Review Reports - Teacher Educators Experience Adopting Problem-Based Learning in Science Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript is well-structured, and provides valuable insights into problem-based learning in science education. I see some potential in this paper but it does need a revision.

Introduction: The manuscript appropriately outlines its scope, with a focus on Ghana. However, it raises questions about the necessity of addressing the rationale for adopting PBL (RQ1) when it is mandatory for teachers in Ghana (see Lines 98-100). To enhance the paper, the authors should provide a clear rationale for this inclusion. Additionally, in the results section, it would be helpful to know if any educators are specifically using PBL because it is mandatory. Any data related to this would be interesting.

Materials and Methods: The authors employ a longitudinal case study approach, which is a good choice. However, it would be beneficial to explain the study's longitudinal aspect further, such as how often data was collected. Additionally, more information about the development of the interview questions would be helpful. How did the authors come up with these questions?

Results and Discussions: When presenting participant quotes, consider adding a brief acronym to identify the source of the quote. In section 3.1.1, when discussing "Changing roles," specify whose roles are changing—teachers, students, or others? There's also an inconsistency between Table Two, which has three categories, and the text, which mentions only two categories (3.1 and 3.2). Clarifying this inconsistency is important.

Discussion & Conclusion: The authors should consider presenting a comprehensive analysis of the implications of implementing PBL, particularly within the unique educational landscape of Ghana. This would contribute to a more robust and insightful conclusion.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please proofread. For example, in Lines 75-77, using 'for instance' for two consecutive sentences?

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Thank you all the review you provided. I must admit they are very comments are are valid and must recommend you for the constructive suggestions and recommendations as well. In fact they are very well stated and concise which would make the paper a more robust one. I appreciate the comments from you all. I have responded to the items and shown in red colour.

Reviewer 1

In the curriculum, it is mandatory for teachers to adopt several student-centred approaches including PBL, but some are not using the approach and I wanted to explore their views on why they think it was necessary to include it in the curriculum and adopt it in their classroom. My intent was to first explore their awareness, understanding and agreement to the policy document statements in the curriculum especially on PBL and ICT and further examine whether they were using integrating the policy statements or not, and if otherwise why they are not using the approach. Their responses lead to the follow up question (RQ2). I have therefore rephrased the research question as,

In adopting the new curriculum, what are teacher educators’ perceptions on including PBL in the curriculum? Check lines 52 - 54

Additionally, in the results section, it would be helpful to know if any educators are specifically using PBL because it is mandatory. Any data related to this would be interesting.

The educators have adequate knowledge and understanding of the policy document of the new curriculum. For instance, they mentioned the inclusion of PBL and ICT into the curriculum was intended to develop the core skills such as creativity, critical thinking skills, innovation, problem-solving skills, and communication skills in students. Check lines 211 -214.

Since the research was an ongoing project that lasted for . The data was collected in two different periods, in September 2020 and December 2020 with some questions adopted from other previous studies to suit the recent research. Other questions also emerged as follow-up questions from the responses from the interviewees. Check 143 -150 for some of the sample research questions used during the interviews.

The source of the quotes comes from the acronym "empashasize students learning roles". I wanted to emphasis that the teacher educators believed the PBL was introduced so that much focus will be shifted towards students learning by themselves. Students are given more learning responsibilities rather than relying on the teacher. The educators believed the approach was introduced in the curriculum to change their roles to facilitators and students taking responsibility of their learning. I have fixed the inconsistencies in the categories and included all the sub-categories. Check lines 154-203.

I have included a vidid explanation of the implication of PBL on teache educators practice and how policy makers could also use the information when planning educational curriculum for teacher education. Check lines 430 to 435.

For example, in Lines 75-77, using 'for instance' for two consecutive sentences?

I have fixed it so that the two consecutive sentences have defined understandings in a context. Check lines 76-78

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic is interesting and pertinent to the field. The results and supporting examples were clear and nicely presented. However, I am concerned with the methods.

A longitudinal case study implies data was collected over time from the same participants. But your methods make it sound like you just interviewed three people one time each, asking a few questions. Even though you admit in the limitations that your small sample size limits generalization, this calls into question the validity and reliability of your results as surveys/simple interviews should have a higher sample size for validity. It felt more like a piloted set of interview questions for the opinions of three people.

