Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Understandings and Task Values of the Science Practices Advocated in the NGSS in the US

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In “Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Understandings and Task Values of the Science Practices Advocated in the NGSS in the US”, the authors present a detailed analysis of 108 preservice teachers’ responses in a pre- and post-course assessment of their understanding and subjective task values of science practices, using an instrument previously developed by the authors for secondary science teachers. The paper is well structured and clearly presented. Relevant and current literatures are cited. Research questions are clearly stated, focused and coherent as a series. The study design is appropriate and data accumulated from 8 semesters build a robust database. The tables in the analysis are easy to understand and different parts of the results are well structured in align with the research questions. The excerpts help readers understand preservice teachers’ perspectives and how data are coded. The conclusions drawn are adequately supported by the results and the discussions of the results are insightful and illuminating, neatly interweaving collected data and relevant literature. With minor revisions, this paper will become a very useful addition to the literature.

Here are some suggestions of amendments for the authors to consider:

Theoretical Background: 

• In “Task Value Beliefs and Teaching Practice”, the first three value categories are the attainment, interest and utility of students as perceived by the teachers from the activity of teaching. This is slightly different from where this theory typically applies, that is the values felt for oneself in the activity. So maybe some short clarification will make the reader less confused.

Methods – Participants:

• Since there is a pre- and post- course test, one may wonder whether the course design and emphasis of various practices have evolved significantly over the years. If so, different cohorts of preservice teachers may show different level of improvements.
• Some details of the time allocation for different parts of the course may also be useful, since the author recommended “more purposeful learning experiences through which they actually engage in the practices themselves such as authentic research experiences” (lines 417-419), so the readers might want to know how much hands-on activities and practicum they have now compared to lectures and group-discussions.

Methods – Data Collection:

• The readers might want to know how much time and effort are put into these tests and under what circumstances? Is the post-course test part of their assignments and taken into their final score? This might affect the validity of the tests.

Methods – Data Analysis:

• Since there are multiple authors, is there an intercoder reliability test done for the scoring?

Discussion and Implications:

• Lines 494: Attainment value, utility value, cost are discussed but interest value is missing. It should be mentioned here.
  
  
• Lines 453-455: Although the discussions are insightful, it might seem a bit unfair for the preservice teachers. If you can only choose three practices as most important, then these three chosen by most preservice teachers do serve as the skeleton of science practices. And the less nuanced understanding of science practices might be related to the features of primary science. So, the claim that judging from the three most selected practices, preservice teachers take a “popular, but naïve image of science” needs to rule out these contextual considerations.

Author Response

We are submitting a revised version of the manuscript entitled “Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Understandings and Task Values of the Science Practices Advocated in the NGSS in the US” in which you encouraged us to make minor revisions. We found the comments from you to be valuable in strengthening our manuscript. We have indicated our changes in blue in the manuscript to make it easier for review. A list of our responses to each of the comments are attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well written, and it discusses relevant issues pertaining to pre-service teachers' understandings of NGSS.  There is a need to revise the research questions. Research question 1 and 2 are directly linked to the title and well stated. The inclusion of 2a and 2b affected the manner in which conclusions drawn for research question 2. The author (s) need to decide if there is a need for all the four questions.  The conclusions can also benefit from revision in terms of answering the critical questions.  

Author Response

We are submitting a revised version of the manuscript entitled “Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Understandings and Task Values of the Science Practices Advocated in the NGSS in the US” in which you encouraged us to make minor revisions. We found the comments from you to be valuable in strengthening our manuscript. We have indicated our changes in blue in the manuscript to make it easier for review.

The paper is well written, and it discusses relevant issues pertaining to pre-service teachers' understandings of NGSS.  There is a need to revise the research questions. Research question 1 and 2 are directly linked to the title and well stated. The inclusion of 2a and 2b affected the manner in which conclusions drawn for research question 2. The author (s) need to decide if there is a need for all the four questions.  The conclusions can also benefit from revision in terms of answering the critical questions.  

→ Following the reviewer’s comment, we removed research questions 2a and 2b (Page 3, line 103).

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for sharing your work. It is very interesting to see how elementary prospective teachers developed their understandings of science practices of NGSS. I would like to make a few comments on the manuscript hoping that you find my commens helpful.

1. Epistemic nature. Reading the manuscript, I tried to get a clear sense of epistemic nature of science practices: However, it was not clear to me  that by epistemic nature, the authors mean. I suggest provising explicitly a few examples of what you mean by epistemic nature.

2. Due to, probably, lacking a clear udnerstadning of epistemic nature of science practices, a question lingers to the end of the manuscript. How can one say teachers can improve epistemic understanding of the practices by comparing the survey responses? I suggest that the manuscript be clear about this. 

3. Result. I am not following when some practices perceived by the teachers as lest important appeared as example of practices. For example, Table 2 shows that Practice 8 (Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information) is one of the least important. But Page 8 in the manuscript  says, "As an example, a preservice teacher perceived that Practice 8 (Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information) is important because it is necessary to construct an explanation during an investigation and communicate it with others." I wonder why the least practice was used as an example of the practices perceived by the teachers as most important. If you agree with my observation, I suggest looking at other examples and revising them

4. Result. The Table 4 appears two times. Please delete one of them, probably the second one.

5. Discussion. I find it more helpful to see a little bit more summary of the findings in the beginning of the discussion.

6. Discussion. It would be much clearer to explicitly relate the discussion point to the research question as you did in Line 420 ("With respect to the second research question").

6. Citations and References: I am not sure whether this manuscript uses APA 6th or not. One example is "Duschl et al., 2006" on page 1 that has 3 authors in references. "Duschl et al., 2006" seems to follow APA 7th but it has a publisher location (Washington, DC: National Academy Press), which is not aligned with APA 7th. Please double-check other references in ways to be aligned with MDPI.

Author Response

We are submitting a revised version of the manuscript entitled “Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Understandings and Task Values of the Science Practices Advocated in the NGSS in the US” in which you encouraged us to make minor revisions. We found the comments from you to be valuable in strengthening our manuscript. We have indicated our changes in blue in the manuscript to make it easier for review. A list of our responses to each of the comments are attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf