Necessity of Post-War Renewal of University Teachers’ Potential in Terms of Sustainable Development in Ukraine

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have done a good job preparing the paper, but it needs several corrections and improvements.

The abstract should be shorter, leaving only the main thing in it, since now the abstract resembles part of the paper.

In the Introduction, lines 80-90 need to be confirmed with references.

In general, the Literature review section is too large and occupies more than half of the entire volume of the article. The review part should be shortened, paying more attention to the research. Also, often in the review part, there is a presentation of thoughts and other authors, without references to sources and supporting studies. Authors should make references to their earlier publications on this topic.

The Methodology section is short, it would be necessary to describe in more detail for university teachers in which areas the survey was conducted (technical, economic, etc.), and which age groups of teachers were surveyed, give an example of a questionnaire in the application, describe how the data was processed.

In the Results and Discussion section (4), the study results, the methodology of which is described in section 3, are practically not presented. They should be presented in more detail. In the same section, it is also necessary to provide supporting references when using statistical data from other sources. Please note that links are placed to a specific document, and not to the site as a whole (for example, link 22).

In the Methodology section, you talk about a survey of university teachers, but in section 4.3, the results of the survey and students are also given (lines 529–532). There is an inconsistency in this that needs to be addressed.

The Conclusions should contain a description of the results obtained, i.e., conducted a statistical study, but the authors have practically nothing about this: only general conclusions of a descriptive nature. More specific data should be provided.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are grateful to you for the objective assessment that you gave to our article.

We have taken into account all your wishes and comments and this greatly improved our article. Please see the attachment for our detailed response.

 If you have any more questions, we are open to dialogue. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Post-War Renewal of the University Teachers’ Potential in 

Terms of Sustainable Development

 

The description of the context of the investigation, the war environment in Ukraine, is very interesting. And it's hard to review research done in such a dramatic environment. However, some inconsistencies in the research should be noted.

 

The research hypothesis, according to the authors, “is that renewing the potential of university teachers in the post-war period will allow improving the educational process in universities, significantly increase the level of professional training of students and ensure the sustainable development of society.” But it seems that this is more an intention than a proven research hypothesis.

 

The authors inform us “To do this, the professional and personal potential of teachers was studied in detail with the aim of radical changes in approaches to methods, techniques, and forms of education, as well as the type and style of communication between teachers and students.” Also, authors inform about the methodology: “The research methodology: a survey conducted by the CAWI method using a structured questionnaire based on the respondents’ place of permanent residence. The sample totality was stratified according to the regions of Ukraine where the teacher Works”. And we are explained about participants: “Teachers of Ukrainian higher education institutions took part in the study. The study sample included 350 people. The main task of the study was to analyze the potential of university teachers in the prewar and post-war periods.”

But it is not enough information to be able to understand the research. For example, we do not know the topics on which the questionnaire deals. We understand that the issues, according with the aims, must revolve around methods, techniques, forms of education and communication between teachers and students but then the presentation of results does not practically inform us about these issues. The results focus mainly on demographic data. There are only two paragraphs referring to communication: We are told that there are problems with the Internet, therefore with communication. And that 89% of teachers do not believe it is possible to implement the curriculum. No comments about reflection.  Finally, the authors refer us five key factors such as “raising morale and patriotism; investment in education; international cooperation; and rethinking educational policy. We don’t understand very well from what source do these results come?

In summary, we believe that there is a lack of consistency between the objectives expressed and the results presented. It may be due to imprecision in presenting the methodology. We do not know if the conceptual framework is adequate because the relationship between objectives and results is very confusing. It would be convenient to clarify the survey results to give coherence to the research.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We are grateful to you for the objective assessment that you gave to our article.

We have taken into account all your wishes and comments and this greatly improved our article. Please see the attachment.

 If you have any more questions, we are open to dialogue. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has great potential with regard to contributing to rethinking the curriculum in post-conflict societies or nations. The article needs revision so as to situate itself in a tradition of authorship/ scholarship and the role of educators in times of conflict. The article would benefit by the author clearly identified which sides they identify with and the reasons why.  It is unclear how prewar education contributed to the conflict with Russia or how post-war education might create a conflict-free society in which sustainable development might be possible.

The quality of English and clarity of expression benefit with careful revision. Even in-text references are not according to APA,7 edition, and while this might not be a requirement, this kind of information is readily available online.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for taking the time to review our article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors improved the article and took my comments into account. The abstract was shortened. The methodology was improved. The overview was slightly shortened.

It is necessary to add supporting references on lines 83-86 of the introduction as it is done on line 100.

In general, the literature overview is still long and occupies more than a half of the entire volume of the paper. This part should be shortened focusing on your own research. The overview usually takes 1-3 pages (unless it is a Review).

What were the research areas of the university teachers who took part in the survey (technical, economic...)? Which age groups of teachers were surveyed etc? If they were not divided into groups, then it is necessary to write that the survey was conducted on teachers from all universities, without taking into account the direction and specifics of their research and work. In the methodology section, you should make a link to the table in section 4 with polling list.

In the results and discussion section (4), there are still few results of our own research, the methodology of which is described in section 3. The results and discussion in section 4 should be presented in more detail. In the same section 4, supporting references should be put when using statistical data from other sources (for example, lines 420, 553-557, 580-583, etc.).

The conclusions should include the description of the results, i.e. the conducted statistical research. You added the results to the conclusions, but why did you include the rest of the data? The conclusions are not a retelling of the content of the article, overview and research methodology. The conclusions should include the brief description of the main research results and findings. There is no need to cite again the statistics and excerpts from the literature presented earlier in this article.

The article consists of three topics: 1. The statistics of destruction, distribution of educational institutions and migration of residents; 2. The overview of teaching methods (the biggest part of the paper); 3. The results of your own research (the smallest part of the article, it is about 1.5 pages). These topics are poorly connected with each other. There is no smooth transition from one topic to another and a single dominant idea is absent.

The same is in the title of your article. You write about the post-war period in the title, but in the article all the statistics are only about the current military situation. In the title you do not reflect the fact that you write only about Ukrainian events. After all, you analyze only this war in your text.

Author Response

Thank  you for the re-review of our article, which allowed us to improve the presented study.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The questions I had raised have been addressed in the revised submission, and as such, the article is good to be published. It still needs to be edited for grammar and clarity of expression.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have done significant work to improve the paper. Most of the minor bugs have been fixed, but there are a few details that are worth paying attention to:

Refinement of the methodology. It is not clear how teachers were distributed across the regions of the country. The situations in the regions are completely different, and accordingly, the data from teachers from these regions should be the same too. However, nothing is said about this. It is not substantiated why the teacher's affiliation to the university is not important, why the form of education is not important to students, etc.

The Results and Discussion section (4) still provides little information about the results of our study, the methodology of which is described in Section 3. The results and their discussion should be presented in more detail in Section 4.

The Conclusions should contain a description of the results obtained, i.e., conducted statistical research. The authors added the results to the conclusions, but why did they leave the rest? Conclusions are not a retelling of the content of the paper, including an overview and experimental methodology. The conclusions briefly summarize the main results of the research and the conclusions drawn. There is no need to cite again the statistics and excerpts from the literature presented earlier in the article. The first 2 paragraphs of conclusions can be deleted, as they do not relate to the results and sometimes repeat other parts of the article verbatim.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments that help improve our research. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 4

Reviewer 1 Report

In previous comments, I asked you to clarify issues related to the methodology, as well as correct the conclusions. Changes have been made only partially. You did not fully answer the questions I posed, and some of the questions were deleted altogether.

For example, I asked to draw conclusions in the classical form, and not an abstract of the paper. This could be done by deleting 2 paragraphs and rewriting the text a bit.

I also asked you to link the parts of the paper into a single logical structure, but it is still not clear how they fit together. The paper is called Necessity of Post-War Renewal of the University Teachers’ Po-2 potential in Terms of Sustainable Development in Ukraine. Your review is on modern teaching methods, and part of the research section is also devoted to the same. It is not clear how modern teaching methods and the need to upgrade the capacity of teachers are related. In theory, the review should be devoted to similar problems in other countries or historical situations and examples of their solution, but this is not reflected in the paper. You also have a lot of statistics on current destruction. The survey is conducted on teachers from different places, and it is not clear from which. This is important enough for presenting the results: after all, some universities are located near places of military operations, while others are very far from them. The difference in survey results can vary greatly, however you don't have anything about that in the article. The paper talks about current conditions while the title of the article is ...Post-War Renewal.... There is a clear inconsistency here.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you for your advices. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf