Assessing the Relationship between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Their Acceptance of Online Teaching in the Chinese Context

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Assessing the Relationship between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Their Acceptance of Online Teaching in the Chinese Context

 

In this manuscript the authors investigate the relationship between 293 Chinese university teachers’ of English self-reported online self-efficacy and their acceptance of online teaching, and, in particular, the extent to which their instrumental strategies, classroom management, computer skills, and students’ engagement were predictors of their acceptance of online teaching. Online questionnaires were used for collecting data and various statistical methods for the analysis, e.g. correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that the scale regarding the four aspects of teaching skills just mentioned all correlated with the teachers’ acceptance of online teaching. The regression analysis showed that only students’ engagement and instructional strategies were predictors of their intension to teach online. 

 

I am not an expert in statistics. Hence, I will not comment on details in the statistical calculations.

 

Overall, I find that the manuscript is clear and well-written, easy to follow. The script is structured in an adequate way. 

 

I have some minor comments that the authors might consider: 

 

Lines 14-16, the abstract: The abstract would benefit from some revision to make it clearer. “Two data” sounds strange to me although I am not a native speaker of English – could it be rephrased? You could also mention that questionnaires were used. The mentioning of subscales is somewhat confusing in the abstract, perhaps because of the “–-“ in line 19.  I would suggest that you rewrite the abstract to some extent. 

 

Lines 60-64: Is this the theory that you refer to in the very last sentence of the article, or what is the self-efficacy theory? Since you write “ We argue that…” I assume that this is a new idea that is presented. If so, could you elaborate this paragraph a bit more and make it clear what the theory and how you add to it? 

 

In lines 65-74 a research gap is identified – good! Perhaps you could try to more clearly show/discuss how this study fills the gap in section 4 Discussion or 5 Conclusion and Implication. 

 

Lines 75-86. Even if you have already mentioned that the study is carried out in a Chinese context, the authors could consider mentioning this again somewhere near on in the research questions. 

When I read the first two research questions, I hesitate at “What is the level of…”. Compared to what? Is it possible to rephrase the questions?  E.g. To what extent do EFL teachers experience online self-efficacy? To what extent do they accept online teaching? This is just a thought from my side, probably mirroring how I would have written. The authors must, of course, decide what they find most suitable for their study. 

Line 94. Would “The current study” be better than “research”? 

If the study is part of a research project, you could mention the name of that project and/or at least give a reference. 

 

Section 2.2. Participants. In this section the number of decimals vary. Perhaps one is enough. 

 

Table 1. Some kind of division or demarcation between the different types of demographic information (gender, age, teaching year etc) would make the table more readable. The last line with total frequency and 100 percent is strange here since a lot of different frequencies and percentages have been presented. Each type of demographic info covers 100 per cent.

 

2.3 The introduction to the questionnaire that generated the data for Table 1 is now presented after the table and after the text describing the table. It would seem more natural to present the instrument before showing the results of the questions. You could consider if this is doable in some way. 

 

Line 184. Could you clarify what you mean by “shared with the participants if needed”.

 

Table 3. In the table the word Mean is written, not the abbreviation M. In the text explaining the abbreviations under the table you write that M= Mean. Either change in the table or take away M= Mean. 

In the middle of the table, to the right, there are two numbers: 2.62 and .98. What do they indicate? 

 

Line 233 and a few other places. You use past tense when describe what we can see in the table: “… were presented in Table 4”. I would used present tense “… are presented in… “

 

Line 237 A word is missing here, probably “to” (to structure).

 

Line 268 Rephrase/change word order “deal with well the….”, Line 276 revise language. I think that probably line 286 also needs some language revision. 

 

 Line 310. Full stop is missing. 

 

Table 4 is very extensive but I think all the information given is relevant. If it is too extensive to put in the actual article, one option could be to include it as an appendix instead. The editors could probably give advice regarding this. 

 

Sections 4 and 5, discussion and conclusions/implications, could be elaborated to some extent. In lines 35-360 you describe some findings as “interesting” and I agree. Perhaps you could discuss in greater detail why the findings are interesting. 

 

In table 4 we could see that there were great differences between the teachers’ answers. There was a group of teachers, although rather small, who marked “nothing” or “a little” and at the other end of the scale other teachers felt the opposite. Perhaps it would be interesting and relevant to discuss what these differences imply for the teachers but also for the students. 

 

Section 5: The authors could consider if Limitations could come before conclusions and implications. To me, the latter two are connected.  

 

Lines 405-407.  Isn’t this easier said than done? What is needed to make it happen? You could consider elaborating on the implications. 

 

Line 429 I don’t think teachers develop subscales … Teaching skills? Qualities? Important aspects to consider when teaching? Try to rephrase in some way. 

 

Line 432: What does “them” refer to? Rephrase? 

 

 

Lines 432-434: You write that the study validated the self-efficacy theory. Perhaps you could mention earlier on that this is one of the aims of the study and also introduce the self-efficacy theory more explicitly (see earlier comment). Here, at the end of the article, you could also elaborate/explain the statement that the study has validated this theory. 

 

Line 499. A T is missing. 

 

 

I enjoyed reading this interesting article and I hope that my comments will be of some use for the authors when finalizing it. 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Dr,

Please see the attachment.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

It is well-structured paper which addresses an interesting topic of Chinese EFL teachers’ self-efficacy and their acceptance of online teaching during the COVID pandemic. However, there are some issues needed to be taken a further consideration. 

1.      Literature review is insufficient.

(1)   The relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and their technology acceptance is the key to this study, but there is no extensive and in-depth review of the relevant literature.

(2)   A few concepts, including student engagement, instructional strategies, classroom management, and computer ability are regarded as variables to interpret or predict self-efficacy, but there is no clear explanation.

(3)   There is a lack of a conceptual framework to guide the study.

2.      In the ‘participants’ section, it needs to give more details on ‘proportional stratified cluster sampling technique’ to explain the data collection process.

3.      Discussion

(1)   The study only conducted correlation tests between Behavioural Intention and four sub-elements of self-efficacy. The statement of ‘self-efficacy was statistically significant to predict the intention of EFL teachers’ is not accurate (361). Correlation cannot be understood as a prediction relationship between the two variables.

(2)   Because of insufficient literature review, there are not enough contrasts and comparisons between your findings and the literature. As a result, the discussion is very superficial with no in-depth reflections, and hence the contribution to the existing literature is not clearly addressed and highlighted.

Author Response

Dear Dr., 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I first and foremost congratulate you for the relevant and thorough approach on the matter of teacher self-efficacy and willingness to teach online, as the pandemic context has exerted more influence on the role of the teacher in eliciting classroom engagement in an online environment where classroom dynamics and peer relationships are not as fundamental as face-to-face and extra effort and time needs to be spent to this end, especially in an EFL classroom. Teacher satisfaction, motivation, and not ultimately well-being are therefore not to be disregarded. 

The merit of the paper lies in:

-using referenced and acknowledged scales in the qualitative approach that were professionally validated

 - the methodology is indeed thoroughly disambiguated (e.g. sample size choice is explained in the utmost detail)

- there is a clear and very orderly correlation between research questions, results and discussions which are presented clearly and extensively for the most part

Areas where authors are kindly suggested to consider improving or reflecting on:

1. English editing and rephrasing for more clarity and disambiguation (e.g. Abstract- line 15- 'two data', Introduction lines 30-31, Introduction line 41, perhaps consider revisiting the use of the verb 'constrained', Discussion- the first paragraph needs to be considered in terms of the manner of presentation of findings.)

2. In the Discussions section, the authors could consider expanding on the correlation between willingness to teach online- behavioural intention and their actual choice of classroom format. 

3. Conclusions- The authors are kindly requested to rephrase the sentence in lines 402-405, it tends to be rather ambiguous.

4. Conclusions- are there any limitations in using a scale for Nurse Educators, where pedagogy is not necessarily profoundly different from language teaching, but it does have its specific traits and differences? Are there any underlying limitations in not using a specific ELF teaching scale? 

Best regards,

 

Author Response

Dear Dr.,

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx