Enhanced Early Childhood Placement Program to Facilitate Family Involvement for Future Teachers

Reviewer and Section

Comment

Response

R1 Overall

The article focuses on a very interesting aspect of early teacher education and more specifically on the link between pre-service teachers’ placement and family involvement. However, there are some issues that need to be clarified to better highlight the content of the research

Thank you for this feedback.

Introduction

In addition to the value of family involvement, common ways or practices that support communication and that are applicable to this placement project need to be mentioned (with relevant literature support).

Thank you for this feedback. This has been included in the introduction section on page 2 lines 66-71: “Some common practices that support and build communication with families in ECEC includes family-teacher meetings or conferences, parent evenings, communication journals. (Kambouri et al. 2022). Family-centred practices such as conversational cycles where PSTs engage with families at the beginning of an experience and debrief with them at the conclusion are also noted to support PSTs to involve families while on placement (Sutton et al. 2020).”

Enhancing the literature on some of the reasons why students feel difficulty in communicating with parents is necessary.

Thank you for this suggestion, we extensively searched for literature on this issue, and checked with 10 colleagues for suggestions for papers after our literature search was exhausted. While all of the 10 ECE academic colleagues had heard of this issue many times anecdotally, they too have been unable to find literature that more extensively addresses this issue in the ECE context. This highlights a research gap and is something our research team is considering. This is one of the limitations of this study and has been addressed in the conclusion on page 12 lines 605-606: “and the gap in literature on family involvement during PST placements. This presents an opportunity for further research into this topic.”

The section titled Family involvement in pre-service early childhood teacher education is mainly about the Australian context so this should be added in the title.

Thank you for this suggestion. I have added in Australia to the end of this title on page 2 line 92.

The research question is not related to the data presented. Facilitating family involvement is not presented (there is no evidence of how parents or other members are involved). In my opinion, the research question should be what are the important elements that a professional placement program should include in order to facilitate pre-service teachers to take a more active role in school-family communication.

Thank you for this suggestion. The RQ has been worked on and is now on page 4 lines 153-155: What are the important elements that a professional placement program should include in order to facilitate pre-service teachers to take a more active role in early childhood education and care-family partnerships?

Line 46: it is not clear whether what follows after the colon is the quote from the Department of Education.

Thank you for pointing this out, this is a quote, the formatting was playing up. This formatting has been addressed and changed on page 2 lines 47-51.

Line 52: The word include doesn't make sense.

The word include has been replaced with occur on page 2 line 56.

Lines 63-75: This paragraph should be moved to the methodology section.

Thank you for this suggestion. This was something that had considered earlier, and has now been moved to page 4 lines 174-186.

Materials and methods

An explanation is needed why undergraduate and postgraduate students are in the same group of participants.

Thank you for this feedback. A sentence has been added to provide more detail on page 5 lines 220-222: “While PSTs are either in undergraduate or postgraduate programs, both groups of PSTs are completing an initial teacher education program where professional experience is sequenced similarly.”

In order to understand the contribution of the programme, the structure of the program needs to be described in detail, i.e. what the 9 repetitions included. Also, the role of the mentors is not described.

Thank you for this feedback. A paper that will extensively address the methodology underway as a project team. So as this is in draft form, I have just included some more information here about the structure of the program as soon this will be completed and then hopefully published to extensively explain the methodology to a deeper level. I have included a section in the materials and methods section on page 4 lines 160-173:

“The [University] model was implemented over nine distinct iterations. This started with the first iteration in July 2019 and continued through to December 2023/February 2024 for the ninth and final iteration. In EC PPP, the MT and PST pairs actively participated in a professional learning community that was created during placements. The community involved MTs and PSTs who engaged as a pair in a series of three professional learning workshops that focused on a particular pedagogical topic. This topic was informed by insight from participants from previous iterations. Participant pairs joined in two professional conversational meetings together with other participants to reflect on and openly discuss professional issues that had arisen during the placement. MTs were actively involved in assessing the PSTs professional capabilities to be and later become an ECT. The MTs role was also to support PSTs to actively develop their teaching capabilities. This was enabled by facilitating opportunities for PSTs to actively apply their developing knowledge, make clear and concrete connections with practice, and engage, implement and later reflect on their teaching (Author).”

I consider it necessary to be more specific about the data collection tool: what are the main axes of the interview? Are there any differences between what the pre-service teachers were asked and what the mentors were asked?

Thank you for this feedback. This section has been clarified further by adding on page 5 lines 227-230 “MTs and PSTs were asked the same questions from the perspective of either being a MT or PST. Questions focused on the project and placement experience and also responded to the participants’ response.”

Results and Discussion

This part needs reorganization: it appears as a compilation of participants' responses without linking to the research question and literature support.

Thank you for this comment. The results and discussion have been strengthened by making many more direct links throughout the results and discussion section more clearly linking to the RQ and literature.

Why are the results for pre-service teachers and mentors not presented accordingly (different subsections)? There seems to be a mismatch as it is mainly the mentors' views from the 5th iteration that are presented.

Thank you for this feedback. This project analyses the data via themes not via participant groups. Your feedback about the iterations is helpful. The majority of the quotes are from the MTs in iteration 5, when a lot of the MTs were very focused on the issue of family involvement and communication for their PSTs. However, there are quotes from iterations 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 throughout the paper, organised via theme.

Line 325-328: The sentence is too long and difficult to understand.

Thank you for this feedback, this sentence has been split into two parts on page 7 lines 348-349.

Line 434-438: I guess this is not part of the PST’s response.

Thank you for pointing this out, this was impacted by an error in editing the font. This has been adjusted to follow the format style required on page 10 line 475.

Please check for the abbreviations so that they are explained the first time they appear (e.g. PST line 58, MT, line 75, EC PPP line 126).

Thank you for pointing this out. The full terms have been used before each of the abbreviations. This has been corrected on page 2 line 54 (PST), page 3 line 150 (MT), and page 3 line 136 (EC PPP).

Reviewer and Section

Comment

Response

R2 Overall

This is an interesting paper and the authors have clearly argued their points with references.

Thank you for this kind feedback.

To strengthen the paper, I suggest the authors:

 define terms such as 'genuine and authentic partnerships'.

Thank you for this feedback. The term has been defined in the paper on page 2 line 53-55: “In this paper we define genuine and authentic partnerships and involvement with families as being experiences between families and PSTs where both parties communicate and interact with each other (Winship et al. 2021).”

introduce the word 'iteration' in relation to the project before you use it. I struggled a lot to make sense of what you were talking about.

Thank you for this suggestion, the word iteration as been used to clarify what it means in the context of this project on page 3 135-136: “At the University reported in this paper each placement block, conceptualized as an iteration for the purposes of The Early Childhood Professional Practice Partnerships (EC PPP) project.”

Ask yourself if all the acronyms are needed. Introduce all acronyms before you use them the first time - I got very lost at times.

Thank you for this suggestion, all full acronyms have been checked and included in the article as responded to in reviewer 1’s comments.

tell a clear story as though you are letting people who don't understand early childhood or teacher education about the study - there seems to be a lot of assumed knowledge.

Thank you for this feedback. In sharing more detail about this program, we have outlined some further information about ECE and TE. Such as on page 2 lines 66-71: “Some common practices that support and build communication with families in ECEC includes family-teacher meetings or conferences, parent evenings, communication journals. (Kambouri et al. 2022). Family-centred practices such as conversational cycles where PSTs engage with families at the beginning of an experience and debrief with them at the conclusion are also noted to support PSTs to involve families while on placement (Sutton et al. 2020).”

Get someone with strong grammar and academic writing stills to check grammar and referencing. There are a number of grammatical issues, such as question marks being used on sentences that are not questions.

The paper has been reviewed with grammar and referencing in mind. The majority of question marks were included with participant quote, but the two extra ones we found have been removed on pages 9 line 421 and 437.

consider each quote and if it can be reduced.

Thank you for this comment. Many of the quotes have been reduced in the article throughout the findings and discussion one page 7 lines 348-349, page 8 lines 365-366, page 9 lines 419-420, 441 and 452, page 10 line 490 and 512, and page 11 lines 527, 530-531, 538, 539-540, and 546.

consider if you need a 'need for further research' and a 'limitations' section.

Thank you for this suggestion. The obstacles to this research and suggestions for future research have been included in the conclusion on page 12 lines 603-606. “The main obstacles to family involvement in this project included COVID-19 restrictions and physical distancing disrupting family involvement, and the gap in literature on family involvement during PST placements. This presents an opportunity for further research into this topic.”

While all this is a lot of work, the study has merit and it will be worth re-working the paper to disseminate your research. I wish the authors well.

Thank you for your support.

Reviewer and Section

Comment

Response

I am grateful for the opportunity to review such an interesting and pertinent manuscript in the field of Early Childhood Education. It is a structurally well-organized, well-founded, methodologically well-explained manuscript, respecting the ethical principles that should underline this type of research. The results presented are clear.

Thank you for your supportive comments.

To improve the manuscript, I suggest:

- deepen the analysis of the results, taking into account the body of theory mobilized in the introduction;

Thank you for this comment. The results and discussion have been strengthened throughout by making many more direct links throughout this section to the literature.

This includes: page 6 lines 281-282 “Epstein et al. (2019) describes families being involved in decision-making as being one of the key types of family involvement.”

Page 7 lines 338-340 “stable and sensitive way that ECTs and families interact with each other. The stability and sensitivity of interactions between ECTs and families is well recognized as being an important factor in family involvement (Kambouri et al. 2022).”

Page 7 lines 354-357: “This MT recognized a common issue for PSTs, limited confidence in working with families (Taylor and Kim 2020, Winship et al. 2021). She was aware of her own ways in which to assist PSTs to strengthen their confidence by involving families (Freeman and Knopf 2007).”

Page 7-8 lines 359-361: “Including scaffolded experiences such as assignments related to family involvement has been suggested by researchers (Sutton et al. 2020).”

Page 8 lines 397-398: “A commonly reported concern from MTs in Australia relates to the quality of professional placement experiences (Patrick 2013)”

Page 8 lines 407-410: “. PSTs are recognized to experience significant growth in their knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy over time as they take part in teacher education programs, this growth extends to their relationships and connections to families also (Sutton et al. 2020).”

Page 9-10 lines 465-468: “The conversational cycles that this PST was able to join in through engaging with the families early on and later on throughout their placement experience helped her to build a sense of confidence (Sutton et al. 2020). Repeated placements were recognized in this project as being a key element of successful professional placement experiences.”

Page 11 lines 553-555: “Sharing documentation of children’s learning is a key aspect of family involvement and this assists PSTs in building a more personal relationship with children and families (Winship et al. 2021).”

- include in the conclusions the main obstacles identified during the research;

Thank you for this suggestion. The main obstacles have been identified in the conclusion on page 12 lines 603-606. “The main obstacles to family involvement in this project included COVID-19 restrictions and physical distancing disrupting family involvement, and the gap in literature on family involvement during PST placements. This presents an opportunity for further research into this topic.”