Pre-Service Teachers’ Knowledge of Relational Structure of Physics Concepts: Finding Key Concepts of Electricity and Magnetism

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I see that the authors reworked the MS to a point. Maybe Figure 1 can fill a whole page to make it readable.

Author Response

The first reviewer asked to make the Figure 1 larger, which would require making the figure in landscape layout. While possible, we think this is unnecessary because the article is published in electronic form and figures can be zoomed-in at wish. The resolution of the figure allows quite large zooming-in ratios.

We have now corrected typos we found during the revision.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for allowing me to review this work. It is a clear and effective revision. I ask the authors to clarify who the "student" is (e.g., ...we discuss here how students present their views of the relational connectedness of concepts in electricity and magnetism, and how the network view provides a window on the features of that knowledge system). Pre-service teachers? Make the corrected changes to 'student' consistent throughout the article as it is currently used to mean different groups of students. Lastly, I would ask the authors to consider adding future research directions to the ending of the article.

Author Response

The second reviewer asked to mention more frequently that the students were pre-service teacher students. This advice we have followed and now in appropriate places mentioned this. However, in many places the discussion is on general level and it is not necessary to explicitly restrict the discussion to teacher students. Approximately the more specific phrasing “pre-service teacher students” is now added in 30% of entries were students are mentioned. In addition, the reviewer invites us to add some future directions. This is done on lines 751-757 in revised manuscript. With these additions, lines 747-757 provide a view of the future directions.

We have also corrected now some typos we found during the revision.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

-  The MS is very long and has various redundancies. The message and presentation could be more mainstreamed. Most readers will not be able to follow the chain of argument.

- The introduction needs to be more focused, the abstract has to say which methods are applied. There needs to be a clear terminology between concept networks (abstract) and concept maps (text). To be checked throughout.

-          Abstract and keyword should mention that this study is focusing the undergraduate level.

-          I wonder whether in the introduction reference could by made to Word-Association-Test studies. There are some dealing with similar content.

- Since the methods are very complicated the need to be explained more straight forward. Most readers will not be familiar with the here operated methodology. The chain of arguments is very difficult to follow. I got lost in the first reading. It seems that the content only plays a minor role in the MS.

- There is no section on limitations, neither concerning the sample nor the methods.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for allowing me to review, "Pre-service teachers’ knowledge of relational 3 structure of physics concepts: Finding key concepts of 4 electricity and magnetism." Overall it is an interesting topic with detailed descriptions. I especially appreciated the tables and figures.

Suggestions for improvement to the article include:

What is the main purpose of the article? State it clearly in the opening paragraphs. It doesn't show up until page 19.

Cite "How People Learn" in the novice/expert portion of the introduction - Chapter .2 "How Experts Differ From Novices." There is a free pdf available: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/9853/how-people-learn-brain-mind-experience-and-school-expanded-edition

Consider using a piece in "How People Learn II" on "Strategies to Support Learning." A free pdf is available: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/9853/how-people-learn-brain-mind-experience-and-school-expanded-edition

Utilizing the expertise in the above two works will inform your article and conclusions, as your work should be an extension of what we as an educational community already understand

The research questions need clarification. For example, the first question does not relate who is involved in "how to operationalize relevant types of local and global relational connectivity." What does this actually mean? Additionally, the research questions come late in the article.

The article does not show a traditional flow - purpose, lit review, a gap in the literature, research questions, methods, analysis, conclusions, discussion. Why are there pieces missing?

How does the quantitative analysis of the nodes help the reader to understand the topic, student learning, or anything else? This information must be put into context.

This article is dense and heavy, and unfortunately shares no new science education information that I can find. The main "why does this study matter" is not answered in light of the knowledge that we understand how students make connections. The positive aspect is that since this article focuses on a specific topic it could add to the literature if it is rewritten in parts.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have done a qualitative and quantitative study looking at the learning conceptual knowledge and the meaning of concepts. This is a topic of great significance in didactics. So I appreciate authors examining this topic. Authors show how the interlinked connections of nodes, locally and globally, can be used in analysis of such a concept network and in revealing how different elements of the network are supported through their weighted connection to other nodes in the network.

Following are my comments:

This manuscript is very well written.

The strength of the manuscript is that it addresses a topic of great importance to the field of didactics. In particular, the novelty of the approach to the study of scientific concepts is to be appreciated

Authors have used the appropriate statistical methods.

In the part of the results it is a little too technical the presentation and sometimes heavy to follow it.

But, thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. 

I wish authors best of luck !