Secondary Stage Science Teachers’ Perceptions toward STEM Education in Saudi Arabia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The background section could benefit from including more information about the Technology Acceptance Model or related theories to bolster the analysis of the teacher’s STEM pedagogy.

2. For the study instrument section, it would be advantageous for the author to offer additional details about the theoretical backgrounds of the questionnaire items and to present this theoretical exploration in the literature section.

3. In the methodology section, providing more information about the data analysis and related statistical approach, including sampling decision and the statistical program used, is recommended.

4. Within the study results section, it is advisable for the author to provide more information about the validity and reliability of the questionnaire items.

5. The results indicate a need for the author to elaborate on why they chose to utilize these specific characteristics for analyzing the survey data and to delve into the theoretical explorations concerning the rationality of these variables.

6. Considering the aforementioned suggestions, I view this study as aligned with a descriptive statistical approach but falling short of meeting academic criteria. It would be beneficial for the author to include more theoretical reflections about teachers’ adoption of new pedagogical approaches and to employ more robust statistical techniques for handling the sample data, such as interrelation analysis, path analysis, or SEM.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, 

The reason that this paper was not rejected in the first place lies in the approximate accuracy of the methodology and listing of results. However, there are many aspects that would require improvement

The most important are:

- the need for extensive improvement of the discussions part (in reference to similar research having been conducted), as well as improvement of the very superficial approach of the conclusions part.

- the entire literature review is short, lacking and barely relevant, it should be dramatically and extensively improved as well.

- the abstract uses ambiguous and informal language, lacks correctness in spelling, for instance what does this refer to "the teachers showed a medium degree of perceptions" in line 15 that also appears in line 172?

- quite importantly, text formatting is in dire need of improvement and most importantly the English language. The paper seems to have been submitted in an draft format and was not checked for spelling errors, in which it abounds. There are so many that it is difficult to mention a few (capitalizations, punctuations, ''student's education''- is there only one student?). The entire introduction, lines 15-19,  25-31 and basically the entire paper requires extensive English editing. In full honesty, I considered rejecting the paper altogether due to the lack of quality and seriousness that the writing showed.

Please consider these considerations and aim at thoroughly improving your work. 

The formatting of the text and the entire manuscript do not only benefit, but extensively require English language editing and corrections. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1.    On Page3 Line 100, The author mentions that teachers play an important role in students’ development, for example, “These teachers should provide lessons… concepts”, “Teachers should use strategies to…cognitive processes”. But I think these arguments do not lead to the view of Line104 “Teachers’ views play a crucial role in the effective execution of STEM”. That is, whether teachers stimulate students’ critical or use instructional strategies, what are their direct connections to teacher perceptions of STEM education? It is recommended to explain the logical relationship between them, or cite other appropriate literature to demonstrate the important role of teachers’ perspective in STEM education.

2.  On Page3 Line 104，The author mentions that “Teachers’ views play a crucial role…, yet there is still a lack of clarity regarding the influences on teachers’ perceptions of STEM education.” I do not agree with that, because there has been a lot of research on teacher perspectives and STEM education. Moreover, the author uses two references, one of which is from 2012. The research result is too old to support your opinion and cannot reflect the current research situation. It is recommended that you expand your literature search and read more relevant literature.

3. On Page3 Line 142，There are 34 questions in the questionnaire, and 44 data are used in the reliability and validity test. I have doubts about the reliability and validity results based on this ratio (the number of questions to the number of people surveyed). And the questionnaire item preparation process is not detailed. It is recommended that you supplement the process of developing or adapting the questionnaire rather than explain it in one sentence.

 4. On Page3 Line 147，There are some problems in the reliability and validity testing process of the questionnaire, which lacks the processing and analysis of some data, for example, Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)，Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)，CR，AVE, etc. Therefore, I am skeptical about the science and validity of the research tool.

5. On Page4 Line 153，“this value is added to the lowest value in the scale to judge questionnaire responses…” How is this classification standard determined, why is it so divided, and on what basis?

 6. On Page4 Line 157，In my opinion, this study is not rigorous in some aspects, such as the number of research subjects (175 teachers), the preparation of the questionnaire, and the reliability and validity test. Therefore, I will not comment in the “Study Results” section.

 7. On Page8 Line 238，in the “5. Discussion”, there are 15 paragraphs, which are not logical and cannot highlight the key points. It is suggested that secondary or tertiary headings can be set up here.

8. What are the reasons for selecting secondary science teachers as research subjects in this article?

9. In the line 45 to 47, Introduction, why is it important to understand science teachers’ perceptions about STEM education, and their ability to identify the requirements of STEM education application in education are critical？I would suggest that you need to be further interpreted.

10. Please note some issues regarding writing conventions, such as follows:

In line 8, (Repair only); Rather,……

In line 95, ……（We）we can watch……

In line 283, ……（the）The results……

In line 289, ……（this）This result may be attributed to……

In line 336, ……（secondary）Secondary stage science teachers……

In line 340, ……（teachers) Teachers with more years of experience (they) have more perceptions about……

In line 341, ……requirements for teaching using it. (,) and the results……

etc...

.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author made more revisions to this manuscript based on my concerns. I suggest this manuscript should be accepted in the present edition.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, you have covered the recommended areas of improvement, especially in the area of results discussions and conclusions, where it was initially significantly lacking, as well as in the areas of formatting and English language. Good luck with your further work

The English language matters have been covered as such and improved.