Effects of Instruction in Writing-to-Learn on Low-Achieving Adolescents in Biology and Mathematics Classes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the opportunity to review the paper. I found the topic interesting and of relevance to both the research and practitioner community. However, before the paper is ready for publication, significant work is needed in my view. Some of my major concerns are outlined below.

Reliability of measures

I am not convinced tests with such low Cronbach alphas constitute a coherent measure. Should they be used as a co-variate? It would be great if the authors could cite some other studies where assessments with such low reliability have been used as co-variate measures etc. For the second study in particular, the Cronbach alpha’s are so low that it does not seem possible to conceptualise prior topic knowledge and insight as measures at all. More generally, I wondered how it was that the Cronbach alpha for both post-tests for insight was in the acceptable range (approx .7), however for the pre-test was far lower. Such idiosyncrasies deserve more commentary and unpacking. They risk undermining the reader’s confidence in the analysis.

Style, Expression and Organisation

Although the paper is generally easy to follow and comprehensively referenced, English language expression could be improved throughout. I would strongly recommend professional editing of the paper to improve its flow, expression and readability if such resources are available to the authors. I think it would improve the impact of the paper overall.

Some specific elements to address:

• Repetition of a sentence in first paragraph. Repetition in other parts of the paper (e.g., Lines 726 to 734 are repeated a couple of paragraphs later multiple times). More generally, the paper is I think far longer than it needs to be, and aspects of it could be written far more succinctly.
• Do not replace author names with numbers in the body of the text. Include the name in the body of the text and the reference number in parentheses at the end of the sentence. For example: [16] was leading for this view should be “Bangert-Drowns et al. (2004) led this view [16].”
• The section 6.1 seems like you are reporting additional results (i.e., student/ teacher reactions to the various teaching approaches). I think this should be incorporated into the results section.

A more in-depth discussion

• I think the discussion of the findings, and connections back to the literature, could probably be extended. Given the wealth of data analysed, the interpretation of the results and how they contribute to what is known in this area is very brief.

I wish the authors all the best with their revisions of the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a really interesting educational research with a good literature review. However, there are some issues that can be improved in this paper, related to the organization and structure: there are too many sub-sections in the whole document, for example, introduction until 1.5 or material & methods even 2.7 or conclusions (discussion, implication, suggestions). I think it is necessary to synthesize and regroup some sections, such as: discussion and conclusions together and finally limitations and future research.  With a new reorganization, the research can be clearer.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study investigates effects of learning by writing in mathematics and biology classes. The first part of the paper presents a very detailed review of literature, concluding that "low achieving students may profit from instruction using writing to learn tasks"  (page 5). It is not clear for me what this new study brings in the landscape of the existing studies; indeed, the research questions seem to be in the line of the results of the previous studies.

The method is clearly described. Even if, I'm not convinced by the reasons given to include tests when Cronbach's alpha is low (page 11 or page 20); in other words, I'm not sure that it is  pertinent to quote the Cronbach's alpha if the results it gives are differently interpreted: it seems, when reading the text, that either the Cronbach's alpha is low and there is a good reason not to take it into account, or it is high, and it is definitively an argument to keep a test!

About the results: the statistical treatment of the study shows that there are no or very few differences between the experimental and the control groups, particularly in sciences (even if very questionable in maths). I would have been happy to read explanations of these results with cognitive reasons rather than explanations about the time and the pedagogical organization of the class (page 25). Perhaps the reasons you evoke in the text are to be taken into account, but I also think that the biological (the mathematical) content of the lessons need to be precisely analysed. Unfortunately, the paper doesn't let us know what are these contents precisely. 

It is interesting that beyond the results, the teachers consider that the experience was a good way to stimulate students' learning (page 26) ; it could be interesting to know better about the reasons of their answers.

It is nice to read that despite the poor results of the study, you still consider that "low achieving students can profit from instruction in writing to learn" (page 27) but it seems to me that there is a paradox in the research method when you choose to use a quantitative experimental method and explain the results with qualitative arguments.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

Thanks for your revised submission. I think you have done a great job of addressing my concerns around the low alpha - all the additions and additional references have been clarifying and clearly strengthened this section. I also think the decision to include the references in the body of the text has substantially improved the readability of the manuscript. My concerns around the style and flow of the manuscript are nowhere near what they were when I read the earlier version. I appreciate that the authors considered revising the discussion section, but agree that on second reading, with greater clarity throughout the paper as a consequence of the minor revisions the authors made (e.g., inserting names of the authors), that the discussion is sufficient given the papers' purpose. I think the paper is interesting, comprehensive and makes a valuable contribution.