What Can We Learn about Science Teachers’ Technology Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors describe a qualitative research about teachers' experiences in a technology-mediated teaching context during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article is well written. His reading is fluent. It's fine
structured, and the magazine's style guide has been used.

On the other hand, the issue of the article is within the scope of the journal.

The main criticism of the study presented is its representativeness (it is a very small population) and the design of the experiment. Although this is a qualitative study, a control group and an experimental group should have been prepared. 

Some improvements:
a) The texts that appear in section 3, I suggest that they be moved to the appendix.
b) What defines each group should be described in the form of characteristics.
c) To facilitate the understanding and comparison of the groups, the information should be represented with tables where the differences between each group can be seen.

Author Response

Thank you for the careful and thoughtful comments. Our response to the comments can be found attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the article with interest and enjoyed it. It is an in-depth, comprehensive study of changes in teachers' attitudes toward technology and their ability and effectiveness to use technology in the class during the COVID crisis. The problem statement, research objectives, and methodology are clear and well presented. The results of the study are clear.

At the same time, the results are quite predictable. This predictability is probably due to a certain level of instrumentality in the interviews with the teachers. I would recommend that in future studies, the authors pay more attention to changes in the fundamental beliefs and even worldviews of teachers. This point is based on a widely accepted considering of the digital revolution as a revolution in people's minds (Floridi, L. (2014). The fourth revolution: How the infosphere is reshaping human reality. OUP Oxford.). Studies based on this important idea are known (e.g., Tsybulsky, D., & Levin, I. (2019). Science teachers' worldviews in the age of the digital revolution: Structural and content analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 86, 102921.). 

I recommend expanding the "Teachers' attitude and beliefs" chapter of the paper and including additional references regarding teachers' worldview changes in the Introduction survey. Such changes will complement the paper with a critical missing component. It would be nice also, if possible, to include a couple of sentences about changes in fundamental teachers' beliefs in the Discussion section.

To summarize, I support the paper and recommend it for publication after the above minor changes.

Author Response

Thank you for the careful and thoughtful comments. Our response to the comments can be found attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents a study conducted among the science teachers in Estonia during the first distance education period of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a large number of studies published during the last year about the forced distance education period during the COVID-19 pandemic. It makes it difficult to stand out with original results that have impact on the research field. Unfortunately the wider implications of this study are not outlined clearly enough.

This paper takes a qualitative approach to understand how teachers used technology during the COVID-19 distance education period. As stated by the authors, the small sample of 13 teachers is not representative and does not allow to make generalizations. It is not explained in the paper clearly, how these 13 teachers were selected. Were invitation e-mails sent out only to these 13 teachers and all of them accepted to do the interview? Were there more invitations sent out and some of the teachers declined or did not respond?

The quality of writing varies between the different sections of the paper. The first two sections (Introduction and Methods) and the Discussion section are well-written, but some improvements could be made in the other sections. The Results section is somewhat “bumpy” due to large number of quotations and complex structure of sub-sections. Perhaps you could summarize the results with a table comparing three identified groups of teacher? Also, the Conclusions section could be improved. Having two short sub-sections is not necessary.

The text is also rather lengthy. I would encourage you to see if there is some repetition which could be removed.

I would also suggest you to think about the title. A more concise title could work better and the research context (science teachers) is missing from the title.

One possible direction for future research is studying the same teachers during the second wave of distance education in 2021/2022 school year. What do these teachers do differently when they have had some time to prepare for the second wave?

I summary, I think that the paper still needs some polishing before it can be accepted.

Author Response

Thank you for the careful and thoughtful comments. Our response to the comments can be found attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper can be accepted in present form

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the revised version. I have only one minor comment left: I would remove heading 5.1. Currently you have only one subsection under section 5, this is not considered a good style.

Otherwise, the manuscript can be accepted in the present form.