Exploring Categories of Self-Development of Novice Physical Education Teachers through Teacher Learning Community Activities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present study is a fascinating and high-quality probe into the self-concept and self-development of PE teachers in South Korea. The style, the basic idea, the handling of sources and the presentation of results are all of a high standard. It is a pleasure to read such a text. I also appreciate the identification of four cultures to reflect on further. Nevertheless, I have some comments on the text that I recommend considering:
1. I suggest moving the Conclusion section to the Discussion. Creating a new Discussion section that would show a more detailed description of the four approaches or cultures and put them in the context of other research would be highly desirable. I believe that such a move would move the text from "mediocre paper" to "highly original paper". The presence of a discussion and having a table describing each culture is essential.
2. Methodology - while other parts of the text are described very carefully, this part is very brief and unclear. Please explain the coding process, how many people were involved, how objectivity was ensured. With such a small sample of relatively short interviews, multiple people must work with repeated coding. Did it take place? The whole methodological part needs to be more transparent, more comprehensive. A process diagram would help considerably.
3. How long did the second interviews take? Is there any way to describe the individual teachers (while maintaining anonymity) in a table?
4. Formal page - line 148 contains an underlined reference to the literature.
5. I would welcome information on the education system that is broader than footnote 1. Would it be possible to devote a paragraph or chapter to it?
6. Overall view - I would consider more logical structuring of the text (IMRAD) and significantly more evident work with subheadings.
7. For further consideration - the authors rely on English-speaking authors, but are there not some cross-cultural determinants? Wouldn't it be worthwhile to discuss intercultural aspects in the Introduction or Discussion section, comparing the situation from different value and cultural perspectives? I think it would greatly benefit the quality of the text.
8. I would consider expanding the sample - given the time of the interviews, it would certainly be possible to work with at least ten or twelve respondents. It might then be possible to describe the different approaches to self-development better and interpret the results.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers;
First of all, I would like to thank you for your comments and suggestions that allowed me to greatly improve the quality of the manuscript. I agree with all your comments, and I revised them within the manuscript accordingly. In this document, your comments are in bold text and my responses in plain italics. As you can see the revised manuscript, I re-organized and added some sentences and paragraphs based on ALL reviewers’ comments and suggestions in the manuscript since all suggestions from the reviewers should be combined with each other for the flow of information and the appropriate structure of the paper. In the revised manuscript, I highlighted all the revised parts in red. Please see the manuscript along with my answers.
I would like to sincerely thank you for your advice and constructive comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Teacher Learning Communities have very important roles on novice teachers' professional career development especially during the initial years. The topic is very popular and it has the potantial to attract the international researchers. The methodology chosen for this research is very appropriate and analysis are fine. There are two main issues that can be seen as problematic. The first one is, there is no table in the whole manuscript. It can make a bit harder for the readers to follow the manuscript. I recommend the the authors to add a table showing the demographic features of the participants. The second important issue is about the conceptual framework. I think that the study can be improved by strengthening the theoretical background. For example the authors can mention about the mentoring and coaching for novice teachers and they can mention the relationship between mentoring and teacher learning community. It is a well-known fact that mentoring is also a good way to help novice teachers (especially peer mentoring ). Improving the theoretical background will strengthen the manuscript and also it will help the manuscript to gain international perspective.
Below you can find some of the related sources I can recommend:
Carter, M., & Francis, R. (2001). Mentoring and beginning teachers' workplace learning. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 29(3), 249-262.
Hobson, A. J., Ashby, P., Malderez, A., & Tomlinson, P. D. (2009). Mentoring beginning teachers: What we know and what we don't. Teaching and teacher education, 25(1), 207-216.
Richter, D., Kunter, M., Lüdtke, O., Klusmann, U., Anders, Y., & Baumert, J. (2013). How different mentoring approaches affect beginning teachers' development in the first years of practice. Teaching and teacher education, 36, 166-177.
Yirci, R. (2017). The evaluation of new mentoring program for novice teachers according to their perceptions. Pedagogika, 126(2), 29-47.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers;
First of all, I would like to thank you for your comments and suggestions that allowed me to greatly improve the quality of the manuscript. I agree with all your comments, and I revised them within the manuscript accordingly. In this document, your comments are in bold text and my responses in plain italics. As you can see the revised manuscript, I re-organized and added some sentences and paragraphs based on ALL reviewers’ comments and suggestions in the manuscript since all suggestions from the reviewers should be combined with each other for the flow of information and the appropriate structure of the paper. In the revised manuscript, I highlighted all the revised parts in red. Please see the manuscript along with my answers.
I would like to sincerely thank you for your advice and constructive comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I agree with publishing the text. It is no longer necessary to return it to the author in this form, but please change "4.5. Overall Discussion" on line 614 after "5. Overall Discussion". I think this is just an oversight in the text formatting that can already be resolved without reviewers.
