Impact of the Pandemic on STEAM Disciplines in the Sixth Grade of Primary Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author/s
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your manuscript. I read your manuscript with great interest. Your manuscript is well structured and organized and partially follows the instructions of the journal. However, the manuscript needs minor or even major changes that will significantly improve it. Below you will find some minor or major points in the manuscript which need clarification, refinement, reanalysis, rewrites and/or additional information and suggestions for what could be done to improve it.

Section 4 (Discussion) seems to be well argued, however, appears to be poor or unclear. The discussion should be done from the perspective of previous studies and/or of the working hypotheses. Please extend this section a little more. In particular, please cite more of the journal papers published by EJIHPE or even MDPI where possible.

Section 5 (Conclusions), Section 6 (Prospective studies and future lines of research) and Section 7 (Study limitations) are very simple and look poor. Please extend these sections or you could even merge them into one section.

In conclusion, certain sections of the manuscript begin or end abruptly, which may reduce the reader's attention or interest. I would suggest the author/s could consider including some introductory paragraphs regarding the content of each section, in order to give the reader an idea of what to expect. Additionally, some discrepancies were observed between the present manuscript and the required template. 

As a final comment, kindly read your manuscript again with a clear mind and make the necessary corrections. You may need to move some parts to other sections for there to be a logical flow. Moreover, kindly check for grammatical errors, and new publications that could form part of the manuscript.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I think it is a timely study that investigate the effects of several approaches of STEAM-EDU in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. By using quasi experimental design, I think the study successfully provide us convincing evidence to draw the conclusion. However, I have one concern. That is how the researchers make sure(or control) there are no contamination due to the long study duration? Or how did they  ensure the internalvalidation of the study?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is quite interesting both from the theoretical and methodological point. It is well structured with sufficient theoretical background. The authors should consider an article entitled “From STEM to STEAM and to STREAM enabled through meaningful critical reflective learning” that can be accessed through Google. This will add to the conceptualization of STEAM in the paper. The methodology and the procedures involved are well explained and the instruments used are validated with good evidence of their robustness. Cronbach's alpha 227 (α=.84) and composite reliability (FC=.81). The results are presented well but they should be contrasted with the two hypotheses set, namely: • H1: STEAM-EDU disciplines are more effective with an active methodology based on Computational Thinking and with Makerspaces compared to a traditional methodology. • H2: The degree of collaboration through STEAM-EDU during the pandemic is more effective in the experimental group compared to the control group. This should also be visible in the section of discussion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author/s,
I consider the current version to be suitable for publication.
Congratulations on the effort made to improve the work!