Artistic, Digital, and Pedagogical Competence in Language Teacher Education: Generating Educational Videos and Innovative Teaching Practices

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article analyses the development of digital and artistic competences among pre-service language teachers. The authors’ initiative aims to train future teachers in designing and producing educational videos.

The study is interesting, but the presentation of the results needs to be significantly improved.

Recommendations:

• The aim of the article should be specified in the Introduction section.
• The number of the last subsection of Introduction should be 1.4.
• From the second section to the end of the manuscript, the text and tables should be formatted in accordance with the journal's requirements.
• Row 179: The author states: “40 items, grouped into six blocks of eight items each”. The numbers should be corrected, or the authors must explain the discrepancy.
• The items in rows 357/358, 382-388, and 393-400 are to be written with words to improve the readability of the article.
• Row 440: “(see Table X)” The authors should specify the pointed table.
• The quality of Figures 1, 2, and 3 can be improved for better readability.
• There is a second Figure 3 on rows 401-407. It should be renamed. Additionally, the author must add labels and provide explanations for them.
• The article contains too much information, repeating both in text and tables, and it should be shortened:
  • Table 2 can be removed, as its content is explained in detail in 3.1. The content of 3.1 section should be moved to 2.2 section.
  • The content of Table 3 is presented in the text, and the table can be removed.
  • The number of master's and undergraduate students can be written in the text; it is not necessary to repeat it 32 times in the table.
  • Table 7 is vast, but informative. However, its volume can be decreased significantly by shortening the description in the first column, for instance, EVa (Equal variances assumed) and EVna (Equal variances not assumed).
  • Table 4 should be formatted. The spaces between lines should be decreased, leaving a gap only between the items in different blocks.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewers and editor,

 

Please, find attached your comments with our responses.

 

We really appreciate your efforts to improve our article.

 

Thank you very much.

 

The authors.

 

 

(x) I would not like to sign my review report
( ) I would like to sign my review report

Quality of English Language

( ) The English could be improved to more clearly express the research.
(x) The English is fine and does not require any improvement.

 

	Yes	Can be improved	Must be improved	Not applicable
Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
Is the article adequately referenced?	(x)	( )	( )	( )
Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?	( )	(x)	( )	( )

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article analyses the development of digital and artistic competences among pre-service language teachers. The authors’ initiative aims to train future teachers in designing and producing educational videos.

The study is interesting, but the presentation of the results needs to be significantly improved.

Recommendations:

• The aim of the article should be specified in the Introduction section.
• The number of the last subsection of Introduction should be 1.4. CHANGED

• From the second section to the end of the manuscript, the text and tables should be formatted in accordance with the journal's requirements.  
• DONE

 

• Row 179: The author states: “40 items, grouped into six blocks of eight items each”. The numbers should be corrected, or the authors must explain the discrepancy. CHANGED (32 ÍTEMS GROUPED INTO FOUR BLOKS)
• The items in rows 357/358, 382-388, and 393-400 are to be written with words to improve the readability of the article.

Row 440: “(see Table X)” The authors should specify the pointed table.CHANGED. TABLE 5

There is a second Figure 3 on rows 401-407. It should be renamed. Additionally, the author must add labels and provide explanations for them. CHANGED IT’S FIGURE 4

• The article contains too much information, repeating both in text and tables, and it should be shortened:
  • Table 2 can be removed, as its content is explained in detail in 3.1. The content of 3.1 section should be moved to 2.2 section. DONE
  • The content of Table 3 is presented in the text, and the table can be removed. DONE
  • The number of master's and undergraduate students can be written in the text; it is not necessary to repeat it 32 times in the table. DELETED

 

Table 7 is vast, but informative. However, its volume can be decreased significantly by shortening the description in the first column, for instance, EVa (Equal variances assumed) and EVna (Equal variances not assumed).CHANGED

 

Table 4 should be formatted. The spaces between lines should be decreased, leaving a gap only between the items in different blocks. DONE

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for this. I'm afraid I find significant problems with this study. There is not an effective lit review, some of the propositions are contentious (to put it mildly!), and I don't see how your research instrument leads you to your conclusions. Your data analysis also is insufficient. Please see the comments throughout for further comments, suggestions and notes.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

• Open Review
• (x) I would not like to sign my review report
  ( ) I would like to sign my review report
• Quality of English Language
• ( ) The English could be improved to more clearly express the research.
  (x) The English is fine and does not require any improvement.

