The Potential and Merits of Narrative-Based Virtual Fieldwork in Preservice Geography Teacher Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript deals with an interesting problem directly related to the educational process. In this way, the work is consistent with the aims and objectives of the journal Education Sciences. The work may be of particular interest in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has practically paralyzed fieldwork in many countries around the world, including field practicums for students in the Earth sciences. However, in order for the article to be accepted for publication, the authors should note the following observations:

1. It is proposed to use narrative-based virtual fieldwork (NVF) as a part of narrative-based geospatial technologies (NGST). In other words, according to the authors, NVF is a kind of NGST technology. However, nowhere in the article is a complete description of NGST technologies (ESRI Story Maps and Map-story are briefly mentioned).

2. From the first observation follows the second. The authors do not have a clear understanding of the difference between NVF and NGST. How can the NVF serve as a basis for the NGST?

3. It has been stated that the NVF has the potential for geography teacher education (PGTE). It seems to me that this is a fairly obvious fact. However, the article should reveal this potential in more detail.

4. The article mentions the problem related to teaching geography in Korea. Obviously, this issue also needs a broader discussion, since virtual teaching of geography of different countries requires a good knowledge of foreign languages and, especially, the spelling of national place names.

5. The authors rightly write that virtual fieldwork possibly realizes "fieldwork in classroom" or "fieldwork on desk". However, it is necessary to clearly show the difference between a virtual journey and a real fieldwork expedition.

6. The results of the study were tested on 28 university students in Korea. The students studied a travel geography course in 2020. Obviously, the students were deprived of the opportunity to participate in actual field expeditions and geographic travel in that year. For a clearer comparison of the proposed methodology with common practice, it would be desirable to repeat the experiment during the period of open state borders and the opportunity to conduct real geographical practices.

7. The content of the discussion section does not correspond to its purpose. There is practically no scientific discussion of the problem. Rather, it lists the main results of the study, which are quite obvious and not debatable. The discussion is supposed to bring out exactly the debatable scientific problems. This is not present in the article.

8. There is no "Conclusions" section in the article, although to some extent conclusions can be drawn from the results described in the "Discussion" section.

An overall evaluation of the manuscript. I found the work interesting and important from a practical point of view. The disadvantage I would call relatively little attention to the scientific component of the work. However, in general, the article may be of interest to teachers of geography and organizers of the educational process in the field of earth sciences. I believe that the article can be published after taking into account the comments.

Author Response

1. It is proposed to use narrative-based virtual fieldwork (NVF) as a part of narrative-based geospatial technologies (NGST). In other words, according to the authors, NVF is a kind of NGST technology. However, nowhere in the article is a complete description of NGST technologies (ESRI Story Maps and Map-story are briefly mentioned).

• I added a sentences on this comment in the section 2.2.

2. From the first observation follows the second. The authors do not have a clear understanding of the difference between NVF and NGST. How can the NVF serve as a basis for the NGST?

• I explainted the difference relationship between NGST and NVF. However, I became to consider that my article should more concretely explain how can the NGST serve the basis of NVF. I added the explanation on this issue to the section 2.2.

3. It has been stated that the NVF has the potential for geography teacher education (PGTE). It seems to me that this is a fairly obvious fact. However, the article should reveal this potential in more detail.

• I added more detailed explanations to the section 2.2.

4. The article mentions the problem related to teaching geography in Korea. Obviously, this issue also needs a broader discussion, since virtual teaching of geography of different countries requires a good knowledge of foreign languages and, especially, the spelling of national place names.

• I added sentences on this issue in the final section of the article as a necessity of follow-up research.

5. The authors rightly write that virtual fieldwork possibly realizes "fieldwork in classroom" or "fieldwork on desk". However, it is necessary to clearly show the difference between a virtual journey and a real fieldwork expedition.

• I added the explanation on this comment in the section 2.1.

6. The results of the study were tested on 28 university students in Korea. The students studied a travel geography course in 2020. Obviously, the students were deprived of the opportunity to participate in actual field expeditions and geographic travel in that year. For a clearer comparison of the proposed methodology with common practice, it would be desirable to repeat the experiment during the period of open state borders and the opportunity to conduct real geographical practices.

• The year 2020 was a typo. The travel geography teaching was held in the fall semester of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, not 2020. I revised the typo in the revision.

7. The content of the discussion section does not correspond to its purpose. There is practically no scientific discussion of the problem. Rather, it lists the main results of the study, which are quite obvious and not debatable. The discussion is supposed to bring out exactly the debatable scientific problems. This is not present in the article.

• I revised the final section in accordance with your comment.

8. There is no "Conclusions" section in the article, although to some extent conclusions can be drawn from the results described in the "Discussion" section.

• I revised the “Discussion” section to “Discussion and Conclusions.” The template states that the “Conclusions” section is not mandatory, and many academic research articles usually integrate the two sections.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your wonderful manuscript. I have no issues or concerns with the document as presented. It was a joy to read and easy to reflect on. Thank you very much.

Author Response

There is no comment from the reviewer 2 thus I have no answer to submit.