Reflective Practice in Times of Covid-19: A Tool to Improve Education for Sustainable Development in Pre-Service Teacher Training

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to review this manuscript. The authors address some interesting research questions that are relevant to teacher training institutions around the world. Overall, I feel the manuscript is well-written and relevant to the field. See specific comments in the Methods section below that require attention and revision from the authors. It would also help the reader to have the full set of Reflective Practice Questionnaire items appended for reference.

Introduction & Literature Review

The introduction provides a brief yet succinct overview of sustainable education goals, processes of reflection, and the importance of reflection for initial teacher training - with relevant foundational authors cited.

Methods

The sample is adequately described across all campuses. Constructs are well-operationalized and are appropriate for the given research.

The data were analyzed using an alpha of 0.05. Since multiple hypotheses were tested (age, location, academic year), it is appropriate to apply the Bonferroni correction to establish statistical significance. This will avoid Type I error occurring by chance.   

Results & Discussion

The text in the data tables is very small and difficult to read. The authors may want to put the larger tables on a separate/landscape page for easier reading.

See comment in methods section regarding the alpha used to determine significant differences observed between groups.

The final sentence suggesting additional discussion on how reflective practice can become “a differentiating element to achieve quality education, allowing adaptation to current and future adverse situations,” should be included.

Minor comments:

The authors may wish to reread the manuscript with a lens for grammatical sentence structure. The errors are few, but noticeable.

Author Response

You can find the answers to reviewer 1 in the pdf document

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The Abstract should follow a clear structure: research questions, methodology, basic findings, innovation, implications.Main purpose of the paper, basic findings and implications are well stated; however, research questions and the innovation of the study should be more highlighted. Regarding keywords, those are suitable for the purpose of the paper.

Moving on to the main part of the manuscript, the “Introduction” section is well structured. The importance of SDG4 and the innovation that provides in Education are clearly stated and the research questions are well demonstrated too. The subsections used are suitable and relevant to the study, while Figure 1 should be added in the Appendix of the paper. Regarding literature references, those are adequate and relevant to the study; however, some of them could still be replaced from recent ones.

The “Materials and Methods” section contains all the necessary information about methodology. In order for the content to be better allocated in the section, authors should use the following 3 subsections: “Method”, “Sample” and “Data Analysis”.

In the “Results” section, the findings of the study are well demonstrated and both tables and figures are clear enough. However, both tables and figures should be added in the Appendix of the paper. Regarding the “Discussion” section, any findings from the research conducted, are further discussed and analyzed and the content of the section is well structured in two main subsections in accordance with the research questions. Besides that, regarding limitations and suggestions that are stated, authors could build a subsection named “Limitations of the present study and suggestions for future research” and add that content there. The “Conclusions” section is well structured and the main aspects of the paper are clearly summarized.

Finally, regarding the quality of communication, any reader can follow the flow of the arguments stated, but in any case, the paper could be revised by a language expert.  

Author Response

You can find the answers to reviewer 2 in the pdf document

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study ultimately reflects the concern for high quality education that helps people to understand what is happening (know), to feel part of the society they live in (know how to be), and to know how they can actively participate on a personal and professional level (know how to do), and this is precisely the value of the study.

It incorporates the necessary information, guiding the reader to identify the basic content of the text quickly, and the title is very appropriate.

It presents the objective of the study, the main elements of the methodology and the findings and conclusions.

Current and thematically relevant article, especially for the value it takes with respect to the covid-19 time we are living in.

The results, analysis and discussion are correctly presented.

It organises the reported works adequately.

Correctly describes the methodological perspective although the statistical analyses could be complemented. Justifies the criteria for sample selection (scarce), types of information and ways of obtaining it.

The results are developed with detail and precision.

The limitations and prospective are not explicit and should be proposed.

It is recommended that it be published with the suggested, minimal changes regarding the determination of limitations and prospective.

Author Response

You can find the answers to reviewer 1 in the pdf document

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf