Cultivating Sustainable STEM Education: The Role of Communities of Practice in Teacher Identity Formation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Although it's an interesting article and its purpose is promising, there are several things I think should be considered:

Explain in greater detail how CoPs work, the types of CoPs, and the activities carried out.
Include a larger number of teachers for the study, and more diverse profiles (for example, there are no math teachers, and two-thirds are technology teachers).
Comparisons are made between teachers from different educational levels, length of experience, and disciplines; it's unknown how these variables influence the responses.

LINES 43-44 and 44-46 in the text are almost equal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment below:

1. Although this study provides some insights into promoting quality STEM education within the SDG4 framework, the arguments for these insights are weak. The reviewer suggested that the authors analyze more participants to strengthen the qualitative and quantitative arguments.
2. This article is novel and relevant to sustainable STEM, but there is still a gap in the argumentation in this area. For example, the sample is only six, which will affect the accuracy of the inference.
3. The STEM teacher identity model questionnaire and some weak qualitative data are not to judge STEM teacher transformation.
4. The reviewer suggested that the authors strengthen the functions of quality and quantity to reinforce the argument of the specific mechanism meaningfully. In the first, second, and third years, research constantly to expand the sample size.
5. The authors explored two questions. However, it only solves part of the problem. The argumentation framework is insufficient. The reviewer recommended that the author start from the source to strengthen the validity and reliability of the questionnaire and effectively increase the number of samples. It suggests that more elementary and secondary school teachers participate and determine any differences after increasing the number of samples. Additionally, the reviewer recommended extending the current interview session by two or three times.  
6. The authors provide an adequate description of the literature on STEM teachers' participation in various communities of practice.
7. Chart suggestions: The reviewer suggested redesigning Figure 1's architectural diagram, and the results need to be presented in more charts to enhance the visibility of the results.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall, there is potential for improvement in several places, and authors must revise it and increase readability.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Kia ora,

I would like to thank the authors for the opportunity to read about your research. I have made some comments and suggestions to the attached that I hope you find helpful.

Cheers,

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment

The author has answered all relevant questions, but there are some formatting issues that require full text review and confirmation.

 P1 Line 38  Replace（Nhamo et al.,2020）with （Nhamo et al., 2020）.

P2 L 82 Replace “…proble Teacher This approach…” with “…proble teacher. This approach…”

P3 L102 Replace “…subjects(Tripp&Liu,2024).” with “…subjects (Tripp&Liu, 2024).”

P5 L208 Replace “…as interviewees(Pietkiewicz&Smith,2014).” with “…as interviewees (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014).”

P11 L340 Table 4 need space.

 

Overall review:

The authors have made revisions based on the comments and agree to publish it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx