Teacher Mobility in Punjab, Pakistan: Stayers and Movers within the Public and Private Schools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is a statistic work . I don't see how the research could be continued.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments. This study is a designed based analysis. Statistical patterns and other findings are discussed in relevance with policy and existing literature. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presented develops a direct analysis of specific concerns on the Punjab education. The selected approach details only the relevance of teacher mobility on their personal satisfaction and analyses the results from the teachers perspective.

Results and conclusions should be complemented with statistical information referring  to curricular students results.

Author Response

The revised version has made changes in the light of your comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

This article makes a number of interesting observations about teacher mobility in public and private schools in Punjab, Pakistan. In tackling this important aspect of teacher governance, this article has the potential to add to the knowledge in the field. Yet disappointedly the article fails to develop a rigorous, robust, methodologically sound, and analytical coherent account of the problem of teacher mobility in Punjab, Pakistan for the following reasons

1. Language and style: the article is often hard to follow due to both the language being unclear and the absence of coherence between and within sections. There are too many such instances of this including in the literature review which is wide ranging and not sufficiently focused on the topic. For example, the discussion of teachers in realizing the SDG for education only appears mid-way through the literature review without any link to the preceding discussion.
2. Methodological weaknesses: this article is methodologically weak as claims are based on a limited non-representative volunteer sample. Further, there is no description provided about the sample in respect of the public and private schools the teachers hail from, whether there were more private or public-school respondents which would influence the analysis, the response and completion rate for the survey, and the basis on which the survey was constructed. Given these weaknesses, the analysis is found to be wanting and thus is not surprising that much of what the article seeks to explain cannot be done.
3. Focus/Analysis: the analysis of the data seem to have limited bearing and relationship to the literature reviewed and tends to be broad ranging and diffuse. As such it is unclear what the argument is. A more focused and disciplined presentation and discussion of the findings would have made this a stronger article.
4. Significance: there is no real and meaningful discussion of the significance of the research findings for the field of teacher governance or for Pakistan for that matter. Further the recommendations that are offered in the discussion are disconnected from the findings that are presented. This is partly a result of the lack of focus in the article.

Overall, this could have been a strong contribution of the debate about teacher mobility. However, the weaknesses noted above, limit the potential of this article.

Author Response

Please see the attached document for response of reviewer's comments.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations! It is not easy to co-opt teachers to participate in research, especially when personal information is requested.

Author Response

Thanks for your kind comments. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has included better references and developed a clearer description for the research carried out.

The research discussion is based on a limited set of experiments. The conclusions should clearly indicate this limitation.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments. I have addressed the nature of survey methods and teh quality of sample more clearly now. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made an attempt to address the comments but fundamentally  the changes do not adequately deal with the comments about methodology and focus.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments. I have clarified details on the survey method used in this study. Discussion on methodology of survey designs could be another paper. However, in this paper I wanted to focus on the analysis and findings of the study.