Empowering Sustainable Futures: Insights from the Integration and Impact of Software-Gifted Classes in South Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The title is not clear. 

Lines 40-44: Here the findings are presented at the very beginning of the paper. Findings should be given in the Findings section. 

Lines 48-49: “We firmly believe that the insights emanating from our study can substantially contribute 48 to the advancement of best practices and policies in sustainable technology education.” Please elaborate on your idea. Support your claim w/ literature. 

Research Questions. Lines 94-97: The first RQ should be divided into parts: a) how were Software gifted classes introduced in South Korea  & b) what in-94 sights can be gained from their introduction process. 

Lines 108-110: “The significance and relevance of our research lie in providing the theoretical foundation for developing educational processes and content applicable to the future expansion of Software gifted classes through the process of addressing our research questions.” This statement should be explained in. depth. How can your research the theoretical foundation for developing educational processes? Please support your claims with research literature. 

Lines 135-137: “As research in computer science giftedness advanced, theories regarding software giftedness began to arise. The establishment of the software giftedness criteria and the activation of software gifted education led to substantial research progress.” These sentences should supported with the research and please expand on your claims with detailed lit review.

Lines 138-142: Please provide more details regarding the research studies mentioned here. 

Lines 151-151: explain more the differences between the western and Korean gifted education programs. 

What is the rationale of the study? Why should a non-Korean read this paper? Provide the signicance before the Research Methods (Line 165). Why are the research questions important to explore?

Who are the authors? What are theire role in this gifted program?

Describe the Software Gifted Class program with more details. We would like to read more about the components of the program. 

Line 187: what is the “the perception survey”? how many questions? purpose? development process? sample items? format of the items? more details please. 

Lines 197-198: “Variables influencing the achievements and career paths of software gifted students are highly diverse” - what are these variables? 

Table 3: how did you select the Latent variables? your rationale? 

Line 196: “variable setup” - this section needs elaboration. Please expand…. why did you utilize the structural equation model?

Table 3 is not clear. Please make it more understandable for the reader. 

Lines 207-208:  “We assumed that if software gifted students have an interest in software education, 207 it would affect their achievements and career development.” why? please explain your reasoning underlying your assumption. 

Lines 211-216: The hypotheses - any literature support for the hypotheses?

Figure 2. Research Model: How did you form the model? what is your support? just based on your hypotheses I do not think that you can form such a model. 

Participants: Did all the participants complete the survey? missing data? all voluntered?

Table 4: What is the “competition rate”? How did you calculate? why did you calculate that way?

Lines 238-242: Please provide support for your claims. 

Lines 249-250: “While this approach is necessary, there was a need to establish and stabilize consistent selection criteria.” what are your suggestions for the criteria? What is needed?

Table 6: Please describe the table more. 

Compare and contrast the Curriculum Compositions of 2016 & 2017.

Table 10: Describe the content of the table…

Conclusion: Expand on your thoughts on Conclusion 1, Conclusion 2 & Conclusion 3.

Please support the conclusions thoroughly by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Today, digitalization is an integral part of all sectors of the economy and therefore the career of a programmer is becoming a rapidly growing scientific field. The South Korean education system is one of the most technologically advanced. Studying the specifics of its development is an important and promising topic for many researchers.

Therefore, this study is relevant and describes the sustainability aspect of technology education with a particular focus on the specific area of gifted programming classes.

One of the important factors that creates the prerequisites for the successful training of gifted programmers is that such children are characterized by high independence in the process of cognition. The development of special programs that expand the possibilities of implementing new methods and forms of self-learning and self-development will contribute to the implementation of the principle of individualization of learning, which is so necessary for gifted students and increasing their interest in learning.

The use of innovative technologies with gifted programmers allows not only effectively training them, but also to maintain their interest in learning, promoting their development and lying the potential for their future achievements. It is precisely this triad of “interest-development-achievement” was substantiated on real data.

This manuscript is clear, relevant and well-structured manner.

The manuscript is scientifically substantiated, and the research plan substantiates the formulated hypotheses.

All the manuscript’s results reproduced based on the details presented methods. The elements of descriptive statistics and the method of structural equations used correctly and competently.

The tables and figures properly show data and substantiated the results of research.

Novelty: The idea of the article is original and interesting.

Scope: The work is fit the journal scope.

Significance: basically, the results obtained are interpreted correctly.

Quality: the article is written at a sufficient level of presentation of scientific results. Data and analysis are presented qualitatively.

Scientific Soundness: This study is well designed and technically sound. The data are reliable.

Interest to the Readers: conclusions are of interest attract a wide readership.

