Scaling Professional Development with a Diverse Early Childhood Workforce

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author(s), thank you for the opportunity to review this study. I have shared the strengths and improvable aspects of this research below.

Strengths:

• The references used are both current and sufficient.
• References are made to both national and global contexts (e.g., sustainable development goals) relevant to the subject matter. This is an important study.
• Emphasis is placed on the important and distinctive features of the coaching system.
• Sufficient information is provided on the characteristics of early childhood education in the Colombian context.
• Sufficient examples are provided from the participants' direct statements.
• The results are evaluated from various perspectives in the discussion section.
• The recommendations are sufficient and feasible.
• Ethics committee approval has been obtained.

 

Weaknesses or questions to be answered:

• The title reflects the content, but I would suggest shortening it a bit.
• The word count is quite high. The authors have attempted to address and prove many points, but this may cause them to stray from the main focus. There are repetitions within the article. The same thought structure is repeated in similar sentences. This does not provide the reader with a smooth flow.
• Theoretically, this article is lacking. For example, when explaining the role of teachers in child development, emphasis should be placed on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Model. In this way, the ideas put forward can be reinforced with various theories, approaches, and models. This study emphasizes the importance of continuous models, but more importantly, the role of teachers in child development. Giving more space to this topic would strengthen the importance of the research from this perspective. More space could be given to the results of cost-benefit analyses of teacher quality.
• Improving teacher quality has long been a fundamental requirement of the education system. For this reason, most societies have various strategies and policies in place. Particularly in higher education institutions, teacher training models are emphasized through various accreditation organizations. Therefore, we should not put forward very bold theses about a gap in this area. Similar studies have also been conducted on quality in early childhood. This article should definitely address quality standards in early childhood.
• Why was the information between 247-269 provided? Why is this information included in the “Introduction” section? I suggest that statements related to the methodology not be included in the introduction. Furthermore, examples from other studies could be included in the discussion section. The introduction seems longer than necessary, and I believe this disrupts the flow.
• Following the research questions, the section (283-288) states: "By focusing on participants' perspectives, this qualitative study documents how the program was experienced in practice, including key facilitators and challenges in implementation. In doing so, it foregrounds the personal resources and constraints that shape teachers' and community mothers' engagement with the training process, providing a foundation for understanding the conditions under which a train-the-trainer model can be implemented in resource-constrained settings." This statement should not be here (in the introduction section). This statement is more like a concluding sentence.
• The question found between 280-282, “What personal resources do the participating teachers and community mothers bring to the program, what challenges do they face, and how do these characteristics shape their training experience and the potential functioning of the model?” should consist of three separate questions. It is not a good idea to include three questions within a single question.
• The research method was designed using a phenomenological qualitative approach. Based on which paradigm view was this approach chosen? It may be better to include the paradigm as well.
• How were the semi-structured interview questions prepared? Was it based solely on the literature, or were expert opinions used? Was a pilot interview conducted before implementation? The answers to these questions should be included in the article.
• If a program was used to determine the themes, it should be specified. Interview durations and data collection dates should be clearly and thoroughly explained.
• Have there been significant changes in the Colombian system since 2019, when the data was collected?
• I did not see the data's ethics committee approval; you should share this.
• It may be better to present the demographic characteristics of the participants in a single table.
• How was inter-rater reliability ensured when performing thematic coding? If Miles & Huberman or Cohen's Kappa Test was applied, this should be specified.
• Less space could be given to participant statements. I recommend selecting important and interesting examples and presenting fewer of them. This will help reduce your word count. Readers tend to want to see the analysis results rather than read all the statements.
• An ethical statement regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence must be provided, and questions such as which tools were used and whether copyrights were obtained must be answered.

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Summary

This qualitative case study examines the implementation of a train-the-trainer professional development (PD) model for early childhood educators (CDI teachers) and community mothers (HCB) in Colombia. Drawing on ten in-depth interviews conducted at the end of the first year of program implementation, the paper explores how participants experienced the program and how personal resources and contextual constraints shaped their learning and appropriation of pedagogical practices. The manuscript’s main strength lies in its focus on an under-researched context and its nuanced account of workforce heterogeneity, highlighting how uneven access to coaching and structural constraints affect both implementation fidelity and learning outcomes.

This manuscript addresses a relevant and underexplored topic — the implementation of train-the-trainer professional development models in Latin American early childhood education — and offers a detailed qualitative account of participants’ experiences in a resource-constrained Colombian context. The study is grounded in a coherent conceptual framework and the data are rich. Here I suggest some changes

General Comments

The study’s most serious limitation is a recurrent slippage between descriptive phenomenological reporting and quasi-causal inference. The manuscript repeatedly moves from participants’ subjective accounts to claims about mechanisms and outcomes (e.g., linking coaching variability to inequitable learning outcomes, or attributing differential conceptual appropriation to training intensity) without the methodological scaffolding that would justify such moves. Phenomenological designs are powerful for capturing lived experience; they are not suited to making claims about causal or even systematically comparative effects.

A second structural weakness is the predominantly descriptive and taxonomic tone of the analysis. The results are organized into facilitators and obstacles — a useful heuristic — but the analytical move rarely goes beyond labelling. Readers are presented with rich data that are insufficiently interrogated theoretically. The manuscript would be considerably stronger if the authors engaged more explicitly with the theoretical frameworks introduced in the literature review (strengths-based approaches, cascade fidelity, communities of practice) to interpret, not merely illustrate, what the data show.

Third, the manuscript lacks researcher reflexivity. In interpretive qualitative research, the relationship between researchers and the object of study is a methodological issue, not a disclosure formality. The authors note that one researcher acted as an “external analyst” because she/he had not participated in data collection (lines 361–362), but they say nothing about the other researchers’ relationship to the implementing organisation, the program, or the participants. Given that the study was conducted “within the framework” of an ICBF strengthening strategy, it is essential to discuss whether any of the research team was connected to that organisation.

Methods.

The sample description reveals important features that are analytically underexplored. The educational backgrounds are strikingly heterogeneous — one CDI teacher holds a postgraduate specialisation in human resources, another has a background in facial aesthetics — yet this is mentioned only descriptively. Given the study’s explicit interest in workforce heterogeneity, these profiles deserve analytic attention. Did these varied backgrounds shape participants’ engagement with the pedagogical model differently? This seems like a missed interpretive opportunity.

“Typical case sampling” is claimed but the criteria defining what counts as “typical” are never operationalised. What made these units and educators representative of the broader program population? This is not a trivial question, given that 51 units participated and only 10 educators were interviewed from one city.

The description of the analytic process is generic. The authors state that an “inductive analytic strategy was adopted” (line 355), yet the study clearly entered the field with a predefined conceptual architecture (cascade model, strengths-based approaches, coaching). The authors should be transparent about how prior conceptual commitments interacted with the data-driven coding process. Was the category in Table 1 developed fully inductively? If categories like “motivation,” “agency,” and “prior knowledge” were anticipated by the interview guides, the claim of inductive emergence needs qualification.

Results.

This is the most analytically central finding of the paper, yet its treatment remains anecdotal. The manuscript presents participant accounts of irregular replication without sufficiently analysing the structural mechanisms that produced this variability. Was the irregularity a predictable consequence of the model design (e.g., leaders were not given dedicated time or institutional recognition)? Or was it idiosyncratic? The discussion section partially addresses this, but the results section should lay the analytical groundwork more firmly, ideally connecting the variability to specific features of the cascade design rather than treating it as a contextual unfortunate.

Discussion and conclusions.

The discussion is competent and well-cited, but its structure largely mirrors the results section, producing a sense of repetition. The authors would benefit from organising the discussion around two or three overarching analytic claims that cut across the findings, rather than processing each result in sequence. The paper’s most novel contribution — that cascade models in LMIC contexts reproduce existing structural inequalities unless deliberate countermeasures are built into their design — deserves to be foregrounded more forcefully. The passage at lines 984-999 is the most conceptually developed in the discussion and should serve as a model for the rest. The connection between historical working conditions, perceived exclusion, and commitment to training is well-argued and empirically grounded. Consider whether this could anchor the central theoretical argument of the paper.

Specific Comments

Lines 52–59: The claim that the study “aims to fill a gap” in LMIC evidence is overstated. The authors should characterise the contribution more precisely: this study’s value lies in its qualitative phenomenological approach to a cascade model in a context of pronounced workforce heterogeneity, not in being the first to study LMIC early childhood PD (from your references).

Lines 247–269: The program description is dense and would benefit from a schematic figure showing the two-tier cascade structure, the number of units at each level, and the planned dosage (workshops, accompaniment, virtual meetings).

Lines 280–282: The second research question conflates at least three distinct analytical dimensions: personal resources, challenges, and their interactive effects on training outcomes. Maybe starting with this, it would help to formulate some more specific research questions.

Lines 709-746: This is one of the most theoretically rich passages in the manuscript. The finding that reorganising community homes provoked emotional responses linked to identity and self-managed resources is important and connects directly to the literature on professional identity in caregiving roles (see Buchely, 2015, already cited). The authors should develop this more substantially, drawing on sociological accounts of domestic labour, professional recognition, and the blurred boundaries between home and workspace that characterise community mothers’ roles. This is an area where a deeper engagement with the Colombian social science literature would strengthen the contribution considerably.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the author(s) for the significant improvements they have made. The article has reached a higher standard of quality in its current form.