Teachers’ Reactions to Educational Television Programs during the Pandemic and Their Implied Images of Mathematics Teaching

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read this article with tremendous interest.  I was pleased to learn of activities taking place in Poland in presence of COVID.  The article is nicely written and needs only some minor editorial work.  It is easy to read.

My greatest concern relates to description of data and ways that they were used to examine specific research questions (which I did not see in the paper). 

It is my understanding that the utterances used in the analysis came from professional (Facebook) groups.  In light of this, I further assume that the comments teachers made on the website characterized the quality of teaching depicted on TV (virtual lessons).  Here is the issue I struggle with (due to absence of clear description in the current version of the paper):  is to interpret the categories of images derived from data to reflect the teachers' own perceptions of mathematics and mathematics teaching or their perceptions of teaching and mathematics portrayed in the TV enacted lessons?  The response to this question certainly impacts the discussion portion of this paper.  

Author Response

Thank you for reading and reviewing our paper! We do appreciate your useful comments and we agree with all the points you made. So, we have revised our paper accordingly and here are our responses to your comments:

1. My greatest concern relates to description of data and ways that they were used to examine specific research questions (which I did not see in the paper). 
   We have inserted the following research question: "What are the teachers’ implied images of mathematics and its teaching, as they were portrayed in their reactions to the educational television programs?"
   We have also added some information in the Methods section, which is now separated from the Results section.
2. It is my understanding that the utterances used in the analysis came from professional (Facebook) groups.  In light of this, I further assume that the comments teachers made on the website characterized the quality of teaching depicted on TV (virtual lessons).  Here is the issue I struggle with (due to absence of clear description in the current version of the paper):  is to interpret the categories of images derived from data to reflect the teachers' own perceptions of mathematics and mathematics teaching or their perceptions of teaching and mathematics portrayed in the TV enacted lessons?  The response to this question certainly impacts the discussion portion of this paper.
   By adding the research question, we believe that it is clear that the paper's focus is on the mathematics teachers' (i.e. who played the role of the audience in this case) own images of mathematics. The television programs were those which triggered these reactions. This view is evident in the title of the paper, in its abstract and in many other parts of the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments: Thanks to the authors for such an important and interesting piece of research. The contribution to the field, especially on asynchronous learning, could be extended beyond television programmes. The manuscript is well structured until Section 4. It could be published, albeit with major changes:

The Data analysis and Results section, Section 4, should separate the stages of data analysis: who the participants in the Facebook groups are, and results from the data analysis. It is also useful to state that in the data collection period, a total of 651 texts were analysed. But how were these 651 texts distributed within the group? Also, which sort of texts were counted as ‘irrelevant texts’, and how many of them were excluded?

Section 5 is a mixture of rationales, limitations and results (with four images). However, it does not tell readers which one is the predominant image, or whether they are equally presented in these 651 texts. The last paragraph reads more like a conclusion section.

In sum, the second half of the manuscript needs substantial rewriting and restructuring. 

Author Response

Thank you for reading and reviewing our paper! We do appreciate your useful comments and we agree with all the points you made. So, we have revised our paper accordingly and here are our responses to your comments:

1. The manuscript is well structured until Section 4. It could be published, albeit with major changes: The Data analysis and Results section, Section 4, should separate the stages of data analysis: who the participants in the Facebook groups are, and results from the data analysis.
   We have separated the Methods section from the Results section.
2. It is also useful to state that in the data collection period, a total of 651 texts were analysed. But how were these 651 texts distributed within the group? Also, which sort of texts were counted as ‘irrelevant texts’, and how many of them were excluded?
   We have inserted some more information on the number of texts analysed; the number of 651 texts came from 635 (Facebook) +289 (websites) texts, after excluding 273 irrelevant texts - we provide information in the text on the reasons for this exclusion (during that time, there was an ongoing struggle between the teachers and the government, resulting in heated debates in all media).
3. Section 5 is a mixture of rationales, limitations and results (with four images). However, it does not tell readers which one is the predominant image, or whether they are equally presented in these 651 texts. The last paragraph reads more like a conclusion section.
   

   Thank you for these comments! We have restructured this section by separating the conclusions. We left the first paragraph of the discussion section as it is, because we believe it assists the reader to see, once again, the background of our study. Additionally, we have considered the possibility of identifying a predominant image among the teachers. We think that, based on the qualitative and interpretative analysis that we made, each image is constructed by combining different codes in a qualitative way (without considering their frequencies). We have added a sub note, in order to stress this issue.

4. In sum, the second half of the manuscript needs substantial rewriting and restructuring.
   We have restructured the second half of the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your careful consideration of suggestions.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the corrections. I consider it publishable.