Explaining Effects of Transformational Leadership on Teachers’ Cooperative Professional Development through Structural Equation Model and Phantom Model Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract:

1. Provide full form of abbreviations in the abstract as well as in the appendix.
2. Reframe the abstract and discuss the use and importance of mediators used in this study.
3. Line 23; “but the direct effect of TL on CPD is not statistically significant” should be “but the direct effect of TL on CPD is not statistically significant in the presence of mediators”. Please follow and refer this paper for better understanding (asif et al., 2020).
4. Author must shorten the abstract and discuss important point only.

Introduction

1. Line 58-61; author discussed about the few studies without refereeing them. Provide the references of those studies.
2. Line 36-37; authors stated “along with efforts to elucidate the factors influencing the teacher’s participation in CPD” and cited 9 references. It is unclear what type of factors were used in these studies? What effects authors noted and how it is different from current study? How these cited studies provide a research gap for current study? All these questions should be answered and it is necessary to discuss in introduction section to rationale the current study.
3. Add potential contribution of this study at the end of introduction section.

Literature review

1. While reviewing the extant literature is necessary for any manuscript, the manuscript in its present form seems to confound reviewing the literature with theorizing and hypothesis development. For example, lines-71-151 of the manuscript (which include Hypotheses 1 through 8) seem to primarily be devoted to reviewing extant literature; it is difficult to identify any novel insights. This is perhaps due to the fact that Hypotheses 1 through 8 have already been thoroughly studied in the past (see all the references cited by the authors in the whole manuscript). You can find many references that authors cited in this manuscript. Though replication is important, the theoretical rationale for a well-tested hypothesis should be novel enough to warrant further study. This does not seem to currently be the case as the hypothesis development sections for Hypothesis 1-8 seem to stand simply on prior research findings. Given that this represents 8 out of 10 hypotheses, I am not sure whether the theoretical contribution of the mediating role of both self-efficacy and teacher’s attitudes alone justifies an entire manuscript where no supporting literature for the mediation effect are provided. Along these lines, the justification and rationale for Hypotheses 9 seems rather thin. There does not seem to be one theoretical framework or theory that justifies these hypotheses but rather the hypothesis development relies on piecemeal arguments from different studies and researchers. Some of these arguments get close to the border of being tautological.
2. Based on the previous comment, it is highly recommended that author must reframe the story-line as a whole and include more hypotheses related to the mediation effects which are the main concern and the contribution of this paper. Author need to add at least three hypotheses; (a) teachers’ self-efficacy in ESD mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and teachers’ CPD; (b) Teachers’ attitudes towards ESD mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and teachers’ CPD; and (c) Both teachers’ self-efficacy in ESD and teachers’ attitudes towards ESD mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and teachers’ CPD in a serial mediation model.
3. Also provide a strong theoretical background to prove these hypotheses and to rationale the model discussed on page 7 (after line 267).

Methodology

1. Provide complete range of participants’ age (i.e. 20-30 years…. 31-40 years etc.) in Table 1.
2. Correct Table 1. For example, teaching experience: 6-10 years; 11-15 years (instead of 10-15 which lies in previous range). Also include number of participants for each category.
3. Provide true response rate.
4. Provide scale details for each variable. For example, who develop this scale (questionnaire)? How many items were in each variable? Also provide a sample item/question for each scale in methodology section.
5. Provide the details of whether data is collected in local language or the author used a translated version. If data is collected in English version then the education of each participant is enough and they can understand English questionnaire easily?

Results

1. Before testing the research hypotheses, the authors should conduct a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) in order to establish discriminant validity among the study variables (for better understanding follow and refer this paper; asif et al., 2020). This will provide better results and please only report the most-used indices including CFI, TLI, SRMR and RMSEA.
2. Authors perform bootstrapping analysis for total, direct and indirect effects which is highly appreciated. For better results and understanding, authors need to provide values of standard error (SE) and t-statistics.
3. Please add the cutoff point and references for CR and AVE values (CR>0.70 [qing et al., 2020] and AVE>0.50; (asif et al., 2019 [sustainability]).

Add Discussion

Although the author provided some implications in the conclusion section but it does not provide complete picture of this research. Author is highly recommended to add a new section under heading “Discussion”. There should be some discussion of the findings as it relates to the extant body of literature and the theoretical implications of the research (in addition to the practical implications that you note). Also, theoretical implications of the findings in discussion need enough elaboration. The authors are recommended to add theoretical implications and focus on findings that have the most theoretical implications. Especially, they are encouraged to compare these findings with the previous findings and derive new implications from them.

References for cutoff points citation:

1. Asif, M., Miao, Q., Jameel, A., Manzoor, F., & Hussain, A. (2020). How ethical leadership influence employee creativity: A parallel multiple mediation model. Current Psychology, 1-17.
2. Qing, M., Asif, M., Hussain, A., & Jameel, A. (2020). Exploring the impact of ethical leadership on job satisfaction and organizational commitment in public sector organizations: The mediating role of psychological empowerment. Review of Managerial Science, 14(6), 1405-1432.
3. Asif, Muhammad, et al. "Ethical leadership, affective commitment, work engagement, and creativity: Testing a multiple mediation approach." Sustainability16 (2019): 4489.

 

 

Author Response

First of all, thank you for your in-depth review. There is no objection to your comments, and your suggestions have helped improve my manuscript. Thanks again for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

As for clarity and understanding, the whole article provides sufficient information to justify the relevance and study's need. The problem is with the labelling of the Tables; two different Tables 3  a line 206 Factors loadings from Principal Axis Factoring technique with Varimax rotation and the line 294 Measurement model test.N: 203. There is a flaw with punctuation - subheadings – the lines 90 and 122.

Author Response

First of all, thank you for your in-depth review. Your suggestions have helped improve my manuscript. Thanks again for your comments.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Here are some suggestions for the authors:

1. A more logical and theoretical statement/discussion to justify or rationalize this research is needed in the section of “Introduction”.(Please elaborate the research problem)
2. Please explain why the attitude is important in CPD and is considered to be explored in this research.(The authors can extensively cite the literature to explain why CPD might change through teachers’ attitude.)
3. Lacking a rational explanation to address the linkage between CPD and ESD, as well as ESD and 2015 Revised National Cross-curricular Curriculum.
4. Please well define the term of “transformational leadership” and depict its role, importance and essentiality to CPD in the context of ESD in order to make readers/audiences to clearly follow the flow of the author’s ideas about the research purposes or problems.
5. This research tried to use literature to provide a rationale for research hypotheses, but some hypotheses are not rationally well established, such as H1, H5, H6 and H7.
6. Some Table numbers shown in the result section are incorrect
7. P value of TSE reported on P.9 should be revised (TSE(B:2.45, P<05).
8. The finding indicates that TL is not at a statistically significant level on CPD, however this research concludes that TL is one of the important determinants of CPD. Please explain more.
9. Although the major findings are reported in the end of the research, comparison or contrast with literature is not made. In addition, discussions as to how the findings of this research can be applied to education or other fields in practice are not suggested in the paper.

Author Response

First of all, thank you for your in-depth review. Your suggestions have helped improve my manuscript. Thanks again for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the opportunity to review the revised version of this manuscript.

After reviewing this paper thoroughly, I found significant changes in it. The authors made good efforts to revise it according to the comments/recommendations of the reviewer. I recommend this paper be accepted after addressing some minor issues. For example, in Table 1;

1. year(s) of teaching experience should be 15 ≤ Years < 20 instead of 16 ≤ Years < 20.
2. year(s) of working with the principal at this school should be 4 ≤ Years (8.3) instead of 8,3.
3. Similarly, the grade level of student teaching should be 100% rather than 99.99%

Good Luck!!!

Author Response

Your thorough review has been a great help in correcting mistakes I almost missed. In addition, your encouragement has been an excellent motivator for me to fix the manuscript. I sincerely thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

On page 3(2.1), please summarize or provide some examples to support the ideas that the author emphasized in the article addressing relations among TL, efficacy, attitudes and teachers’ participation in CPD have been investigated by prior research.

 

Some Table numbers shown in content of the result section are still incorrect (p.10, p. 11’s and 13’s first paragraph), please examine them carefully. For instance, on page 10 (4.1), in the end of the paragraph the number of table should be revises from Table 2 to Table 3.

 

The finding indicates the result of H1 is reserved (p=0.129, not at a significant level). This research, however, still concludes that “the effects of transformative leadership on CPD were also confirmed in ESD contexts.” Please provide more details explaining the meaning of p value (0.129) suggests or implies in the context of this research to support the conclusion made by the author.

      

Author Response

First of all, I sincerely thank you for your review.

You suggested that I deal with the relationship between TL, efficacy, attitudes, and teacher participation in CPD in Section 2.1. However, I think that the content is highly likely to be duplicated with the following section. So, after thinking for a few days, I have supplemented it with a bit of guidance. I'm not sure if you'll agree with that choice, but I hope you understand my concerns.

I divided Hypothesis 1 into sub-hypotheses.

Then, I checked the table number and corrected it.

Your review has helped tremendously in improving the quality of my manuscript.

I sincerely thank you again.