•  

	Yes	Can be improved	Must be improved	Not applicable
Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
Are the research design, questions, hypotheses and methods clearly stated?	( )	(x)	( )	( )
Are the arguments and discussion of findings coherent, balanced and compelling?	( )	( )	( )	( )
For empirical research, are the results clearly presented?	( )	( )	( )	( )
Is the article adequately referenced?	( )	( )	(x)	( )
Are the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results presented in the article or referenced in secondary literature?	( )	( )	(x)	( )

• Comments and Suggestions for Authors
• Thanks for this. I'm afraid I find significant problems with this study. There is not an effective lit review, some of the propositions are contentious (to put it mildly!), and I don't see how your research instrument leads you to your conclusions. Your data analysis also is insufficient. Please see the comments throughout for further comments, suggestions and notes.

COMENTARIOS SOBRE EL ARTÍCULO DEL REVISOR 2

LÍNEA 27 What respect? Why not just start with "Addressing..." ? CHANGED

LÍNEA 28 Which? Don't use the abstract as an opening paragraph. CHANGED

LÍNEA 38 What about people who aren't - or don't think they are - artistic? Are they incapable of digital competence? This is clearly nonsense and needs to be removed. We have rewritten the text to clarify the meaning and explained the context. think the reviewer did not understand the meaning of the context,

LÍNEA 47 BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY ROUTE TO THESE!!. MODIFIED.

LÍNEA 49 Why not indented like the other new paragraphs?//// modified remove the 'a' and add 's' onto ways. modified

LÍNEA 52 Non-sequitur. Pedagogical skill is not the same as problem-solving and communication. modified

LÍNEA 57. Not based on the model in your diagram it doesn't - this is about tools for teaching, not learning. Explained and modified

LÍNEA 70. No it isn't - it merely describes it. It's not a teaching tool. We have modified this paragraph, too.

LÍNEA 72. No it doesn't - see previous comment. modified

LÍNEA 89. It's not supposed to be USED - it describes teacher competence. modified

LÍNEA 107. This is about to be irrelevant, as version 3.0 is coming out in the next few months. Modified as expected the new version is to be released shortly.

LÍNEA 131. built?modified

LÍNEA 141Says who, ¿and how do you know? Modified and explained

LÍNEA 154 its

LÍNEA 158 Hang on - where's your lit review? These few pages don't establish the need for this, the theory that underpins or - crucially for this paper - your understanding that one needs to be creative in order to achieve digital competence. We appreciate the reviewer’s concern regarding the lack of an extensive literature review and the theoretical foundations linking creativity to digital competence. However, we respectfully disagree that the current manuscript fails to establish this connection.

Our aim was not to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review, but rather to situate the study within the existing frameworks (DigCompEdu, artistic competence, pedagogical competence) that are already widely recognised in the literature. Several authors have argued that creativity is an essential dimension of digital competence, as it underpins the ability to design meaningful, innovative, and adaptive digital learning experiences (Ferrari, 2013; Craft, 2011; Bocconi et al., 2016; Loveless, 2015). Furthermore, recent studies highlight that the integration of creativity into teacher education is central to achieving professional digital competence (Concha-Huarcaya et al., 2024; Martín-Parraga et al., 2023).

For this reason, we chose to focus our review on the most relevant sources and position creativity as a key component rather than providing a separate and extensive literature review section. We believe this approach maintains the clarity and conciseness of the paper, while still grounding our argument in established theoretical perspectives.

LÍNEA 166. was - you're using the past tense, so stay in it. modified

LÍNEA 170 was selected. modified

LÍNEA 190 these should be. modified

LÍNEA 210. What do these mean? That they do or don't accept these? Use these? Agree with them? I don't understand it at all. Check spacing - this table doesn't need to be this big here. Or, have it as an appendix. Or, just say it meets each of the 22 standards, which are on the diagram you shared earlier. You're not showing anything else here, so it seems irrelevant. Table 2 has been deleted as suggested by reviewer nº 1.

LÍNEA 212 How so? This means - in colloquial English - a spur-of-the-moment "that'll do" kind of approach. Use the word 'bespoke' or 'tailored' or 'customised' instead - here, and in the abstract. We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. We decided to keep the term ad hoc, as it is widely used in educational and social science research to refer to instruments created for a specific purpose (e.g., Pérez-López, 2019; Rodríguez & García, 2021)

LÍNEA 227 You definitely do need to have these here, but again, they don't need to be double spaced. This table has been deleted as suggested by reviewer nº1.

LÍNEA 227 These are not questions. How can respondents agree or disagree? Table deleted.