Overall Merit: work open up new knowledge.

Author Response

Thank you for the very thorough review and thoughtful comments on our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

In many respects this is a technically and methodologically well-written article. However, in my opinion the main weakness is that article has only a very limited relevance for the journal ”Sustainability”: The authors state that they “firmly believe that the insights emanating from our study [of Software gifted classes, reviewer] can substantially contribute to the advancement of best practices and policies in sustainable technology education” (lines 48-49). I am not so sure about that, and at least more focus should be made on the transfer from software education to sustainable technology education. There is no reflection of the relevance of the study for sustainable technology education in the conclusion section, and I miss a discussion section in which this topic could be relected.

Also, the three hypotheses of the study are not very original (they are not contra-intuitive), cf. lines 206-216. Therefore, it is not surprising that hypothesis 1 is totally confirmed and hypothesis 3 is almost totally confirmed. However, it comes as a surprise that hypothesis 2 (The interest of software gifted students in software education will influence software career development) is only partly confirmed (in 2020 and first half of 2021, but not in second half of 2021 and 2022) (table 10, after line 321). This is reflected in the conclusion section, stating that “interest alone may not be directly linked to career development.” (lines 336-337) However, I miss a deeper discussion of the implication of this finding.

Finally, much of the article is rather descriptive.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your precious time and efforts invested in improving this paper. Your insightful advice is very much appreciated. We have addressed your concerns, which greatly improved the quality of our paper.

[414-464] In the conclusion section, we added a discussion to confirm the relevance of sustainable technology education and this research. Furthermore, as you pointed out, we identified the limitations of the hypotheses and set the direction for additional research in the future. We believe that verifying the most intuitive hypothesis and elaborating on it in subsequent research is also a research approach.

Thanks again for your insightful comments and your valuable time devoted to improving this manuscript. We believe the quality of this paper has been significantly imploved by addressing your concerns.

Reviewer 4 Report

Congratulations to the authors for their work.

The title of the paper defines the content of the paper well.

The general objective of the paper is well stated.

The manuscript could fit into the subject matter of the special issue of the journal specific to the special issue, however, in the wording of the paper the authors should not refer to this fact as they do in line 46 and 47.

The keywords, career development and interest are perhaps too abstract for the subject matter of the article.

The method proposed by the authors proposes to answer two research questions and is supported by five reports from the support team of the software gifted class. However, they do not clarify whether the reports they use themselves did not already show conclusions that respond to the questions that arise. In this sense, as an evaluator of the work, I wonder what objectives these reports were made for if they do not answer questions such as those raised by the researchers in the article.

The variables are well defined and the results and their discussion are well presented, responding to the proposed hypotheses. However, the authors, in the discussion, must reflect on the reason why interest in software education does not always affect professional development. For example, could this perception be caused by the age of the students given that the change is radical from a certain moment?

The conclusions are very focused on the work itself and not contrasted with similar studies that can further generalize the results as a contribution to educational research.

The article could have been reinforced with more international bibliographic references on high-ability students, not only focused on Asia.

Minor issues: In table 9, in some cases, B must be replaced by β

Author Response

Thank you for your thoughtful review of our paper.

We appreciate your feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Regarding your comment about not referring to the special issue in the paper (lines 46-47), we will certainly make the necessary revisions to remove any such references.

Regarding the choice of keywords, we will reconsider and possibly select more specific terms that align better with the article's subject matter.

We acknowledge your concern about the reports from the support team and whether they already addressed the research questions. We will provide additional clarity on the purpose and objectives of these reports and how they relate to our research.

Your point about exploring the reason why interest in software education may not always impact professional development, possibly due to students' age, is insightful. We will consider this perspective and include a discussion on potential age-related factors.

In terms of the conclusions, we will work on broadening their scope by comparing our findings with similar studies in the field to provide a more comprehensive contribution to educational research.

We also appreciate your suggestion to include more international bibliographic references on high-ability students, beyond just an Asian focus. We will expand our reference list to encompass a more global perspective.

Regarding the minor issue with Table 9, we will ensure that any instances of "B" are appropriately replaced with "β" as needed.

Once again, thank you for your valuable feedback, and we will make the necessary revisions to address these points in our paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing the reviewers' comments and suggestions. It is much better now. 

Author Response

Once again, we would like to express our gratitude for the valuable comments from the reviewer. Thanks to your input, we believe we were able to significantly improve this manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for revising the conclusion sections. I have no further comments or suggestions.

Reviewer 4 Report

As an evaluator, I continue with the doubt I raise about the method.

In table 9, check if the coefficients are all unified with the same denomination

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf