Sustainable Inquiry-Based Learning Through Adaptive Management: A Phenomenological Study of Physics Teachers in Türkiye

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors.

I have carefully reviewed the manuscript entitled “Sustainable Inquiry‑Based Learning Ecosystem: A Phenomenological Study of Physics Teachers in Turkiye”, submitted for evaluation to Sustainability.

This manuscript reports a qualitative, phenomenological study with semi‑structured interviews of 11 public‑school physics teachers (Anatolian and Vocational High Schools) in Turkiye. The manuscript explores how inquiry‑based learning (IBL) is enacted and sustained across five interrelated approaches: student‑centred (guidance‑focused), experiential (practice‑oriented), flexible (meaning‑focused), scientific (systematic), and emotional (human‑centred). These five approaches are framed as components of a “Sustainable Inquiry‑Based Learning Ecosystem”.

I consider that the manuscript addresses a relevant topic within the scope of this journal and provides contextually rich accounts of teachers’ practices. In addition, it contributes by articulating sustainability in IBL through adaptive management and ecosystem metaphors, and by focusing on public schools – an under‑represented setting in prior Turkish IBL research. However, there are some minor aspects needing to be addressed in order to improve the academic quality of the manuscript. These observations are explained in greater detail in the following paragraphs.

Starting by the strengths of the manuscript, the first one is its topical relevance and potential contribution. The ecosystem framing that integrates cognitive, epistemic, affective, contextual, and pedagogical dimensions is conceptually coherent and could advance discourse on sustaining IBL beyond classroom episodes. The second strength is its rich qualitative evidence. The manuscript includes numerous illustrative quotations across five thematic models, enhancing credibility and reader engagement. However, I consider that there are three main aspects needing attention.

A first aspect to be clarified is sampling and context to enhance transferability. The study uses purposeful sampling of 11 teachers with ≥8 years’ experience, but the geographical spread (cities/regions), school SES profiles, and distribution across Anatolian vs. Vocational institutions are not fully specified. It would be interesting if the authors add a brief contextual table (location, class sizes, facilities) which helps readers assess transferability and the constraints reported (e.g., limited labs, crowded classes).

A second aspect to be detailed is the analytic procedure and trustworthiness. The analysis is described as phenomenological/thematic with a codebook and joint discussions by two authors, but procedures for ensuring trustworthiness (e.g., reflexivity, audit trail, member‑checking, and/or peer‑debriefing) are not specified. If inter‑coder agreement was assessed, report the process (qualitative consensus or coefficients); if not, justify the approach and add a short reflexive note on researchers’ backgrounds and positionality vis‑à‑vis Turkish physics education. These considerations would enhance reproducibility/rigour of the reported study.

A third aspect to be strengthened is the link between claims and evidence in the “Adaptive Management” section. This section argues that teachers act as adaptive managers of learning (iterative decisions under uncertainty). It would be interesting if the authors add analytically explicit excerpts showing how teachers monitored feedback (e.g., formative observations of students’ questions/emotions) and changed activity design in real time, to substantiate the adaptive cycle beyond the conceptual narrative.

In addition to the above, there are some minor issues also needing attention. Regarding the abstract, trim to ~200–250 words, emphasising aim, design (phenomenology; 11 teachers; interviews 60–90 minutes), core findings (five approaches), and practical implications, trying to avoid theoretical repetition. In section “2. Materials and Methods”, it would be convenient to add subsection headings (e.g., “Design and Rationale”, “Participants”, “Data Collection”, etc.) to improve navigation within the section. The teacher quotations need brief analytic leads to be provided (e.g., “This illustrates formative assessment through observation”) so readers can see how excerpts support each code/theme. The Limitations section is appropriate, but the authors could add one sentence on potential social desirability bias in interviews with experienced teachers and how the interview protocol attempted to mitigate it (e.g., neutral prompts, probing for counter‑examples).

Finally, I highlight that this manuscript is conceptually strong, with rich qualitative evidence. Minor revisions to methodological transparency and structure will significantly improve academic quality and presentation of the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is readable but would benefit from light copy‑editing for article use, punctuation, and concision (e.g., replace “students get to validate ideas” with “students validate ideas” in line 113; avoid multi‑word synonyms like “re‑emergence and subjective retention” in line 952 where simpler wording suffices).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We greatly appreciate your positive review of the manuscript’s conceptual contribution, methodological approach, and relevance to the scope of Sustainability. Your comments helped to strengthen the methodological transparency, analytic clarity, and overall presentation of the study. We also explain below in detail the specific corrections based on each comment and suggestion, with those of the revised manuscript.

On your advice, we have made small but meaningful improvements in the methodological rigor, analytic transparency, and structural clarity in our work. Specifically, we clarified the sampling context, strengthened the descriptions of analytic and trustworthiness procedures, substantiated claims about Adaptive Management with additional analytic excerpts, and addressed several minor issues regarding structure, abstraction, and limitations.

COMMENT: The geographical spread, school SES profiles, and distribution across Anatolian vs. Vocational schools are not fully specified. A contextual table would help readers assess transferability.

We agree with this comment. All participants joined from the same metropolitan city, Istanbul, Turkiye. To improve transparency and ease readers’ perception of transferability, we have included a new Table 1 with major characteristics of participating teachers and schools. This table includes codes of participants, type of school (Anatolian/Vocational), geographical area/city, approximate class size, and laboratory facilities (adequate/limited/none). We further developed the Participants subparagraph to delineate our rationale for sampling purposefully, and to briefly outline constraints on teachers’ inquiry-based approaches at the institutional and/or contextual level. These revisions also solidify the contextual grounding of the study and correspond to qualitative reporting standards.

COMMENT: Procedures for ensuring trustworthiness (e.g., reflexivity, audit trail, member checking, peer debriefing) are not specified.

Thank you for making that crucial point. In the Methods section, we have integrated discussions about rigor and trustworthiness. We have clarified that coding was conducted independently by two authors, followed by iterative consensus-building discussions rather than the calculation of formal intercoder reliability coefficients, consistent with interpretive phenomenological research traditions. We added a description of the audit trail, including codebook development, memo writing, and iterative refinement of themes. We also included a brief reflexivity statement describing the authors’ professional backgrounds in physics education and qualitative research, as well as our positionality within the Turkish education context. These additions improve methodological transparency and clarify how analytic rigor was ensured throughout the study.

COMMENT: The Adaptive Management section would benefit from analytically explicit excerpts demonstrating monitoring and instructional adaptation.

Thank you for your suggestion. We have rewritten the Adaptive Management sections in the results section, with explicit excerpts that explain how teachers monitored students’ conceptual understanding and emotional engagement, and how they adjusted inquiry tasks. This gives excerpts an introductory analytic lead-in that describes how we are now seeing evidence supporting the adaptive management cycle. This revision validates teachers' conceptual understanding of themselves as adaptive managers, illustrated with relevant examples from practitioners’ work and life experiences in classroom contexts in the field.

COMMENT: Abstract

The Abstract has been prepared to approximately 220 words, with clearer emphasis on the study aim, the Phenomenological design, Participants, the five themes, and the practical implications. Excessive theoretical phrasing has been eliminated for clarity, and language has been reduced.

COMMENT: Limitations

We have included a sentence in the Limitations section to declare the possibility of social desirability bias for interviews with experienced teachers. We describe how this risk is counterbalanced by providing neutral prompts, probing for counterexamples, and encouraging reflective rather than evaluative responses.

A language edit has been performed to cover the examples you raised within the manuscript. Though our suggestions for improvements appeared more reader-friendly, the changes did not detract from the academic voice.

We thank you for your help. These changes, we believe, have given the manuscript considerable methodological enhancement and analytic merit, and have helped bring further sustainability-based educational research to the forefront. We are thankful for your guidance and trust that the improved manuscript will meet your expectations.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript shows significant improvement, particularly in terms of strengthening the theoretical framework and providing a broader and better articulated conclusion. The theoretical deepening lends greater conceptual solidity to the study, more clearly integrating the foundations of sustainable inquiry, as well as the connections between the cognitive, affective, epistemological, contextual, and pedagogical dimensions of the ecosystem. This expansion not only clarifies the authors' conceptual position, but also reinforces the coherence between the initial approach, the phenomenological focus adopted, and the empirical findings. The reader now perceives a more robust thread, where the literature cited dialogues directly with the results and provides a more nuanced interpretative framework.

In terms of conclusions, the revised version offers a richer and more balanced synthesis. The authors better contextualise the study's contribution within the landscape of science education and more clearly highlight the relevance of the five teaching approaches identified. The expansion also improves the explicitness of the practical and theoretical implications, showing how the sustainable inquiry ecosystem model can guide both teaching decisions and future lines of research. The final reflection thus acquires greater depth and allows for an understanding of the study's significance beyond the specific case analysed.

Given that the rest of the manuscript remains stable and the changes made strengthen the internal coherence, argumentative quality and interpretative value of the work, this revised version satisfactorily meets the requirements of conceptual clarity, academic rigour and contribution to the field.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your thoughtful and generous review of the revised manuscript.

We thank you for carefully reviewing the revisions and for considering the manuscript’s conceptual clarity, theoretical weight, and contribution to the field. We welcome your praise for the theory-based framework being reinforced, particularly in making sustainable inquiry more directly related to the cognitive, affective, epistemological, contextual, and pedagogical aspects of the envisioned ecosystem. We appreciate your complimentary comment regarding the enriched conclusions, particularly the strengthened claim that the study’s contribution to science education research includes theoretical/practical coverage. As you point out, our aim in reforming the manuscript was to demonstrate that a sustainable inquiry-based learning ecosystem can shape instruction and potentially expand research and development. Your responses show that we are conveying that intention even more clearly than before.

We are most pleased to present the revised paper, which develops greater internal coherence, greater significance, and greater interpretative value, and whose phenomenological approach is now more congruent with its theoretical context in the empirical findings.

The replies you have provided have bolstered the manuscript and its case for sustainable inquiry-based science education in the debate.

 Kind regards,

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The second version of the paper is really very nice.  It was a pleasure reading it.

One minor problem is the use of abbreviations, for example NGSS. It probably stands for Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which should be announced not only by the citation where it was first mentioned, but also in the paper.

The second problem is the esthetics of the paper. Figure representing the cycle of sustainable inquiry ecosystem is too pretentious, it should be replaced by some smarter chart. The tables are not aligned with the right margin. It should be corrected.

The section 4. should be renamed to Discussions.

The section 5 should be divided into two sections: Limitations (no need to change anything) and Conclusions. The new Section 6 (Conclusions) should also stress the usability and extend the future work. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for your very positive evaluation of the revised manuscript and for your generous comment that it was a pleasure to read. We greatly appreciate your careful attention to both the content and presentation of the paper. Your suggestions have been very helpful in further improving the clarity, structure, and visual quality of the manuscript.

Below, we address each of your comments in detail.

COMMENT: Abbreviations such as NGSS should be explicitly defined in the paper, not only via citation.

 Thank you for this important clarification. All abbreviations (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS]) are now defined at first mention in the manuscript. We also systematically reviewed the manuscript to ensure that all other abbreviations are introduced consistently and clearly, in line with the journal guidelines.

COMMENT: The figure depicting the cycle of the sustainable inquiry ecosystem is overly pretentious and should be replaced with a simpler, clearer chart. Tables are not aligned with the right margin.

I appreciate your comments on the visual clarity and formatting. The figure illustrating the Sustainable Inquiry-Based Learning Ecosystem has been redesigned in a simpler, cleaner visual format to improve clarity and aesthetics. All tables have been revised and repositioned to correctly align with margins and MDPI formatting. These changes also improve the overall visual coherence and readability of the manuscript. All tables have been reformatted and properly aligned to meet MDPI layout standards.

COMMENT: Section 4 should be renamed to “Discussions.”

We have implemented this suggestion and renamed Section 5 to “Discussion”, in accordance with standard academic convention and MDPI guidelines.

COMMENT: Section 5 should be divided into “Limitations” and “Conclusions.” The new Conclusions section should emphasize usability and future work.

The former Section 5 has been divided into two sections: “Limitations” and “Conclusions.” The Conclusions section has been expanded to emphasize practical usability and directions for future research.

Section 7 is now called “Limitations”, keeping the same content as originally presented. A new Section 6: Conclusions has been added. This part provides a summary of the study’s major findings, highlights their value, focuses on their practical application for teachers, school leaders, and researchers, and outlines directions for future research, including implications for sustainable inquiry-based learning and adaptive management in diverse educational contexts. Such restructuring improves conceptual clarity and strengthens the manuscript’s final contribution.

We believe these revisions have further improved the clarity, presentation, and contribution of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf