Teachers’ Knowledge Regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A Systematic Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a very interesting study providing relevant data, well written and organized. The findings revealed significant data applicable in future research on the issue. The results are well reported. Some of my minor comments are:
- The theoretical framework behind is not exhaustive.
- More suggestions regarding the future directions for research are encouraged to be developed giving more importance to the findings.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you very much for the opportunity to review the manuscript titled “Teachers’ knowledge regarding autism spectrum disorder (ASD): A Systematic Review”. This promising manuscript seeks to identify and analyze the knowledge of teachers about ASD. Because of the importance of the knowledge of a disorder in order to provide intervention to reduce the symptoms of ASD and to improve those skills that are most frequently affected in children with autism, is clearly crucial. The authors should be commended for this. However, there are several concerns in terms of terminological clarity, argumentative structure, and possible concerns with the methodological presentation that should be taken into account.
Below, I detail these concerns:
- Introduction:
(1): The authors specified the prevalence of autism as from 1 in 59 to 1 in 54. This prevalence has been found in countries with a high level of income. Worldwide, there is an estimate prevalence of 1% (Brugha, T. S., Charman, T., Cusack, J., Dumas, G., Frazier, T., Jones, E. J. H., Jones, R. M., Pickles, A., State, M. W., Taylor, J. L., & Veenstra-VanderWeele, J. (2020). Autism spectrum disorder. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 6(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-019-0138-4).
(1-3): The introduction, methods, and results are structured in based of the general knowledge that teachers have about ASD. However, in the discussion section, there are different sections like stages, special education/mainstream education, countries, instruments… It is recommended to follow the same structure as in the discussion and talk about the possible mediators and moderators of the knowledge that are not mentioned and supposedly will be studied later (the results in the discussion confirm this). Authors are strongly encouraged to significantly restructure the introduction to provide a clearer set of specific and well-supported mediators and moderators that can be tested in this review, specifying what it contributes and what foundation is supported.
(3). It seems to be a mistake: “lies not only lies”
(3). Is there a reason to screen studies only from 2015 to 2020? There is no need to clarify this in the introduction.
(3). The aim of this study is to contribute to build a framework about teachers’ knowledge of ASD. As I mentioned previously, this is quite vague, and the results confirm this. It should be recommendable to specify the variables that contribute to build the knowledge, like the experience, type of school (mainstream/special), country, age of participants, stages of education… All of these are factors that contribute to build the knowledge of teachers about ASD and the authors could compare and extract from studies. Only talk about general knowledge is quite global.
- Method:
(3). It is recommended to change the order and put first the Information sources section.
(4). Were the inclusion criteria the same in every stage of the review? If this is the case, it is recommended to specify it in the text. The method section is the most complex section in a review. Authors should specify in detail all the process they have done with this review. At some points the description of the process is too general.
(4). The authors do not specify the reliability of the different review stages. Cases with divergences were discussed and resolved by consensus. However, they do not specify if there was another reviewer that solved these divergences, or they were the same reviewers. Also, they did not calculate the reliability of the different stages.
- Results:
(9): It is recommended to describe the characteristics of the participants, age, sample… in a table and then describe it in the text.
(9). The description of the results of the tables is quite general. Authors describe precisely the results, but in the discussion section. It is recommended to add this description in the results section, rather in the discussion, and with the same subheadings. It seems that the authors have analyzed the studies in detail, but then they have added this description to the discussion section. They compare the studies with the same characteristics, but do not specify this information in the results.
- Discussion: The results are repeated as I mentioned before.
The section of limitations is scarce. There are some limitations of the results as the studies used different tools to evaluate knowledge, they do not describe the type of knowledge they evaluate, the lack of a meta-analysis to compare the studies quantitatively, the lack of measurements in some studies, compare different samples with different tools…
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for choosing me for the revision of this manuscript. After reviewing the article thoroughly and according to the quality standards that this journal has, I recommend its publication.
After revision, the manuscript meets the standards required for a quality scientific publication. Therefore, the topic is relevant.
Kind regards.
