Effect of Model-Based Problem Solving on Error Patterns of At-Risk Students in Solving Additive Word Problems

Feedback from reviewer 1

Response

The flow of the article is fine but I would rather prefer to see in the end paragraph of introduction the research gap and how the researcher tries to bridge it.

Thank you for your feedback. We have added a need statement, pointing out the gap, before the purpose statement. See the paragraph (tracked changes) before the two research questions.

I want to know if the gender differences has an impact on the applicability and capability of the students to learn after the model has been applied

Thank you for your concern.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study and the small number of participants involved in this study, it is not suitable to run Qi Square analysis to analyze the differences between males and females or on other demonography variables.

To run Qi Square analysis to see if there are differences between male and female for instance, suggested sample size is 50. As such, it is not appropriate to run statistical analyses to see “if the gender differences has an impact on the applicability and capability of the students to learn after the model has been applied”

The Sample size is small and I am not sure if the findings of this study can be generalized.

Thank you for the point. Yes, we did point it out in the limitation section, that the readers need to take into considerations of this limitation when interpreting the findings of this study.

Another thing I could not find the Conclusion as an independent section. 

Thank you for the suggestion, we have revised the discussion section and we have added a Conclusion section at the end of the manuscript—see the last section of the revised manuscript

Feedback from reviewer 2

Responses

Because the participants in this study were not normal-achieving students, we feel that the title should specify the participants involved in this study.  To address reviewers’ concern, we have clearly defined “at risk” in the first paragraph under “Introduction.”

The reviewer suggested to revise the research question to –

In relation to the MBPS intervention with students with LDM:

1.     Does it mean an improvement in success rate when doing addition and subtract word problems?

2.     Does the  MBPS intervention involve

 changes in the pattern of solving addition and subtraction problems in students with LDM.

Thank you for your suggestion.

We feel that the revised questions are not as clear as the original questions. For instance, the MBPS intervention would not “involve

 changes in the pattern of solving addition and subtraction problems in students with LDM.” As such, we kept our original questions.

Re concerns about participants:

1.     number of participants

2.     participant’s information

1.As it is described in the first apograph under “Participants and Setting”: There were a total of 13 participants, 9 of them came from a group design study and another 4 came from a multiple baseline across participants design (MB design) study. Data from the group design study and MB design study were analyzed separately.

2.According to IES’ (Institute of Educational Sciences) quality indicator of research papers (What Works Clearinghouse, WWC), detailed description of participant information is important (especially for small sample sized studies), so that other researchers and practitioners know that the intervention program was applied to what kind of students/population, to help readers better understand the findings of the study and apply the conclusion in context. As such, we kept the demographic information of the participants.

*It is suggested that these problem types will be used when analyzing the problem solving pattern

*Variables not explicitly specified

*It is not explained in method section how the analysis of the information were carried out

Thanks for the suggestion, we have added a paragraph under “Results” delineating the analysis strategies used to answer each of the research questions, which also addresses the specific variables (e.g., either % of students solved problems correctly) across the 14 problem types (for RQ1), or % of problems solved correctly for consistent or inconsistent language problems (for RQ2) before reporting the findings for each of the RQs. See the second paragraph under “RESULTS.”

Concern about statistical analysis:

It is necessary to exhaustively describe the

analysis procedure, the techniques used, the software, ...

The mere description in frequencies and percentages is a poor analysis, and the work carried out deserves an extensive inferential analysis.

 Thanks for the suggestion. We have revised the method section and made it clear that this study used descriptive statistics, supported by qualitative data, to answer the two research questions.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study involving small number of participants, it is not suitable to run inferential statistical analyses.

There are basic reequipments that need to be met in order to run most of the statistical analyses. These requirements may include random sampling process, data independency, and most relevantly minimum sample size.

For instance, it is perhaps not appropriate to runa t test to see the differences between students’ performance on solving consistent and inconsistent language problems, because there is not enough statistical power to run the test. To have enough statistical power to detect the potential differences, it perhaps needs to have a sample size of 50 or more.

On the other hand, we value the qualitative information gathered from individual students’ sample work, which help address the research questions raised in this study.

The discussion section could be structed around the two research questions

Thank you for your suggestions, we have made it more clear by adding a sentence at the end of the first paragraph under the “Discussion” section:

“The next two sections serve to answer each of the two research questions raised in this study.”

Reference.

take care of possible excess of self-citations

Thank you for the suggestions. We have deleted one self-citation and replaced it with a different citation. We kept other citations because they are necessary for the reporting of this study.