Influence of Human Biology and Health (HBH) Teaching–Learning Process on Students’ Conceptions of the COVID-19 Vaccine

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents a cross-sectional study investigating the conceptions about covid-19 vaccination development, delivery and safety among Portuguese teacher training students. The research hypothesis is that the attendance to a Human Biology and Health course, which uses SAQ and SCIs positively influences students' conceptions.

The instrument to address this hypothesis is a questionnaire with both open-ended and close-ended questions. The authors provide lots of data and compare different variables (previous academic itinerary, attendance to the HBH course, health self-perception, etc) and conclude that indeed attendance to the course improved those perceptions.

However, the research suffers from some serious limitations that prevent me to recommend the manuscript for publication in its present form.

I have included specific comments throughout the text using pop-up notes and highlighted paragraphs. Nevertheless, I summarize my major concerns here:

1. The use of SAQ and SCIs is well described in the Introduction. However, there are no details on how this socially acute question was presented in the classroom and what strategies were carried out to help students develope their argumentation and critical thinking capacity. Without knowing how the lessons were performed it is difficult to infer that those lessons changed students' conceptions

2. The sample size is very limited for inferential studies. No data on power of the test analysis is provided or size effect. No data about the validation of the quantitative questionnaire is provided either. The authors need to argue strongly about the sample size and how powerful the obtained differences are.

3. When describing the open-ended responses by categories, the authors decided to mention which ones showed differences by course but did not do the opposite. In the conclusions, the authors should specify clearly which questions showed a difference by course or by chosen secondary education itinerary. It is not clear if the variable secondary education itinerary may be more explicative of the differences rather than having taken the HBH course.

4. I think that the world clouds are not informative of the emerging categories. The appearence of words like  vaccination or antibodies appear in a high frequency does not say too much about the context in which that word appears. Therefore, the tables with the categories are informative enough.

5. The authors say that there is very little literature in their educational context to argue in favour of their results. Please check these recent papers:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.869643/full

https://ensciencias.uab.cat/article/view/v35-n2-maguregi-uskola-burgoa

6. The authors mention in the discussion the six styles of scientific reasoning. This has not been mentioned previously and the reader does not konw if this has been addressed when teaching the HBH course (lines 513-526). In fact, the conclusion drawn in this paragraph is far too fetched. There is no information in the paper about the strategies used with the students to produce arguments or reasoning when facing a SAQ or SSR. Also, the open-ended questions were not analysed by the prisma of styles of reasoning. I think that the authors can only conclude that the teaching of specific topics about immunity and vaccines helped their reasoning regarding covid-19 vaccination, but if we cannot see the specific teaching strategies to produce arguments, one could not conclude that their argumentation competency has improved. Something similar happens in lines 605-607., where the authors argue that students coming from secondary science were more affraid of vaccines' side effects. I think to draw a conclusion like that, follow up interviews should have been done. One could argue the opposite and conclude that 2nd year students did not develop the argumentation or critical thinking competency enough to be confident in the science behind the covid-19 vaccine development.

 

7. A paragraph stating the limitations of the work is needed. Authors need to justify the use of inferential statistics with such a small sample size. Also, the fact that there was not a control group with the 2nd year students that took the course 3 months previously limits the strength of the conclusions because there can be hidden effects that have not been controlled. The authors could mention this as a further improvement of their research.

Some minor comments

1.The authors shoud state in the abstract that the university students are teacher trainers, or specify the degree they are doing.

2. Moderate English edition is required.

3. Material and methods should have at least 2 subsections: Sample and Data analysis

4. There are a few paragraphs in the discussion that are too long and provide background information. Therefore, they should be incorporated in a shorter form in the Introduction.

5. Some of the conclusions may contradict their results. In lines 438-443 they show that a higher background in science would diminish the confidence in the vaccine at the beginning of the background process. The authors argue later that something similar happened with health professionals (lines 461). I think that the discussion is a bit disorganized and the results justified based in these pieces of evidence better and clearly stated.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We want to thank you for your time and suggestions given to improve our manuscript. We tried to answer to all and/or justify what seems need.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Please find minor recommendations in the attachment,

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We want to thank you for your time and suggestions given to improve our manuscript. We tried to answer to all.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The submitted manuscript is interesting, however it presents a series of improvable aspects that I list below INTRODUCTION: - This section must end not only with the purpose of the investigation but also with the formulation of the hypotheses and the questions that this investigation intends to answer. METHOD: - In the section corresponding to participants, it is recommended to include a cross table that shows the main socio-demographic characteristics of the sample. DISCUSSION: - I recommend structuring the discussion in the following sections: objectives and hypotheses that have been fulfilled or that have not been fulfilled. Main findings of the investigation. Main implications of the results. Future lines of research. And, research limitations.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We want to thank you for your time and suggestions given to improve our manuscript. We tried to answer to all.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript has improved significantly, and it has been helped by clearly stating two operating hypotheses for your investigation and discussing the results accordingly. However, being an educational research paper, we should feel obliged to offer a product for further practice and improvement. With the information provided in the paper (a mention of an image in a book and some vague description on how discussions are carried out in the classroom), one cannot apply the teaching unit in other contexts.

I would consider including an appendix or some reference about the teaching unit.

I attach my minor comments inserted in the second version of the manuscript.

Best wishes.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We very much appreciate all your effort and detailed comments and suggestions for improvement of our article. All your suggestions have been taken into account, as described in the attached document. We think we have also clarified a few more doubtful points. The answers to your comments are done point-by-point in attached file. It is already all done in the manuscript, which we will upload as having instructions for it.

We are really very grateful for your help.

Best wishes

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf