STEM Career Interest of Kazakhstani Middle and High School Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Introduction

 

The introduction sets up a strong rationale for this study and connects it to the global context, including the need for a larger STEM workforce. The paradox of low levels of interest in STEM careers and positive attitudes towards learning STEM in school is clearly addressed. 

 

Lines 52-53: The authors state that “many studies support significant gender differences while few studies found no gap or little gap” but only two references are cited. This topic should be addressed further or see more than two studies cited to support these claims. Gender should not be looked at in a single context as other demographics (age, race, ethnicity) also play a role (which are addressed more at length).

 

The use of the word “nowadays” feels too informal a phrase for this work and it is seemingly overused in the manuscript. 

 

2. Materials and Methods

 

Line 148: Are these questions or survey items? What were some additional survey items?

 

Lines 166-192: I’m noticing several grammatical errors that interfere with readability. 

 

Lines 193-202: I appreciate the multiple subgroups that were created to carry out this study. I’m curious about the size of these groups; were the students divided evenly? What were the ratios of each of these subgroups? Are there other pertinent demographics of the students that would be relevant to share in the description of the sample? (In addition to grade level which is mentioned in the next section, 2.3 Data collection)

 

3. Results

 

Lines 315-317: Please clarify: “According to the descriptive data, those whose fathers are not working have the highest (3.70) interest score in science and the lowest score (2.90) is in engineering which corresponds to students whose fathers are not working.” Both groups of students have fathers are not working?

 

Was there any research done on students from one-parent or alternative family households? Is that worthy of consideration and/or discussion? 

 

4. Discussion

 

Line 465: Please elaborate on what you refer to as “problems”. Does this include social barriers that promote antiquated gender stereotypes?

 

4.3 Students’ family size…: This is interesting. As mentioned earlier, does family structure have a role (traditional versus nontraditional)? If that was beyond the scope of your study, is there value in researching it in the future? 

 

This is a very interesting study and I believe that it will make a strong contribution to the global conversation on promoting STEM to K-12 students.

Author Response

Dear reviewer!

 

Thank you, for reviewing our manuscript and giving valuable comments.

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Introduction

 

The introduction sets up a strong rationale for this study and connects it to the global context, including the need for a larger STEM workforce. The paradox of low levels of interest in STEM careers and positive attitudes towards learning STEM in school is clearly addressed. 

 

Lines 52-53: The authors state that “many studies support significant gender differences while few studies found no gap or little gap” but only two references are cited. This topic should be addressed further or see more than two studies cited to support these claims. Gender should not be looked at in a single context as other demographics (age, race, ethnicity) also play a role (which are addressed more at length).

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

We have added some literature about gender.

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

 

The use of the word “nowadays” feels too informal a phrase for this work and it is seemingly overused in the manuscript. 

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

We have substituted the word “nowadays” with other suitable ones.

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Materials and Methods

 

Line 148: Are these questions or survey items? What were some additional survey items?

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

This are survey items, we wrote some examples of the items in order to describe our instrument (STEM - CIS) which were used in the study

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Lines 166-192: I’m noticing several grammatical errors that interfere with readability. 

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

Grammar errors were corrected

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Lines 193-202: I appreciate the multiple subgroups that were created to carry out this study. I’m curious about the size of these groups; were the students divided evenly? What were the ratios of each of these subgroups? Are there other pertinent demographics of the students that would be relevant to share in the description of the sample? (In addition to grade level which is mentioned in the next section, 2.3 Data collection)

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

Data collection was provided by Google forms online platform, STEM – CIS was sent to students by email. At the beginning of the survey we asked students’ personal information (grade, gender, end term marks, info about parents and family and so on) after answering these questions students were able to answer STEM – CIS items. After data collection we made Descriptive tables and combined them into one supplementary file. In that file the number of participants in each groups were shown.  

 

Yes, there could be other pertinent demographics of the students, but literature review showed us that the mentioned demographics are most relevant and therefore we decided to choose them.

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Results

 

 

Lines 315-317: Please clarify: “According to the descriptive data, those whose fathers are not working have the highest (3.70) interest score in science and the lowest score (2.90) is in engineering which corresponds to students whose fathers are not working.” Both groups of students have fathers are not working?

 

Was there any research done on students from one-parent or alternative family households? Is that worthy of consideration and/or discussion? 

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

Yes, Both groups of students have fathers are not working.

 

Actually there are some literature about one-parent or alternative family households but they are not strongly related to STEM, therefore we did not consider them in discussion.

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Discussion

 

 

Line 465: Please elaborate on what you refer to as “problems”. Does this include social barriers that promote antiquated gender stereotypes?

 

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

We revised the sentence in the text as follows: However, Rosser [49] claims that maintaining balances between career and family, time management, maintaining trust and respectability from colleagues of women in science are still associated with problems related to social status of the woman and stereotypical beliefs.

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

 

4.3 Students’ family size…: This is interesting. As mentioned earlier, does family structure have a role (traditional versus nontraditional)? If that was beyond the scope of your study, is there value in researching it in the future? 

 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

 

Family size affect to students’ career interest is the interesting topic to study, because some researchers show certain effect of family size to peers future career. Also, in our work we come up with some strong proof about this. However, there are lack of studies about the effect of family size on students’ STEM career interest. Therefore, we suggest this topic be studied deeper in the future.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents and analyses the results of a well-desigend research, and well-fulfilled research, the subjcte is interesting, actual, and the research questions do cover various areas. However the numbering of research questions and the presentation of Results (ch. 3.) and Discussions (ch.4.) could be corelated, either numbering 1-6 the research questions e.g. by joining 5-6 to one single, or completing the chapters with the missing points. It seems that the authors consider the problem of parents occupation and education strong related, in this case the research question could be reduced to 6. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer!

 

Thank you, for reviewing our manuscript and giving valuable comments.

 

 

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents and analyses the results of a well-designed research, and well-fulfilled research, the subject is interesting, actual, and the research questions do cover various areas. However the numbering of research questions and the presentation of Results (ch. 3.) and Discussions (ch.4.) could be correlated, either numbering 1-6 the research questions e.g. by joining 5-6 to one single, or completing the chapters with the missing points. It seems that the authors consider the problem of parents occupation and education strong related, in this case the research question could be reduced to 6. 

Authors response for reviewer comment:

 

The numbering of research questions and the presentation of Results (ch. 3.) and Discussions (ch.4.) was correlated. We merged the 5 and 6 RQs, so the number of research question reduced to 6.

 

 

 Thank you so much for your valuable comments! We hope with these changes our paper meets the quality requirements of “Education Sciences”.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx