Through Their Eyes: Children’s Perspectives on Quality in Early Childhood Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to review this interesting and potentially innovative article. I was excited to see research on children’s voices relating to quality in early childhood education. Children are missing as stakeholders in understanding of quality and this has implications right through to national policy and international guidelines.
While I was enthusiastic about the potential of the article, it was difficult to see the connection between quality and the questions asked of the children, which were mainly about likes and dislikes. It was also quite brief, just 10 minutes for pairs of children to respond. I noticed that there was mention of drawing tools. It would help if this could be explained in more detail to demonstrate that children were doing more than responding to e.g. very recent events or very frequent events, for example.
I recommend using deductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke) to intentionally analyse for structural and process quality. Summative analysis with no correction for number of utterances to avoid bias to participants who are more vocal. Summative analysis is generally considered a good way to look at trends, but not for content that may have deeper meaning. For these reasons, I don’t believe summative analysis is appropriate for this study.
I noted there is a lot of information that has been deleted for peer review (Lines 606-611). It is difficult for reviewers if we don’t know about ethics approvals, funding, availability of data. It is possible to redact information that might reveal author identity, but there should be enough information for reviewers to include this part of the manuscript in their assessment.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to read an interesting study. It would be good to elaborate on the theory or conceptual approach taken to this paper or study overall?
I have organised my feedback into sections:
Abstract: You noted that thematic analysis uncovered. I would reframe this to identified as you described your process of data analysis.
Your keywords: I suggest you use some alternate keywords here in order to optimise your search functions. Use words other than what is in the abstract and/or title and it really helps to gain more traction with your papers.
Materials and methods: You need to more clearly state you are discussing the overall study in the introduction of this section as I was confused a few times by the wording in this section. I would make it much more clear that this is one data set in a larger study.
In your analysis section you name a reference - one author's surname is incorrect spelled and also not in the reference list. I am assuming here you are using this reference? Hsieh, H. F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative health research, 15(9), 1277-1288.
Findings:
In section 3.1 I had expected more than one example extract if it was the highest number of responses - the next theme has three example extracts.
When children named the toys and activities I suggest saying "specifically naming..."
In 3.1.5 it would have been great to link to some literature in the section about Rose's excitement.
Also, in 3.2.2 I wondered if there could have been some links (In Nick's comments) made to some research from QUT about sleep that you reference in the discussion?
Otherwise, I wish you well in making these changes and re-submitting your paper.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the thorough explanations of the revisions. Please could you check the revision comment that the average duration of the interviews was 10 minutes, but the range was 15-40 minutes? That isn't possible. It looks like a mistake.
Author Response
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Response to 2nd round reviewer comments for Through their eyes: Children’s perspectives on quality in early childhood education
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Reviewer comment |
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Reviewer 1: Please could you check the revision comment that the average duration of the interviews was 10 minutes, but the range was 15-40 minutes? That isn't possible. It looks like a mistake. |
Thank you for pointing out this unintentional error. The interviews ranged from 15-40 minutes. The paper has been edited accordingly (page 5, line 209). |
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
