Co-Adapting a Reflective Video-Based Professional Development in Informal STEM Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsKia ora,
Thank you for the opportunity to read about you work. I have made some comments and suggestions on your article to highlight a few issues that I encountered while reviewing this article. The issues are mainly around clarity of what you did and when and then some consistency issues in how you present your information. Three examples:
1. Your abstract states this was done over the summer season, then in the text it talks about three years of research, this needs to be clarified.
2. Lines 508-509 raise concerns as it states cohort 1 and 2 were not part of the paper (but talked about in the paper) more problematic is this states reflection and video-based PD were also not part of the paper - and these are in the title, this needs clarification.
3. Some figures are rather difficult to read and not all of them are really in the text, so raises questions as to why here then such as Figure 1 and Figure 9.
Cheers,
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We appreciate your guidance in revising this manuscript.
Thank you for the opportunity to read about you work. I have made some comments and suggestions on your article to highlight a few issues that I encountered while reviewing this article. The issues are mainly around clarity of what you did and when and then some consistency issues in how you present your information.
- Your abstract states this was done over the summer season, then in the text it talks about three years of research, this needs to be clarified.
Response: We changed “categories during the summer season” to “to support the operational constraints of their organizations while addressing the specific needs of their informal educators.”
- Lines 508-509 raise concerns as it states cohort 1 and 2 were not part of the paper (but talked about in the paper) more problematic is this states reflection and video-based PD were also not part of the paper - and these are in the title, this needs clarification.
Response: We revised this sentence to clarify that our professional development has had impacts on informal educators as noted in some of our prior publications.
- Some figures are rather difficult to read and not all of them are really in the text, so raises questions as to why here then such as Figure 1 and Figure 9.
Response: We recreated Figure 8 to be more readable.
Figure 1, It is put here as the MFSC model, but then the following two paragraphs do not really reflect this figure. How or what changed from line 99 to lines 103- 137?
Response: We removed the following sentence: “The MFSC model as presented is illustrated in Figure 1. We also added (see Figure 1) at the end of the sentence that shares an overview of the MFSC as a series of four interconnected workshops. Lastly, we added the name of the four workshops within the two paragraphs that follow Figure 1.
Figure 2 has one issue that prevents it from being very well done. What does the organization size mean? This is not in the text? Is it relevant?
How to respond: We added organization size as a way to share the range of organizations we partnered with, which is similar to why we included the location. This further implies how size of the museum organization was not necessarily a unique factor to how the model was co-adapted. To clarify the meaning of small, medium, and large, we updated the caption in Figure 2. “Size was self-reported or matched based on income reported through annual reports or IMLS data (Frehill & Pelczar, 2018), where annual income is <$2.5 million for Small, $2.5MM-$5MM for Medium, >$5 million for Large.”
- Lines in 26 and 39 in attached document.
Response: In Line 37, we changed “museum education” to “museum organizations.” We also added the following to the end of the sentence: “for the growth and development of museum educators.”
- Line 59
Response: We changed “but to” to “but also to.”
- Line 181
Response: This was an oversight on our part as we removed a table from the manuscript. Therefore, we removed “(see Table 1)” from Line 181.
- Line 204.
Response: We reworded the sentence to clarify how Cohort 3 was part of the co-development of the PD. “Unlike the first two cohorts, Cohort 3 did not engage in teamwork, discussions, or peer-to-peer support across organizations.”
- Should state that all names are pseudonyms the first time a name is used, assuming this is a pseudonym and not real name (Ethical issue then)
Response: We did not attend to this as we noted this in our original submission, Lines 256-257. “Pseudonyms for individuals and organizations are used to maintain their anonymity.”
- Why not? “Lori continued to be a part of the professional development workshops, but she was not engaged in her professional growth through video-based self-reflection and discussions with her peers around her own failure-based instructional moves with youth who visit their museum.”
Response: We clarified this by adding the following . “…, but due to feelings of discomfort, she was not engaged …”
- consistency in how this is done, generally the location or the quote would follow the quote, so if using dates, then these should come after the quote. This needs to be done throughout the paper.
Response: We moved all dates to the end of each direct quote.
- Line 283: As this quote follows on from the text, it should have a colon - Museum of Awe:
Response: Thank you for this comment. We made this change throughout the revision. Revise and double check for other areas throughout the paper.
- Line 325
Response: We revised our typo error.
- Line 333: Figure 1 has reflect in it, and could imply improvement, but should it only imply?
Response: We updated the Figure to include Reflect & Improve to better align with our description of the original cycle presented to museum organizations. In addition, we added the language of Workshop to better align with the overview of the professional development cycle, as well as that of Figure 3 and Figure 4.
- Line 334: Confusion, does this mean all three cohorts conducted this only during the summer so for three summers?
Response: In describing the Overview of the Professional Development Cycle, we added the following sentence to address this comment: “Further, organizations were provided flexibility for when to engage in the professional development cycle, with the majority engaged in the cycle during the summer sessions.”
- How is this [investigator] triangulation? Lines 550-552.
Response: We better defined investigator triangulation by adding the following sentence: “Bias is mitigated by different investigators observing the same data who may not agree on its interpretation” (p. 22).
- Line 572: suggest amending - underscore the potential for the transferability
Response: We amended the sentence to reflect this suggestion.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
- informal education, professional development, reflection and museum education, videos. these are mentioned in the introduction but the relationship between them needs to be strengthened by using up-to-date bibliographies. there are also problems of context between them.
- Why did you perform it in mathematics education, as indicated in lines 55-57?
- In line 62, STEM education was included in the process, but no justification was given.
- In line 71, it is associated with museum education due to failure in STEM fields. However, topics that may constitute a problem situation such as the importance of success in STEM fields, possible problems of failures in STEM fields are not included.
- the problem situation of the research should be reconstructed with current studies.
- what is the method of the research? state this first in the method section of the article. when stating the method, organize it in relation to your research purpose.
- What is your research sample type according to your research objective?
- The data collection was carried out with great effort. the data is very valuable. however, the way the findings are presented needs to be improved.
- processes such as research method, sampling, data collection should be organized according to basic scientific article writing methods. data analyses are explained in detail, but there is not enough explanation about which type of analysis is done.
- the discussion section is insufficient. it should be updated with current studies.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThere are no problems related to the quality of the English language.
Author Response
We appreciate your comments in strengthening the manuscript.
- informal education, professional development, reflection and museum education, videos. these are mentioned in the introduction but the relationship between them needs to be strengthened by using up-to-date bibliographies. there are also problems of context between them.
- the problem situation of the research should be reconstructed with current studies.
How to respond: In the first sentence, we clarified that museum education is informal education, “Professional development for informal educators (i.e., professionals who facilitate learning experiences outside of traditional classroom settings such as museums) is frequently structured…” We also revised some of our language in Lines “In particular, we co-adapted and co-refined the professional development to not only translate to informal learning environments, specifically museum environments, but to focus on supporting informal museum educators to productively attend, interpret, and respond to youths’ experiences with failure.”
Many of our citations are foundational to this scholarship such as Borko et al., 2015 and Sherin (2004); therefore, we did not remove this from the manuscript. On the other hand, we also added a few current studies to support statements throughout the introduction.
- Why did you perform it in mathematics education, as indicated in lines 55-57?
Response: This study was conducted in mathematics education, but drew upon this foundational research. To clarify, we changed “…through utilizing a reflective, video-based…” to “…drawing upon a research-informed reflective, video-based…”
- In line 62, STEM education was included in the process, but no justification was given.
Response: We did not attend to this comment as our focus was ‘failure in STEM education”, which justified.in Lines 67-70.
- In line 71, it is associated with museum education due to failure in STEM fields. However, topics that may constitute a problem situation such as the importance of success in STEM fields, possible problems of failures in STEM fields are not included.
Response:: We included the following sentence in Section 3.1. “In addition, the STEM activities within the organizations were typically created to encourage iterative refinement, meaning youth’s initial designs would often fail and need to be revised.” This sentence highlights how failure is “baked” in to the activities. We further clarified why our focus on failure in STEM education through revising sentences in the introduction.
- what is the method of the research? state this first in the method section of the article. when stating the method, organize it in relation to your research purpose.
Response: We began the section – Materials and Methods – with the following sentence: “This study was informed by qualitative research methods, utilizing both natural observations of recorded meetings (Mulhall, 2003) and interviews with individual museum organizations (Tavory, 2020), which allowed the research team to examine and understand how and why museum organizations adapted and refined the professional development cycle.” The second part of the sentence connects the method to the purpose statement.
- What is your research sample type according to your research objective?
Response: We added the following sentence to the beginning of section 3.1 on organizations and participants. “Purposive sampling was employed to recruit and select museum organizations that espoused failure as part of their mission, and willing to engage their informal educators within the professional development cycle (Campbell et al., 2020).”
- The data collection was carried out with great effort. the data is very valuable. however, the way the findings are presented needs to be improved.
Response: We structured the results around the four themes identified through the analysis, which we also identified in the beginning of the results. In addition, there is no guidance on what needs to be improved and without more details we are unable to address this comment.
- processes such as research method, sampling, data collection should be organized according to basic scientific article writing methods. data analyses are explained in detail, but there is not enough explanation about which type of analysis is done.
Response: With the addition of research method and sampling information, the manuscript is organized appropriately as defined by some body of scientific article writing methods. We added a phrase at the beginning of the analysis regarding the type of analysis, namely “analysis was guided by Braun and Clark’s (2020) principles of thematic analysis.”
- the discussion section is insufficient. it should be updated with current studies.
Response: The majority of our citations are less than 10 years old. However, we updated some of the citation to reflect changes in the introduction.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Aurthor/s
- researcher has added current studies.
- I don't think the problem situation is clearly presented. why did you need to do this study? I still haven't received a clear answer to this question.
- Necessary edits were made in the method section and it was associated with the purpose of the research.
- The sampling method is specified.
- adding current studies in the discussion section does not make the discussion sufficient. those studies should also be discussed.
In general terms, the researcher has made arrangements according to the referee reports. however, I recommend that they review what I have stated above.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe quality of the English language is adequate.
Author Response
We appreciate the continuous review of our manuscript.
I don't think the problem situation is clearly presented. why did you need to do this study? I still haven't received a clear answer to this question.
Response: We restructured the introduction but also specifically named gaps in the literature. Here is one example: "However, while these approaches have been widely studied in classroom settings, their application in informal learning environments—particularly museums—remains underexplored." In addition, we changed the language in the purpose statement.
adding current studies in the discussion section does not make the discussion sufficient. those studies should also be discussed.
Response: In the discussion, we elaborated on studies that were not included in the introduction. We did not discuss studies in the discussion that were highlighted in the introduction. In the discussion, we related the results to previous studies from the introduction. With this in mind, we added information from a study by Lottero-Perdue and Parry in the introduction.
