Resistances to Educational Change: Teachers’ Perceptions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript addresses the topic of teachers' approach towards changes. It provides a coherent and up-to-date theoretical background. I personally missed some outline/reasons/justification why author(s) decided to do this research, and why particularly in the Autonomous Community of Galicia? Did the authors experience some significant resistances to reforms or changes in education? Or what was the intention behind this study?
The methodological part involves all necessary parts. However, I didn't find any reason for quasi-experimental design if the only instrument was a questionnaire (no observations, no experiment done). I would like to ask authors to clarify this point. I would also like authors to mention some limitations which their research (can) have.
Overall, I find this manuscript compelling for readers and after minor changes ready to be published.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Good subject and nice paper.
- Introduction + 2. Conceptual references: These statements might differ between types of “school”. Are you often addressing higher education, universities in the these chapters? Does that differ from the participants (lines 172 – 184)?
88 ““However, if reference is made to a change in the work methodology of teachers, it should be taken into account that resistance can develop according to modalities that can coexist and appear partially or alternately”
Please scan the article for this type of sentences that can be improved. This example:
“However, when the work of teachers is changed, resistance can have different forms that coexist and appear partially or alternately”
Page 2 and 3 Seems a bit about two groups: The management versus the teachers. And the focus: the resistance of the second group. What could be added:
- Change is not always an improvement or may result in an just equal value situation while costing time not spent on education and causing frustration (some but too small indication already in lines 133, 134). How to select really needed change?
- Prioritizing of the work and change, within capacity.
- Consider a process in which conclusions about the changes needed are reached by management and teachers together.
- Problems with ill designed change projects. (lines 125 – 129 have some but not very clear indication of that).
167 “A descriptive and inferential cross-sectional study was carried out using a quasi-experimental design employing a non-probabilistic sample of volunteer subjects. “
Skip or shorten this line and use only the words of it that are really needed at their natural position further down in the article.
208 ”For correction, higher scores reveal higher levels of resistance, while lower scores reveal lower levels of the evaluated variable” What correction?
230 “The participants' resistance to methodological change is relatively low since the mean is 2.54, with 1 being the minimum value and 4.52 the maximum.” Explain how this was calculated. Does the “mean” give much information? Is this also on the 1-5 Likert scale? Than it looks not “relatively low”
235 – 274: explain how these percentages are calculated (and make a table using them?)
279 – 281 The differences might be significant, but more important is that they are also very small and the value!
286 – 296; please not just give an indication of significant differences, but also what to conclude with regard to small differences in the averages.
313 “Based on the hypotheses raised, we can point out that Galician teachers do not have great resistance to educational change” This conclusion should not be based on hypotheses. Is the evidence for this conclusion: the mean of 2.54 ? which might still be coupled with quite some resistance?
314 “However, the greatest resistance occurs among male teachers, graduates, who teach at higher levels such as baccalaureate, vocational training or secondary school. Likewise, those who work in public schools have higher levels of resistance than other types of schools. In addition, there is greater resistance with increasing age and, therefore, with increasing years of teaching experience. the greatest resistance occurs among male teachers, graduates, who teach at higher levels such as baccalaureate, vocational training or secondary school” Rephrase and point to the very small (but significant) differences in averages
359 “Likewise, it can be seen that resistance to methodological change within this population of teachers is relatively low, which generates a big question: if resistance to methodological change is rather low among Galician teachers, why is methodological change not evident in educational practice?” This repeats a finding; see remarks above
393 “Based on these data” you mean “based on the literature findings above”?
Conclusions seems to be mainly based on literature (and a bit authors opinion). That is ok but indicate that, and try to interpret the data analysis more so you can use the results in the conclusions.
A grammar check like with Grammarly would find some improvements.
Good luck with this nice subject!
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
your article is very interesting and actually. Pedagogical changes are necessary in eucational process, and the teachers are in the first line in it's implementation.
In your paper, could you add to the questionnaire results results of the dimensions mentioned in lines 188-201.
I further recommend describing the regression model (lines 302-311), what you expected and compare with the obtained results.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
