Exploring Gender Differences in Teacher–Student Interactions during an Adapted Robotics Program for Children with Disabilities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments have be taken in consideration and the raised issues have been addressed.

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the authors for the modifications and clarifications. I suggest further minor changes in text editing. Specifically, tables 1 to 6 I would suggest putting them immediately after the quote in the text. Line 237 there is an extra space preceding "Most".

Thanks

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Summary

The purpose of this article was to understand gender differences in teacher-student interactions during an adapted robotics program for children with disabilities. The paper outlines that Robotics programs (e.g., FIRST®) are an effective and increasingly popular approach for developing the interest and skills of youth in STEM disciplines.

Strengths

The work is generally well written and described, although a further proof-read would be beneficial to catch a few minor grammar errors. 

 

Improvements

Furthermore, the authors should place the sections according to the indications of the Social Science Journal (Introduction, Materials and methods, etc). The abstract may also need to be revised ((1) Study aims, Methods, etc). It probably doesn't need to be in sections. I suggest to the authors to review the recent journal format.

Unfortunately, I had difficulty reading the manuscript. The tables do not have the correct numbers and do not match. Table 1 in the text is missing. Some re-formatting regarding the placement of figures would be useful as well; they are not always in good positions relative to where they are referred to in the text. I suggest inserting the table immediately after the mention in the text.

Furthermore, the data in the table do not correspond to those inserted in the text. Example: Line 124- if I refer to table 5 (not Table 6 as reported) N = 168 should be 196 (or 93 + 103). Unfortunately, I did not find N= 168 in any table of the manuscript. This does not allow me to understand if the results and conclusions are correct.

Lines 255-257: the Authors report “…After building, children exchanged ideas with their peers on what was built. This opening activity was followed by a short video showing challenges faced by today’s scientists..”. I suggest that the authors give more details on the video.

There are a couple of other research papers that I would suggest that the authors consider referencing:

DOI: 10.1007/s12369-016-0359-6.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330442522_Robot_tell_me_a_tale_A_Social_Robot_as_tool_for_Teachers_in_Kindergarten. 

Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments to "Exploring gender differences in teacher-student interactions during an adapted robotics program for children with disabilities"

I think this paper is a very interesting exploratory work on how gender affects the interactions between student and teacher in one of the main STEM areas: robotics. In my point of view, the topic is completely inside the scope and the research seems to be rigorous and well conducted.

The abstract presents the research results in a very clear way, one can take a direct photograph of what the authors have done in just one glance. The abstract is perhaps the best part of the work.

My concerns about this paper (and the reason because of I will recommend not to publish it in the present form) is the way the authors present the data. As far as I know, the sections' order is a crucial aspect to take care of. The current paper does not respect the classical order of Introduction  -Materials and Methods - Results - Discussion - Conclusion - References, but develops the whole research in other sequence. This is not necessarily worse, but in this case, at least for me, makes very difficult the understanding of the article.

I recommend the authors re-writting the article in the classical way of presenting this piece of research, so readers will find it easier to understand and to appreciate its valuable insights.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper addresses a very interesting topic related to gender differences and disability in teacher-student interactions for STEM.

The sections are well-written.

I suggest to enrich the data analysis to better highlight the weight of gender differences.