Table 1 lists three categories, but results are sorted into only two categories. Results should follow the same three categories OR the heading for 3.1 should include both of the first two categories for alignment.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor grammar issues relating to key areas where you have missing words or phrases For example:

1st sentence - did you mean "educators in higher education"?;

Question 2 - Did you mean "What were teacher educators' perceptions . ." - "How did . . " creates an incomplete sentence because you are not finishing the thought. How did perceptions . .do/cause/influence/relate to something else - what is the something else?

In methods did you mean "A semi-structured online interview was conducted using the Zoom App. . ."?

The discussion says "In this research, students were engaged. . ." Did you mean "In [63, 70] research, students were engaged. . ."? Because there were no students in this research study (only 3 professors).

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Comment

Apologies I did not include much information about the whole project and that might have left some gaps in your understanding of the context. Actually, this research was a planned project for my PhD studies to support teacher educators to adopt online learning during the pandemic. As part of the project, we designed teaching and learning materials based on the national curriculum to support student teachers learning of science courses. At the onset of the project, I wanted to know the type of active learning approaches that the teachers are familiar with so that we can integrate ICT into such strategies. I first interview the teachers on their experiences of PBL before helping them to use ICT to design their inquiry learning activities. The three teacher educators were interviewed twice before and after an intervention we used to help students during the pandemic. Check lines

Comment

Table 1 lists three categories, but results are sorted into only two categories. Results should follow the same three categories.

OR the heading for 3.1 should include both of the first two categories for alignment.

The categories are now sorted into the right places now

Minor grammar issues relating to key areas where you have missing words or phrases. For example:

1st sentence - did you mean "educators in higher education"?; I mean teachers at the colleges of education who are training students to become teachers.

The question has been rephrased to remove the ambuiguity. I have therefore rephrased the RQ1 as, In adopting the new curriculum, what are teacher educators’ perceptions on including PBL in the curriculum?

In methods did you mean "A semi-structured online interview was conducted using the Zoom App. . ."? Yes i conducted a semi-structured interview using the Zoom App

I have changed the statement as it was the teachers who claimed they engaged the students in PBL activities to .......

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

The IBT in the abstract has been fixed

What are the indicators of problem-based learning, what are the steps? described first

Check lines 44 to 46

The research results are described in detail based on research variables and indicators

The results are described based on the indicators mentioned by the participants

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The research has appropriate theoretical documentation and its topic is crucial for promoting effective teacher education, especially in science.

Ideally, it is important to record how exactly the teachers' knowledge of PBL is documented. so that the selection criteria of research participants are clearly defined and can form a basis for subsequent research. It is crucial to be clear how the participants had acquired knowledge about the specific method, how many years they had been applying it, and in which population.

Methodological documentation of the qualitative content analysis is important. The use of terminology concerning the description of methodology (e.g. themes)

Additionally, a quantitative analysis is required alongside the qualitative analysis. It is important to present data regarding the amount of information coded.

That is, how extensive the interviews were, how many sentences were included and data regarding the reliability of the coding.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

language and the use of terms especially in methodology can be improved.

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Ideally, it is important to record how exactly the teachers' knowledge of PBL is documented so that the selection criteria of research participants are clearly defined and can form a basis for subsequent research. It is crucial to be clear how the participants had acquired knowledge about the specific method, how many years they had been applying it, and in which population.

In the curriculum, it is mandatory for teachers to adopt several student-centred approaches including PBL, but some are not adopting the approach and I wanted to explore their views on why they think it was necessary to adopt it in their classroom. My intent was to first explore some of their awareness, understanding and agreement of the policy document statements in the curriculum especially on PBL and ICT (RQ1) and further examine whether they were using integrating the policy statements or not and why they are not using them and that was the follow up question (RQ2).

I have therefore rephrased the research questions as,

In adopting the new curriculum, what are teacher educators’ perceptions on including PBL in the curriculum?
What are the perceptions of teacher educators’ on the advantages and challenges of PBL as an instructional approach?

The educators have adequate knowledge and understanding and acceptance of the policy document of the new curriculum. For instance, they mentioned the inclusion of PBL and ICT into the curriculum was intended to develop the core skills such as creativity, critical thinking skills, innovation, problem-solving skills, and communication skills. Check lines 172 to 179.

Methodological documentation of the qualitative content analysis is important. The use of terminology concerning the description of methodology (e.g. themes)

Additionally, a quantitative analysis is required alongside the qualitative analysis. It is important to present data regarding the amount of information coded. The research was basically qualitative in nature as I was interested to examine the teacher educators views, understanding and experiences of PBL. Based on the focus of the research, I wanted to use a methodology that would enable the teacher educators to describe the nature of experiences of the issue under consideration.

That is, how extensive the interviews were, how many sentences were included and data regarding the reliability of the coding. The interviews with each teacher lasted for between 45-60mins. The questions used in the interviews ranged from their experiences. Theere were 10,529 words and 730 sentences from the transcripts. Check lines 190-191

Language and the use of terms especially in methodology can be improve. I have read through the whole manuscript and given it to an English native speaker to proofread for me.

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study design is similar to an experiment; the researcher asks the participants to follow a particular teaching approach and examine their attitudes towards it. This makes qualitative data insufficient, and the research question does not reflect the study design; the number of participants is very limited, and the discussion part needs many improvements.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs a revision

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Apologies I did not include much information about the whole project and that might have left some gaps in your understanding of the context. The teachers already have some knowledge and understanding of the approach and they were facing the challenge of using ICT to transform their teaching and activities such as the PBL. So my role was to help them to design and develop a teachig and learning model (flipped classroom) so they could continue teaching their students despite the pandemic restrictions. Therefore I need to build on the teaching approaches that they were familiar with and then incorporate ICT into it. Moreover, i did not ask them to follow the PBL approach and examine their views as indicated. I have provided enough information and especially the research question, the duration of the project and the data collection procedures to reflect what actually transpired. Yes I understand that the research was limited to only three teacher educators however, i contacted five colleges of education and it was only these three that showed interest in the poject and most especially i selected them based on their experiences in the use of PBL in their teaching. Some of the educators had have been using ICT and active learning approaches including PBL in the past 5 years.

Check lines 229-238

Also, the selection was based on their availability and commitment to partake in the whole project. This research was a planned project for my PhD studies to support teacher educators to adopt online learning during the pandemic. As part of the project, we designed teaching and learning materials based on the national curriculum to support student teachers learning of science courses. At the onset of the project, I wanted to know the type of active learning approaches that the teachers are familiar with so that we can integrate ICT into such strategies. I first interview the teachers on their experiences of PBL before helping them to use ICT to design their inquiry learning activities. The three teacher educators were interviewed twice before and after an intervention we used to help students during the pandemic. Check lines 160 -168

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Nice work on the revisions. The only issue is one language comment from first recommendation that was not fixed (see below)

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The first sentence is still missing a word. When writing "Over the past two decades, educators in higher have relied on different teaching methods, including lectures and demonstrations." the "educators in higher" is not a complete sentence because it makes you ask "higher what?".

One possible change is "Over the past two decades, educators in higher education have relied on different teaching methods, including lectures and demonstrations."

Alternatively, you could use what you wrote in the author response "Over the past two decades, teachers at the colleges of education who are training students to become teachers have relied on different teaching methods, including lectures and demonstrations." which means the same thing, but a lot more wordy.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the constructive review and suggestion. It has really helped in making this paper very robust.

I have changed lines 22

Over the past two decades, educators in higher education have relied on different teaching methods, including lectures and demonstrations

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the constructive reviews and suggestions on the paper. It had made this paper robust.

I have changed lines 78-79

The results showed the post-test mean scores of students instructed with problem-based learning were higher than those in the conventional instruction class.

I have changed lines 130, 301, 340, problem-based learning

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The necessary corrections have been made and the methodology elements that were missing have been added. These methodological elements are essential for the replication of the research and the continuation by other researchers in the field

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the review and comments. It has brought an improvement in the paper.

Regards

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Nothing

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Suitable to be published

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the review and suggestions. They have brought significant improvement in the paper.

Regards