LÍNEA 227 Remember, you have given no justification for including these. deleted

LÍNEA 236 ?? This seems to mean that only a European could create something of value in this area, which sounds very wrong to me. Please rewrite - or at least explain differently. We agree that our previous wording could be misinterpreted. Our intention was just to highlight that Dig Comp Edu is the official reference in the European Union. We have clarify the text accordingly.

LÍNEA 241 So how was it voluntary - what %age refused? Although participation was voluntary, no students refused to complete the questionnaire resulting in a 100% response rate.

LÍNEA 254 But how did you amalgamate all the written observations into the simplified paragraphs you offer below? You need to explain whether it was thematic or ...? And how was it validated? Explained and modified.

LÍNEA 260 Where is the table with the number of Y/N/sometimes for each Q? Your analysis doesn't seem to match your instrument...? We thank the reviewer for this observation. The questionnaire included categorical responses (Yes/No/Sometimes). However, we decided not to include a frequency table in the manuscript to avoid excessive length and redundancy, as our focus was on the thematic synthesis of the responses rather than on reporting raw counts. We have now clarified this in the Methods/Results section.

 

LÍNEA 347 Which ones? Explained on the manuscript.

LÍNEA 352 4.14 as an average of the Likert scores given by all respondents? You haven't actually made this clear. CLARIFIED

LÍNEA 352 Why do some have , where the rest have . ? The standard Anglicized version would be . CHANGED

LÍNEA 357 But which are these? We don't want to have to go and look. DONE

LÍNEA 363 What is this showing, exactly? Differences between master’s and undergraduate students 360 were explored by comparing the mean scores per item and block. Table 6 presents the av-361 erages obtained from master's and undergraduate students for each item. Now it is table 4.

LÍNEA 366.They didn't - they gave you self-reported levels of agreement. This is VERY different from scoring, which implies a level of achievement. We thank the reviewer for this clarification. We agree that the term scores could misleadingly suggest levels of achievement. To avoid this confusion, we have revised the text to state that the values represent self-reported levels of agreement on a five-point Likert scale.

LÍNEA 378 No they don't - it's not something they're better at. It's merely how they've answered your questions. Be very careful with over-claiming. We thank the reviewer for this important observation. We agree that our previous wording could be misinterpreted as an over-claim about competence. We have therefore revised the text to make clear that the results refer to students’ perceptions as reflected in their self-reported levels of agreement, not to objective achievement.

LÍNEA 384 Again, you need to say what these were. Maybe a small table. Explained in the manuscript.

LÍNEA 389. Do we need all of this? I think this should be, at best, an appendix. This table is fundamental according to reviewer n1

LÍNEA 413 This doesn't appear on any of your questionnaires, so I don't see how you can make this leap. We thank the reviewer for this observation. We acknowledge that our questionnaire did not directly measure constructs such as autonomous learning or metacognitive awareness. We have therefore revised the text to avoid over-claiming and to attribute these outcomes explicitly to the existing literature, while limiting our own findings to the perceptions actually measured in the instrument.

 

LÍNEA 437 proposed, modified

LÍNEA 534 You haven't mentioned creativity being a prerequisite for digital competence at all in the conclusions - presumably because you found no evidence for what I still believe is a nonsense proposition. We thank the reviewer for these comments. Regarding creativity, we have clarified in the conclusions that our results do not support the claim that creativity is a “prerequisite” for digital competence but rather reinforce the view—consistent with prior research—that creativity acts as a key enabler and dimension that strengthens teachers’ digital practices.

LÍNEA 535 Don't finish with these, or it will be what your readers leave thinking about. Have them at the start of the concluding section, and then show how, "Despite these, this study is significant and original because..."

We have also restructured the conclusions to begin with the study’s limitations and end with its originality and contribution, so as to ensure the section closes with its main significance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors' correction are sufficient and I accept the answers to my remarks.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers once again for their comments, which have contributed to the improvement of our article.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I still disagree that you need to be creative to be digitally competent. I am very creative, artistic and musical and I am okay online. My brother who is utterly lacking in creative or artistic talent is a database architect and software developer. Go figure. I still think where you make the claim you need to say "we believe that" or "it is our contention that", rather than presenting it as a truth.

Throughout, Masters students should not have the apostrophe. It is not "Master's". This needs changing before publication.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers once again for their comments, which have contributed to the improvement of our article.

With regard to the comments made by reviewer 2, all apostrophes in Master have been removed and the introduction has been modified (modification underlined in green and deletion in red and underlined), in the hope that this reflects the suggestion made.