Measuring and Activating iSTEM Key Principles among Student Teachers in STEM

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled Measuring and activating iSTEM key principles among student-teachers in STEM. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.

The presented study contains a well-written introductory chapter that contains enough references. It continues with the Materials and Methods chapter, which fails to describe the 'CODEM for iSTEM' methodology. The third chapter presents the results. The fourth chapter contains discussions, it is well and comprehensively prepared. It also contains work limits and future work.

The text information in Figure 1 is very small and completely illegible. I recommend increasing the text information adequately. I noticed the same thing in Figure 2 where the chart labels are again very small text. I recommend editing.

In the study, I see great potential for further follow-up research.

However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.

This study refers to 49 scientific references, resources and publications. The references used are current and of sufficient quality, and are a suitable tereotic basis for this study.

This study represents a contribution in this area of research.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your helpful comments. We have revised the manuscript accordingly.

• Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled Measuring and activating iSTEM key principles among student-teachers in STEM. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.

• The presented study contains a well-written introductory chapter that contains enough references. It continues with the Materials and Methods chapter, which fails to describe the 'CODEM for iSTEM' methodology. The third chapter presents the results. The fourth chapter contains discussions, it is well and comprehensively prepared. It also contains work limits and future work.
  • The acronym ‘CODEM for iSTEM’ is now explained in line 100.

• The text information in Figure 1 is very small and completely illegible. I recommend increasing the text information adequately. I noticed the same thing in Figure 2 where the chart labels are again very small text. I recommend editing.
  • Thank you for pointing this out. However, Figure 1 merely functions as an illustration of a random phase. Therefore the small text in the figure is not meant to be read, as the text would be out of context and would only confuse the reader.
  • The chart labels in Figure 2 have been increased in size and the y- and x-axis are described in the text below the figure.

• In the study, I see great potential for further follow-up research.

• However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.
  • We acknowledge the reviewer’s concern about the length of some passages. That being said, we are convinced that these texts provide essential information needed to fully comprehend the manuscript.

• This study refers to 49 scientific references, resources and publications. The references used are current and of sufficient quality, and are a suitable theoretic basis for this study.

• This study represents a contribution in this area of research.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for education-1950314-peer-review-v1

Title: Measuring and activating iSTEM key principles among student-teachers in STEM.

Title:

1.     Measuring and activating iSTEM key principles among student-teachers in STEM. (lines 2-3)

Remove the hyphen to read “student teachers”.

Abstract:

1.     Please define STEM on first use.

2.     There are missing periods at the ends of the sentences in lines 6, 7, 9.

3.     “This study examines to which extent” (line 9)

Should read “to what extent”.

Introduction:

4.     Please define STEM on first use.

5.     “from separate STEM-disciplines” (line 24)

Remove hyphen to read “STEM disciplines”.

6.     “In Flanders, between 2014 and 2018…” (line 86)

What is Flanders? A location? This is the first mention. Please could the authors add an explanation.

7.     “Since 2019, KU Leuven’s Master of Teaching in Science and Technology includes a mandatory course on iSTEM project design…” (lines 89-91)

Why was this Masters course specifically chosen? Please add a lead-in phrase explaining the link to this particular institution/course.

8.     Remove hyphens from “student-teachers” throughout the manuscript to read “student teachers”.

9.     Could the research questions (lines 118-121) be made into a bullet pointed list? That would emphasise them whereas at the moment, they get a bit lost in the middle of the text.

10.  “To which extent does the…” (line 118)

Change to “To what extent”.

Materials and Methods:

11. Line 163 ends with two period, please remove one.

12. There’s a lot of things that look like acronyms that aren’t defined. Is “CODEM” (eg line 175) an acronym? Is CiSTEM² (eg line 248)? If they are, please define on first use.

13.  “For each item, the rubric contains four scoring criteria: insufficient, sufficient, strong and very strong. Achieving a higher scoring criterion always assumes that the criteria of the lower scores are also fulfilled.” (lines 264-267)

Could you give a brief example of how this works in practice?

14.  “discission” (line 330)

Should read “decision”

15. I’m not 100% sure how the observations of meetings have been analysed.

Results:

16.  “For MOD, the cause lies in remaining unaware of the assumptions or validity of a model” (lines 372-373).

How do you know this is the cause? Is this a fact from your research results (in which case, which results?), or authors’ opinions?

17.  “PCL, DBL, IBL and MOD show a modest positive linear growth curve” (lines 379-180)

Please explicitly signpost to Figure 2 in the text here.

