Analysis of Scratch Software in Scientific Production for 20 Years: Programming in Education to Develop Computational Thinking and STEAM Disciplines

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper for Educational Sciences

Aim

The aim of this paper is to report on 20 years’ activities and publications of an educational software program for beginners by analysing how the program has been used, who used the program and what has been achieved. To achieve this aim, the authors used a bibliometric analysis.

Overall, the paper achieves its aim and shows the development/evolution of the use of this software over the 20 years since its creation.

Critique

This is a potentially useful paper. I believe the following issues should be addressed in the revision.

1.      The paper is written more like a technical report rather than a research paper. All the necessary elements are there but the paper would be better focusing on the educational findings of the research. One way to achieve this, is especially to change the title to have research focus.  That this is as 20-year celebration of the software’s use should be the subtext not the focus of this research paper and the title.

2.      The educational context of the program and subsequent research is presented in Section 1.2 – from this reviewer’s perspective, this is what the reader needs to appraise first before learning about the details of Scratch and its use. I would also like to know of other educational software at that time and gain some appreciation of the significance of this program in the broader educational connect of the time. Some of these issues are presented in the short paragraph before section 1.3. Can this be substantially expanded?

3.      The authors should reconsider the language used in the research questions in section 1.3 to be more scientific and measurable – words like ‘importance’, ‘outstanding’ have inbuilt author bias and can replaced by ‘use’ and ‘frequent’.

4.      From what I can ascertain, the authors have taken care to conduct the bibliometric analysis using the PRISMA protocol. Figure 4 and Table 1 provide the reader with the necessary details to follow the results. 

5.      However, Figure 4 is too small and needs to be much larger. 

6.      The exception to the analysis is ‘Areas of knowledge’ as shown in table 3 – this multiple use of Education and Educational is confusing.

7.      The presented results do fit the research questions. Maybe the research questions should be revised to fit, for example, about the issue of the three periods under investigation.

8.      The paper would be easier to follow if the results were presented in response to research questions and be separate sections.

9.      Information in the cluster networks (figures 9, 11, 13) and the network map (Figure 15) are not needed to understand the research findings and should be excluded from the paper. These can presented as urls for interested readers who wish to know more.

10.   In this reader’s understanding of the research – as opposed to being a report - the information in Table 13 and figure 14 are the most important issues that arise from this research and should be given the main central place of the paper. 

11.   In keeping with the above comments, the minor issues in tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 can be easily presented as text rather than tables.

12.   The discussion would be better focusing on the research questions and the findings in Table 13 and figure 14.

13.   Minor point – Table 13 heading – P1- (2003-2016)

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I have attached the responses to your considerations in a Word document.

Regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is well written and makes clear the extensive work done.

The acronym "TC" was introduced without mentioning what it is. Is it Computational Thinking.  If so, you have a conflict with "CT" in the abstract.

What are the indexes mentioned in the end of section 2.1? 

What are the purpose of the indexes mentioned in the begining of section 2.2?

Figure 4 is too small and difficult to read. It could be divided in 3 Figures.

In page 8 you mention that "In 2021 and 2022 the number of documents decreases, coinciding  with the Covid-19 pandemic period."  Do you have any evidence that the same happened with papers in other areas? Isn´t a bit strong to suggest that this happened as a consequence of COVID-19?

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I have attached the responses to your considerations in a Word document.

Regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for responding to my review which I agree has really improved the flow and presentation of the article. The figures are now readable and hence more meaningful.

 

My only major comment is the title - the authors may like the title  but it is not engaging to the potential reader - and in my view now knowing the paper not informative.

 

I consider that ‘programming needs to be in the title - what about the following?  In this statement the 20 years makes sense. The sentence after ‘Scratch’ comes from the authors’ text -lines 74-75.

 

Scatch should bee in single quotations or in italics.

 

My recommended title is below:

Analysis of 20-years of research on 'Scratch': A powerful programming tool for integrating art and creativity in schools by developing skills in STEAM disciplines

 

Minor -line 870 ….objectives

Author Response

Dear reviewer, I have attached the responses to your considerations in a Word document.

Regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf