentioned in comment p.5.209 I have no clue what you did and how you conducted your study. I miss information about the analysis. Did you record the sessions? The interactions between students provide relevant information about the so-called “read between the data”. I am concerned if you only use the final products to reach the conclusion (of being able to read between the data).
p.5 Due to the frequency of the comments so far I will go through the remainder with less detail. The previous comments raised concern about the overall quality of your work.
Another concern that I have with this section: informed consent. Your participants are underaged and need parental/caregiver/guardian consent to participate.
p.5.224/225 Introduce the activities.
p.5.228 This does not belong in the results (it belongs in the method). You can structure your method with Materials, Procedure, etc.
p.6.255 I see the topic of colors. Did you check (or retrieved information) about colorblindness?
p.6.260/261 “would be done by gender” à I do not know what you mean with this.
p.7.263 – 271 This information should be presented in the methods section. In addition, your Figure 3 refers to cartoons. Did the teacher revise all questionnaires? Did the individual document the revisions? The number of revisions? Did you use this information as well? The information you display here seems incomplete.
p.7.280 You need to present more information about these participants as well.
p.8.287/288 “showed care in the construction and presentation of graphs” à How did you reach this conclusion? What evidence do you have to support this claim?
p.9/10 Did you record the presentations? Regardless of the answer, this should be mentioned in the informed consent (missing in your current version).
p.10.349 Is this header displayed correctly? In addition, synthesis of what?
p.10.355 Use proper punctuation (i.e., em dash instead of hyphen).
p.10.361 Avoid back-to-back brackets.
p.10 The pre-posttest design should be explicitly stated in the method.
p.12.413 “not problematic” à Subjective labeling. Can you come up with a more formal (or academic) alternative? The argument as to why this was problematic is not self-explanatory (your argument is incomplete). Why is the context (the topic in the area of Environmental Studies) causing issues?
p.12.437 If motivation and/or difficulties play a role in the outcome, you need to discuss (or at least) mention this in the introduction. Furthermore, do you refer to learning difficulties when you mention “students with more difficulties” or do you refer to the fact that some students find the activity more challenging than other students?
p.12/13 I mostly read the difficulties students experience. Why did you go for this age group? It would also have been wise to use more quantitative measures to gain insight what is causing the difficulties. Your participants are young and certain skills need further practice. If they aren’t used to work in groups, you have a confounding factor in your study. As a result, drawing conclusions is challenging. You could have controlled for a few of these confounding factors ([meta]cognitive skills, motivation, language skills). Simply using their school grades as a rough estimation of their (meta)cognitive abilities would have been an ”easy” way of capturing this confounding factors. I am also concerned about the group forming. How did you make the groups? Did you match students (so that each group has, for example (in a black/white fashion to illustrate my point), a good, average and low performing student?
p.References there are some consistency issues in your reference list. First, if you use the doi link, you do not have to use “DOI:” before that. The hyphen needs to be replaced by an en dash (between the page numbers). In reference 32 you need to place the volume- and issue number in italics. And something to look into because I notice it: you do not have a lot of English sources. If the context (e.g., Portuguese) is so crucial, you need to make this explicit.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
p. 1.10 --> A writing test in which students apply? I do not understand what you are trying to say here. The sentence is incorrect.
p.1.15 --> The conclusion were shorts? I do not know what you mean with this.
p.7.284-287 --> This sentence is hard to read. Split it in two.
I still recommend to let a Native English speaker read your manuscript. Your comma use, especially in the added sections, is plentiful and in several cases incorrect (see e.g., p.9.318-320). Also the sentence added in the conclusion (p.13.459-462) is difficult to read and grammatically incorrect.
Author Response
We thank you for the support of the careful and thorough review for the improvement of our manuscript.
We incorporated all your comments and suggestions. The changes made after this second revision are marked in blue in the manuscript.
The manuscript was reviewed by a Native English speaker.
We hope to have responded to the request.
Best regards
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Revisions are sufficient. Your work is a lot more informative.