18. Overall, I’m not clear which results are from the qualitative analysis? Please could the authors make this clearer.

19. There’s also no qualitative evidence supporting claims – perhaps brief descriptions of what happens or is said in the video clips can be added in order to support the relevant claims made.

Discussion:

20. Why is “professional development needs” in italics on line 425? This isn’t clear. Same comment about “changes in iSTEM education conceptions” in line 429.

21. There is an ellipsis in line 511. What is this indicating? It looks like something was just forgotten to be added.

Conclusion:

22. There’s no conclusion as such, and it feels like the article just seems to stop. Would it be possible to add a short paragraph of conclusion, just summarizing the findings with relation to the research questions?

References:

23. Good range of references.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your helpful comments. We have revised the manuscript accordingly.

• What is Flanders? A location? This is the first mention. Please could the authors add an explanation.
  • Flanders is explained to be a region in Belgium (see line 97).
• “Since 2019, KU Leuven’s Master of Teaching in Science and Technology includes a mandatory course on iSTEM project design…” (lines 89-91). Why was this Masters course specifically chosen? Please add a lead-in phrase explaining the link to this particular institution/course.
  • The manuscript now explains that it was the KU Leuven who chose to implement the iSTEM course in their ‘Master of Teaching in Science and Technology’ (lines 103-105). 
• “For each item, the rubric contains four scoring criteria: insufficient, sufficient, strong and very strong. Achieving a higher scoring criterion always assumes that the criteria of the lower scores are also fulfilled.” (lines 264-267). Could you give a brief example of how this works in practice?
  • An example was given in line 295: “For example, the table in Appendix A shows that when a team achieves a ‘strong’ score on the item ‘explicitly formulating expected objectives/results’ of the PCL key principle, this indicates that the team not only fulfilled the criterion of the ‘strong’ score ‘Show awareness of the underlying reason / usefulness why these results should be achieved.’, but automatically also the criterion of the ‘sufficient’ score ‘Explicitly formulate which actions should be taken and what the result should be.’. Logically, in order for a team to be aware of the results’ usefulness, it first needs to formulate what the results should be.”
• I’m not 100% sure how the observations of meetings have been analyzed.
  • The observations were analyzed via the CiSTEM²-TTR rubric (see line 259). Part 2.4 contains a full description of the rubric.
• “For MOD, the cause lies in remaining unaware of the assumptions or validity of a model” (lines 372-373). How do you know this is the cause? Is this a fact from your research results (in which case, which results?), or authors’ opinions?
  • Thank you for pointing out that the wording used is somewhat misleading as we cannot test true causation in qualitative research. Therefore we have now chosen the term ‘reason’.
• Overall, I’m not clear which results are from the qualitative analysis? Please could the authors make this clearer.
  • All the findings reported in the ‘Results’ section are derived from the qualitative video-analysis using the rubric.
• There’s also no qualitative evidence supporting claims – perhaps brief descriptions of what happens or is said in the video clips can be added in order to support the relevant claims made.
  • Although adding citations from the video meetings will provide additional information, this would lengthen the manuscript considerably. A manuscript that is already reaching the maximum word limit. Therefore we have only presented the results based on the analysis via the rubric.
• There’s no conclusion as such, and it feels like the article just seems to stop. Would it be possible to add a short paragraph of conclusion, just summarizing the findings with relation to the research questions?
  • A conclusion was added, see part 5 ‘Conclusion’.
• Spelling and grammar:
  • Hyphen was removed from ‘student-teachers’ in the title (see lines 2-3) and throughout the rest of the manuscript.
  • Periods have been added at the ends of the sentences in lines 5-10.
  • To which extent” has been changed to “to what extent” (see lines 19 and 133)
  • STEM has been defined on first use (see lines 29-30).
  • The hyphen was removed from ‘STEM-disciplines’ throughout the manuscript.
  • The research questions are transformed into a bullet pointed list (see lines 131-136).
  • The double period was removed from line 183.
  • The acronyms CODEM for iSTEM (line 100) and CiSTEM² (line 275) were defined upon first use.
  • ‘discission’ was replaced by ‘decision’ (line 366).
  • ‘see Figure 2’ was added to “PCL, DBL, IBL and MOD show a modest positive linear growth curve” (line 418).
  • Italics were removed from “professional development needs” in lines 465-467 and “changes in iSTEM education conceptions” in line 470.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the changes made.