Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.  

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed.

Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted. 

Author Response

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

This is timely, original article exploring a topic that is emerging as a key issue in contemporary education, sustaining teacher well being in a challenging and evolving landscape.

The article is of overall very good quality, some minor grammatical issues to be addressed. Abstract: Data 'were' to Data 'was'

Measures: Consistency in presentation of final point on each measure adopted.

Thanks for your time for reviewing process and for your suggestions.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Is there a measurable correlation between "self-care", "self-compassion" and optimism on the one hand and "resilience" and  "work engagement" in the Italian kindergarten and primary school context? Should teacher trainers and school managers view compassion and optimism as psychological resources to be promoted and instantiated in the workplace?

I am a linguist and an educationist, not a psychologist, and I am not familiar enough with psychometrics to be thoroughly reliable reviewer of this article. I was in fact expecting a qualitative (or mixed-methods) study with more context. So the comments I will be making below are delivered with honesty but no special authority. 

(+) "Training interventions" and "support programs" that would openly promote the virtues of compassion amongst (head) teachers and managers in primary schools do make sense. The self-reported evidence that has been collected and analyzed suggests so. This study provides strong arguments for reshaping professional culture in public education.

(+) The authors provide an extensive literature review. They go beyond listing, and scanning: they extract relevant concepts, categories, definitions, etc. while identifying determining factors / processes that affect both individual well-being and professional performance.

(?) Where exactly are the 183 teachers from? How were they contacted and recruited in the first place ? What kind of « online » setup was used? How did they take the 6 quick-fix tests ?   BRS (for resilience), UWES-3 (for work engagement) ; the « Proactive Strategy Scale » (vaguely defined); « The Self-Compassion Scale »  (compassionate beliefs about themselves): LOT-R (dispositional optimism); Experienced compassion at work scale. 

(-/?) Pupils (students) are never mentioned.  The teachers are treated as abstract and disembodied entities / stakeholders. No mention is ever made of their interactions. 

(-) The study is supposed to be focused and quite specific in scope: kindergarten and primary school teachers in Italy's state education system. Yet, we know nothing about the Italian context. They are completely faceless and decontextualized informants, using set answers to self-report psychological states and professional stances. So reader is left with the opposite impression : general remarks on correlations between attitudes, dispositions and efficacy. They themselves acknowledge that "mixed methods that combine quantitative and qualitative measures" would probably "offer a more detailed understanding of resilience processes and psychological resources in education". That might indeed be the case but at this stage, they seem to have completely lost track.

(?) Being "self-critical" and unduly harsh upon oneself is indeed detremental to one’s mental health and unlikely to foster motivation, resilience etc. in the workplace. Yet, acknowledging one's struggles and shortcomings is also an essential  if painful part of the process of self-improvement. Isn't this were self-compassion might act as a safety-net? Acknowledging one's failings and vulnerabilities is not equated with being harsh one oneself or feeling inadequate, etc.

(-) What are the specific challenges that kindergarten and primary school teachers in Italy have to live up to? What are common forms of pressure they experience? 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 2 comment

 

Is there a measurable correlation between "self-care", "self-compassion" and optimism on the one hand and "resilience" and "work engagement" in the Italian kindergarten and primary school context? Should teacher trainers and school managers view compassion and optimism as psychological resources to be promoted and instantiated in the workplace?

 

I am a linguist and an educationist, not a psychologist, and I am not familiar enough with psychometrics to be thoroughly reliable reviewer of this article. I was in fact expecting a qualitative (or mixed-methods) study with more context. So the comments I will be making below are

delivered with honesty but no special authority.

 

(+) "Training interventions" and "support programs" that would openly promote the virtues of

compassion amongst (head) teachers and managers in primary schools do make sense. The self- reported evidence that has been collected and analyzed suggests so. This study provides strong arguments for reshaping professional culture in public education.

 

(+) The authors provide an extensive literature review. They go beyond listing, and scanning: they extract relevant concepts, categories, definitions, etc. while identifying determining factors / processes that affect both individual well-being and professional performance.

 

(?) Where exactly are the 183 teachers from?

How were they contacted and recruited in the first place ? What kind of « online » setup was used? How did they take the 6 quick-fix tests ? BRS (for resilience), UWES-3 (for work engagement) ; the « Proactive Strategy Scale » (vaguely defined); «

The Self-Compassion Scale » (compassionate beliefs about themselves): LOT-R (dispositional optimism); Experienced compassion at work scale.

Following your suggestion, we have clarified the details regarding the sample in the revised version of our manuscript.

“The study population was a convenience sample and may not be taken as representative of the entire population of Italian teachers given that all participants were based in Central Italy. The authors organized plenary assemblies in schools to inform the teachers about the aims of the research and the procedures for completion of the questionnaires.

. The survey was conducted online in December 2022, where participants were informed about Italian privacy laws, provided informed consent, and then participated in the study filling in the search protocol via a Google string.

 

(-/?) Pupils (students) are never mentioned. The teachers are treated as abstract and disembodied entities / stakeholders. No mention is ever made of their interactions.

In our study we choose to focus our attention only on teachers’ personal dimension.

 

(-) The study is supposed to be focused and quite specific in scope: kindergarten and primary school teachers in Italy's state education system. Yet, we know nothing about the Italian context. They are completely faceless and decontextualized informants, using set answers to self-report psychological states and professional stances. So reader is left with the opposite impression : general remarks on correlations between attitudes, dispositions and efficacy. They themselves acknowledge that "mixed methods that combine quantitative and qualitative measures" would probably "offer a more detailed understanding of resilience processes and psychological resources in education". That might indeed be the case but at this stage, they seem to have completely lost track.

            Thank you for this comment. We completely agree with you on the importance of mixed methods. We have added the absence of qualitative analysis in our study in the section dedicated to limitations.

 

 (?) Being "self-critical" and unduly harsh upon oneself is indeed detremental to one’s mental health and unlikely to foster motivation, resilience etc. in the workplace. Yet, acknowledging one's

struggles and shortcomings is also an essential if painful part of the process of self-improvement. Isn't this were self-compassion might act as a safety-net? Acknowledging one's failings and vulnerabilities is not equated with being harsh one oneself or feeling inadequate, etc.

 

(-) What are the specific challenges that kindergarten and primary school teachers in Italy have to live up to? What are common forms of pressure they experience?

Thank you for this comment. We have revised the manuscript by adding a brief description of the Italian teaching context, highlighting common sources of pressure for kindergarten and primary school teachers. This clarification was included to better frame the rationale of the study and the focus on teachers’ personal resources.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is an interesting paper which also includes a very extensive literature review. The following points could be addressed: 

Mansfield, 2020 or 2021 (as in the references section)? 

p.8 "Hu and Bentler" should it appear as "Hu & Bentler"? Please check all references in the text and make any necessary changes. 

In the references section: alphabetical order of 121/122. Please check all references in the text/references section in case there are also similar cases/points that need to be altered.  

Please check spacing throughout the text (i.e., p.2, "resilience in instruction, researchers have examined...", Galaza & Jarosz,2022)

Please rephrase: p.3, last paragraph in section 1.2 (check punctuation marks). 

Please add more information about the participants educational background. Is this taken into account in the analysis? Would it be relevant to the study? Please add a comment either way. How was the sample selected? Could you provide more details about data collection (the author(s) state(s) it was online but please add some extra information). Could you please provide more detaisl about the analysis of the data (which tool did the author(s) use)? 

Given that it is a quantitative study and that the teacher population in Italy (nursery and primary schools) is quite big, it might be a good idea to add a comment on the number of participants who participated in the study.   

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3 comment

 

It is an interesting paper which also includes a very extensive literature review. The following points could be addressed:

Mansfield, 2020 or 2021 (as in the references section)?

Thank you for pointing this out. The correct publication year for Mansfield is 2021, and this has now been corrected in the references section.

 

p.8 "Hu and Bentler" should it appear as "Hu & Bentler"? Please check all references in the text and make any necessary changes.

In the references section: alphabetical order of 121/122. Please check all references in the text/references section in case there are also similar cases/points that need to be altered.

 

Thank you for this comment. We have corrected the reference to “Hu & Bentler,” reviewed all in-text citations and the reference list, removed a duplicated reference entry, and corrected the alphabetical order where needed.

Please check spacing throughout the text (i.e., p.2, "resilience in instruction, researchers have examined...", Galaza & Jarosz,2022)
Please rephrase: p.3, last paragraph in section 1.2 (check punctuation marks).

Thank you for this comment. We corrected punctuation.
Please add more information about the participants educational background. Is this taken into account in the analysis? Would it be relevant to the study? Please add a comment either way. How was the sample selected? Could you provide more details about data collection (the author(s) state(s) it was online but please add some extra information).

Following your suggestion, we have clarified the details regarding the sample in the revised version of our manuscript.

 

Could you please provide more details about the analysis of the data (which tool did the author(s) use)?   

For greater clarity, we have moved the information about the software used to the beginning of the data analysis paragraph. 

 

Given that it is a quantitative study and that the teacher population in Italy (nursery and primary schools) is quite big, it might be a good idea to add a comment on the number of participants who participated in the study.

Thank you for this comment. We have added a note in the Limitations section acknowledging the relatively limited sample size and its implications for generalizability.