Review Reports - Towards Acquiring Teachers’ Professional Qualification Based on Professional Standards: Perceptions, Expectations and Needs on the Application Process

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

-Introduction provides a good background and plants some good arguments.

-“ European teachers [42] shows that com-petence” is it a typo?

--In the beginning of the methodology section, the authors can clearly state the methodology (qual, quan, or mixed) and research model/design (e.g., survey, case study, experimental study, explanatory sequential mixed design, etc.). You can consult Creswell’s schema.

Creswell, J. W. (2004). Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. Pearson.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for the valuable and constructive comments. In accordance with the suggestions, the following, quite thorough, revisions were made to the article " Towards Acquiring Teachers’ Professional Qualification based on professional standards: Perceptions, Expectations and Needs on the Application Process".

We address the comments and suggestions of both reviewers, which can be clustered into the following, attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript needs some revisions:

Firstly, the introduction has not provided an in-depth review on the research/practice gap on this particular topic. That is, why should we care? What little is known in this area and what would your study contribute to the field?
The topic itself has been widely studied for years in various domains and across world. Is there any new perspective that you have offered? If yes, you may need to place and highlight that argument in both your abstract and introduction.
Similarly, why should we worry about the shortcomings in PS? What the previous literature have said about it and what have you done differently in this aspect?
Also, why it is important to understand the expectations and needs of different target groups for professional standards and professional application procedure? Are you sure the similar studies (note: this is a very descriptive analysis) have not be conducted at all and why it matters anyway? You may need to be more specific on this part.
I am having difficulty of understanding how your Theoretical Framework has organically guided your whole research design, analysis and discussion. It is too brief, general, and unclear, which makes me feel it exists because it has to be there.
As a qualitative study, it is equally important to be very detailed in your sampling method and information of your participants.
If I understand it correctly, you are looking at seven different groups and have asked them with different questions. Firstly, what kind of questions you have asked for each group? Why are they different? You need to provide all of those information.
It looks like you have studied seven groups separately. However, I don’t see any differences or separate discussion in your findings. On page 13 there is a table called Findings per target groups. In this table, all I see are the findings across all groups.
In terms of data analysis, I was surprised to see you had not provided any credibility and validity/reliability information in your paper. Without those basic information, how should you ensure the trustworthiness of the findings?
You need to synthesize your findings.

Author Response

We address the comments and suggestions of both reviewers, which can be clustered into the following, please find attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for submitting the paper for review. It is interesting to read about Estonia’s Professional Standards system. You need to address a number of quite substantial issues, which I highlight below, with the aim of helping you produce a stronger paper for an international audience. A core issue is the very small data set. Without addition to it, either via additional data collection or a different analysis suitable to such a small set of qualitative data). A possibility is for the interview findings to help you develop a larger survey which could help identify to what extent the issues you uncovered were relevant to a wider set of teachers. You would need to extent the interview data to include some more early career teachers first, as they are unrepresented at this point. If you can do so, I encourage to resubmit.

Starting in the introduction, in general terms it packs a lot in and raises quite a lot questions – I think it needs more clarity on structure (e.g. better signposting) and a clearer argument for what the paper adds to the international literature.

Some specifics: you need to provide more explanation of Hargreaves’ four ages of professionalism (lines 43-45)

The very brief review of definitions of professionalism includes no critical commentary – where does your definition (lines 60-62) emerge from in relation to earlier literature – which do you have most sympathy with, which seem to you to be wrong or incomplete and why, and how does your definition link to them? You do return to these definitions later, so it is important you spend more time developing this section further.

Lines 71-83 on professional standards provides no real examination of literature in this area, which seems to be essential for this study. This is addressed later, but there is a need for signposting.

On lines 84-93, Professional qualification is introduced – with no clear linkages to professional standards. I understand why you want to move on quickly here, but you need to signpost forward to where you spend more time in the paper on these key issues (professionalism, professional standards, professional qualifications) in this introduction. Crucially here, not all professional standards require professional qualifications, so there is a need for more lead in to the RQs.

On the RQs, there is no clarity on why answering these very specific questions on Estonia’s specific system will help meet a gap in the literature on PS or PQs – without this, it is very unclear what an international readership will learn. All of this points to a need for a more detailed review of literature, and a much clearer identification of the contribution of this paper at the point at which the RQs are identified. Note: you use the term ‘Professional Standards’ – a plural’ but usually refer to PS in the singular (e.g. you refer to PS as ‘it’ not ‘them’). You need to either talk about ‘Professional Standard’ or use plurals throughout.

Line 104 onwards – Snoek et al are introduced here, but not mentioned earlier in the mini-review on professionalism – the section needs linking much more clearly to the section on professionalism in the intro (which as I note above needs more critical review) – a general point on section 1.1 linked to this – it needs a clearer justification for this theoretical framework.

Section 1.2 and into 1.3 addresses some of the issues I noted above in relation to lines 71-83.

There are several proofing errors – for example, hyphens are used mid-word in some places. Please check the script thoroughly before resubmission.

Section 1.4 – you need to explain some of the Estonian structures for an international audience – what is the Education Professional Council, Vocational Committee and Vocational Assessment Committee/s? Is there just one Teachers’ Union? Are all teachers members of it?

Section 2.1 – how did you create the sample? It consists only of very experienced teachers – why? It is quite a small sample – why did you not sure (e.g.) a larger representative sample? What knowledge claims do you feel able to make from such a small and unrepresentative sample [especially given that you say on line 270/271 they were actually members of the assessment board] I note that you included just 3 teachers as well as 3 assessors and a developer. Because they are all in the experienced category, this restricts your ability to answer your two RQs. You can’t say anything about the shortcomings, needs, expectations for earlier career teachers – and given early career teachers are a very important cohort, this really limits any judgment you can make.

Section 2.3 – you have three sets of participants and different questions for each – how did you rake this into account in your analysis as described?

As the findings are limited by the small and unrepresentative sample, the remaining sections need to be re-examined once the RQs and data sets are reviewed as indicated above.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable and constructive comments. In accordance with the suggestions, the following, quite thorough, revisions were made to the article " Towards Acquiring Teachers’ Professional Qualification based on professional standards: Perceptions, Expectations and Needs on the Application Process".

We address the comments and suggestions of both reviewers, which can be clustered into the following, please find attached file

Hopefully, the changes to the article are valued by the reviewers and the editor. We ourselves think the changes and additions significantly improved the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall the revisions are acceptable and the authors have carefully responded to my comments and questions. I still have some concerns about the seven teacher groups and feel you have not sufficiently address their differences and the reasons behind the differences. Clearly it can be a highlight to your paper as there are not too many studies out there that have focused on this aspect.

As I mentioned earlier, this topic is not that new although it is still very meaningful to dig deeper under certain unique social context. I can see you have made your efforts in this way and believe the paper will be a plus to the filed.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable and constructive comments. In accordance with the suggestions, the following, quite thorough, double revisions were made to the article " Towards Acquiring Teachers’ Professional Qualification based on professional standards: Perceptions, Expectations and Needs on the Application Process".

We address the comments and suggestions of the reviewer, which can be clustered into the following.

As an explanation the first comments - we can point out that since 2014, only 251 teachers out of about 22,000 teachers, who work in schools and kindergartens in Estonia, have successfully acquired a professional qualification certificate. Vocational Assessment Committee consists of 21 teachers. These numbers are so small primarily because of our small (teacher) population. We hope that is a sufficient justification. We also highlighted the need for further early career teachers’ involvement in the Limitation section and hope to expand and repeat our study in the future.

Discussion part - We considered it a valuable result that there was the consensus in the teachers’ opinions, the shortcomings and needs of teachers 'professional standards and on proposals to improve the application process for the qualification.

And finally we would like to thank you for your supportive assessment. Although the professionalism of the teacher has been discussed a lot in the world context, the research topic has become important recently in the Estonian educational landscape.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your significant changes which have improved the paper. There are a few other issues I want to raise, but I think the paper is now much closer to being publishable.

Issues I picked up are below:

Line 71- it’s unclear how professionalism definition is related to the national interest; do you policy context?

PS as a singular is still in place, and there are still quite a lot of errors in use of English which need to be picked up in proofing prior to publication.

For example:

Lines 109-110 “but little has been studied there has been little study of PS shortcomings and teachers' expectations and needs for both the PS…”

Line 112 – delete ‘The’ at start of the line.

Line 113 – ‘PS has not found the desired use’ – do you mean PS has not found to influence teacher careers and PD?

Lines 124-129 – this is a useful explanation of wider significance, thank you.

Line 142 – you have said earlier it is based on Snoek et al’s conception, you should reference back.

Line 144/145 – ‘can be pointed out’ – do you mean this is central?

In the discussion section [and/or earlier] you need to be clear about the limitations of the study, which goes beyond your paragraph starting on line 699; as a small, unrepresentative qualitative study, you are able to identify themes and issues of importance, which may be correlated with other work. However, you should be circumspect in making recommendations for practice. So, for example on line 626 you suggest that you can ‘eliminate’ some shortcomings - but as the study is small and unrepresentative you can’t be sure that this is applicable more broadly [unless I’m misunderstanding the claim being made].

In the conclusion and/or discussion you should move beyond the Estonian context to explicitly address an international audience [you do this on lines 687-695, but I think you can add more]. For example, which particular contexts would be similar? I presume those where there is a professional qualification which is not compulsory, and a similar professional standards framework. What can those studying these similar contexts learn? Issues around ambiguity in interpreting the Ps framework is likely to be more widely applicable, and worth considering; requirement for self-analysis skills [etc] – in the conclusion at the moment, you mainly focus on specific changes in the Estonian context, and further research in this context too.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We address the comments and suggestions of the reviewers, which can be clustered into the following.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf