PONE-D-22-31844Relationship between Students’ Attitude towards, and Performance in Mathematics Word ProblemsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wakhata,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Peer review of your manuscript is now complete and, in light of the reports, and my own assessment as an academic editor, I inform you that your manuscript needs major revisions. Please find the reviewers' reports at the end of this email. As you can see, both reviewers shared their questions and concerns about the study.  Please pay more attention to reviewer 2’s comments when you are revising and improving your paper.

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Daner Sun

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The study presents the results of original research. Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a good technical standard and are described in sufficient detail. Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data. The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.

Still, there are some issues for the authors' consideration and revisions.

Para 1.1 Please revise the citation format in the first sentence.

Para 3.2 Of the 608 students, 291 (47.86%) were males and 492 (57.8%) were females with a mean age of 18.36 (S.D = 0.94) years. 291 plus 492 does not equal 608. Please double check.

For the Data Analysis part, please present the tables according the APA style. For example, it should be three digits after decimal point rather than four digits. The data analysis part needs to be enhanced.

Reviewer #2: This research seems to be interesting, but the author did not introduce it following rigorous academic norms. The theoretical basis, methodology, analysis and discussion of the results have not been fully delivered. In the literature review section, many ideas are vague and need to be expanded. In the methodology section, does the research design effectively respond to the purpose of the research, and does each subsection follow a logical sequence? The discussion section lacks systematic analysis, as well as critical discussion. In the Results section, there is no response to the purpose of the study. The following are some specific comments including textual and logical issues:

P3, 1.1 Verschaffel et al., 2010),

P5, 1.3 there is no “in the middle of the sentence.

P2 and P3, there are many references supporting one statement, which is a very general conclusion, for example, "some empirical findings report students’ attitudes towards specific units or topics in mathematics to enhance the learning of that specific content and mathematics”, and “Yet, some empirical studies have shown existence of significant

relationships between students’ attitude and performance in mathematics”. Do they say the same thing or have the same effect? And could you kindly clarify this statement and make those references indicating the specific results?

P3, “it appears that multiple factors ranging from students’ demographic factors to teachers’ classroom instructional practices influence students’ attitude towards learning mathematics" What multiple factors? I would suggest authors indicate this clearly.

P4, “Despite numerous difficulties encountered by students in algebraic inequalities (e.g., Fernández & Molina, 2017; Molina et al., 2017;Bazzini & Tsamir, 2004; Tsamir & Almog, 2001; Tsamir & Bazzini, 2004, 2006; Tsamir & Tirosh, 2006), a combination of methods (strategies) rather than one specific method can be applied to overcome specific students’ learning challenges.” These sentences seem not to be connected with the prior sentences. Please re-organize this part so that it could be aligned with this section.

Section 1.2 is too simple, authors should expand some points, for example, “Previous empirical studies have revealed that LP and/or related concepts are not only difficult for learners but also challenging to teach (Awofala, 2014; Goulet-Lyle et al., 2020; Kenney et al., 2020; Verschaffel et al., 2020a, 2020b).” What difficulties did the students encounter, cognitive or non-cognitive? “Different factors account for learners’ challenges in mathematics word problems?” What are these different factors? Is there existing research on attitudes towards Mathematics Word Problems? What kind of attitudes students held?

P6, not sure how these two theoretical frameworks connected. Could you clarify how "expectancy-value model theory within the constructivism paradigm” works?

P7, “Active Learning Heuristic Problem Solving Strategies" is here for the first time. More information should be provided in the literature review about these strategies.

Methodology, authors should make sure the correct methodology, “A quantitative survey research design” or “A quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test, non-equivalent, non-randomized control group study design". Please check the methodology and method. They are different.

P9, Treatment group vs. Experimental group, please use the same term throughout the context.

P9, “The learning in the comparison group was purely conventional, and teachers did not follow proper and organized strategies as was the case with the treatment group.” It seems that the treatment group has been involved in a more scientific, systematic, and better teaching method than the comparison group, so it is certain that the treatment group will achieve better results. In this case, the conclusion is obvious.

“Empirical studies (e.g., Abdul et al., 2010; Sari et al., 2012) have found that the stated materials enhance students’ conceptual understanding and critical thinking abilities. These strategies were further integrated in problem solving strategies (Polya, 2014) by ensuring that students understand the LP word problem, devise a plan, adequately carry out the plan and finally look back to verify solution sketches (see Appendix 3 for PS01, PS02, PS03, PS04). To ensure that students minimize errors and misconceptions, the learning of LP was further integrated with Newman Error Analysis (NEA) model (Mushlihah, 2018)." Those statements should be put in the literature review.

“The instrument was designed by the researcher and validated by experts in mathematics education as an error analysis tool to provide teachers with a framework to consider the underlying reasons why students answer mathematics word problems incorrectly. The teachers emphasized question reading and decoding, comprehension, transformation, process skills and encoding (see Appendix 3 for NEA01, NEA02, NEA03, NEA04 and NEA05).” You started to say new points. This paragraph contains two many ideas: strategies, instruments, coding.

P10. “the post attitude questionnaire and achievement test were administered to both groups, and analysis was done by comparing and contrasting students’ feedback on attitudinal constructs and the post-test scores." Not sure what the achievement test is. You should clearly state how many instruments you apply and how many hours implement the treatment group. Who implemented it in the treatment group and comparison group?

For table 4 and table 5, there is not enough explanation, what statistical method is used, and how to explain the data?

Again, the description of table8,9,10 is also very simple and unclear.

The main problem in the discussion part is that there is a lack of comparison with previous literature, and critical discussion, as with the total number of literature, the author needs to make a more detailed comparison with the relevant literature instead of citing a lot of literature.

The conclusion section does not respond well to the purpose of the study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: review comments.edited.docx

Relationship between Students’ Attitude towards, and Performance in Mathematics Word Problems

PONE-D-22-31844R1

Dear Dr. Wakhata,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Daner Sun

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have well addressed the reviewers' comments.

Reviewers' comments: