Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper deals with a very interesting topic as its examines how K–12 educators’ sense of belonging influences their engagement with equity-focused professional development (PD). The authors theorize that greater belonging leads to more engagement, while a lack of belonging can lead to resistance or pushback, weakening the effectiveness of equity efforts. Thus, they use focus groups to explore factors that promote or hinder belonging and how these factors affect participation, offering insights into the reaction against equity efforts and ways to enhance PD effectiveness.

The authors of this paper have managed to effectively provide a critical review of the literature as regards to how a sense of belonging affects engagement and performance in educational settings, applying these insights to equity-focused PD. They explore how these experiences may vary by race, particularly for White educators versus educators of colour. They also introduce their theoretical hypotheses early in their paper, and connect educators’ experiences to broader societal backlash, highlighting practical implications in the last part of their paper.

 

Nevertheless, the authors could consider the following recommendations to improve the quality of their paper.

 

Methods:

1. It is mentioned that “Two focus groups were conducted at most schools, one that included the school’s equity leadership team members (n = 40) and one that included staff (n = 39) who were not members of the equity leadership team”. This seems like a relatively large number of participants for a focus group. Could you clarify whether you conducted only two focus group sessions in total, or whether these groups were divided into smaller subgroups?
2. Participant selection, coding, and analysis are clearly reported. However, additional details are needed regarding the recording process (e.g., whether written consent was obtained), the use of audio or video recordings for accurate transcription, and ethical considerations such as how participant anonymity and confidentiality were protected.

 

Results: The authors present the results very well. However, they may consider shortening the tables by reducing the number of illustrative excerpts. For instance, limiting the excerpts to one or two per theme/factor may enhance readability without compromising the depth of the analysis.

 

Discussion: There is some repetition of content already presented in the results. The authors are encouraged to reduce this redundancy by focusing more on interpreting the findings and making connections to existing literature.

 

Last section (Limitations): Well-written. The authors highlight important implications for research, policy, and practice.

Author Response

Comment 1: It is mentioned that “Two focus groups were conducted at most schools, one that included the school’s equity leadership team members (n = 40) and one that included staff (n = 39) who were not members of the equity leadership team”. This seems like a relatively large number of participants for a focus group. Could you clarify whether you conducted only two focus group sessions in total, or whether these groups were divided into smaller subgroups?

Response 1: Thank you for highlighting this opportunity to clarify our methodology. We conducted 19 focus groups in total, each of which included an average of 4-5 staff members, for a total of 40 staff who were members of their school’s equity leadership team and 39 staff who were not part of these teams. We have revised the participants section (page 8) to include details about the approximate number of staff involved in each focus group and clarify that 40 and 39 are the total number of educators participating in the different types of focus groups (those with equity leadership team members and those with other staff, respectively).

 

Comment 2: Participant selection, coding, and analysis are clearly reported. However, additional details are needed regarding the recording process (e.g., whether written consent was obtained), the use of audio or video recordings for accurate transcription, and ethical considerations such as how participant anonymity and confidentiality were protected.

Response 2: Thank you for the invitation to expand our explanation of our recording process and ethical assurances. We have added this detail to the procedure section on page 9.

 

Comment 3: The authors present the results very well. However, they may consider shortening the tables by reducing the number of illustrative excerpts. For instance, limiting the excerpts to one or two per theme/factor may enhance readability without compromising the depth of the analysis.

Response 3: Thank you for this suggestion. We have reduced the tables to include 2 illustrative excerpts per code.

 

Comment 4: There is some repetition of content already presented in the results. The authors are encouraged to reduce this redundancy by focusing more on interpreting the findings and making connections to existing literature.

Response 4: Thank you for this feedback. We have expanded our discussion to include additional connections to previous literature, particularly in the first section of the discussion, where we focus on the facilitators and inhibitors of belonging. For example, we now connect the findings both with past research conducted in educational settings and with broader bodies of research exploring social phenomena such as intergroup relations and intellectual humility. We draw connections between our findings, which are highly contextualized in equity-focused PD provided within a single district, and more general findings that point to similarities in social and psychological processes more broadly. These literatures may provide productive avenues for future research on ways to improve educators’ experiences in equity-focused PD.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

As the field of education faces continuous attacks against DEI, this work is imperative. The authors have tactfully approached this topic and carefully laid out the reasons for engagement (or disengagement) with equity-based PD.

In the section on belonging concerns for educators of color, there is a reference to "solo status", which does relate to this topic, but the authors may benefit from including work on racial battle fatigue as well (this phenomenon could also be referenced in the discussion section when analyzing the perspectives of participants of color).

Additionally, more could be said about how educators' identities inform how they are able (or unable) to engage with the content of equity-based PD. While the quotes from participants were compelling, the authors' discussion could have used a more critical analysis, perhaps by naming systems of power that have influenced educators' perspectives, or acknowledging the ways that identity and power are intertwined. While a sense of belonging is key in getting educators to participate in equity-based PD, there are other barriers that could be acknowledged in discussion with the findings from this study. 

Overall, this is great work that is very much needed at this time. In moving forward with work that focuses on equity, tact is important, but it is also crucial to speak truth to power.

Author Response

Comment 1: In the section on belonging concerns for educators of color, there is a reference to "solo status", which does relate to this topic, but the authors may benefit from including work on racial battle fatigue as well (this phenomenon could also be referenced in the discussion section when analyzing the perspectives of participants of color).

Response 1: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree that racial battle fatigue is a relevant and useful construct that aligns well with the findings among educators of color. We have expanded our discussion of the facilitators and inhibitors of belonging among educators of color to put our results into conversation with findings from research on racial battle fatigue (p. 23). We acknowledge the limitations of this research, which is largely qualitative, while also noting that the converging findings across studies suggest that the experiences reported in our study are likely not confined to the participating educators or the PD they experienced.

 

Comment 2: Additionally, more could be said about how educators' identities inform how they are able (or unable) to engage with the content of equity-based PD. While the quotes from participants were compelling, the authors' discussion could have used a more critical analysis, perhaps by naming systems of power that have influenced educators' perspectives, or acknowledging the ways that identity and power are intertwined. While a sense of belonging is key in getting educators to participate in equity-based PD, there are other barriers that could be acknowledged in discussion with the findings from this study. 

Response 2: Thank you for this feedback. We are also interested in understanding the systems of power that may have influenced educators’ perspectives, as well as the structural and contextual factors that shaped their experiences in equity-focused PD. We have expanded our discussion to include more analysis, particularly through connections to prior literature. However, we did not elaborate on how systems of power may have played a role in shaping educators’ identity-related experiences or engagement because we felt doing so would take us too far beyond what our data could support. Instead, we have expanded the limitations section to acknowledge the theoretical constraints imposed by our design, where the unit of analysis was at the teacher level and teachers shared their experiences in a focus group setting, which may have limited the depth of information they were willing to share. We have described some additional factors, such as school and district policies, practices, and histories, and contextual factors, such as the existence and quality of educators’ pre-existing relationships, that may prove fruitful for future research.