The Effect of the Conceptual Change Model on Conceptual Understanding of Electrostatics

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

I am happy about the changes the authors made. They answered all the comments I made ans saw problematic in the paper. However, there are two more aspects I still see problematic:

1. The research tool containing questions targeting the very same phenomenon.

The authors responded to my comment, however, I cannot accept their argument. By asking the same question twice, though differently, you don't map their conceptual understanding any better than with just one question.

I consider this fact a mistake in the research tool's composition.

2. The use of statistics.

Though the authors did a very good job reporting every data they calculated, the results are a mess now. Once a reader is not skilled in statistics, and even then, it's very difficult to read through the data and make some sense of it. I suggest the authors to interpret the results more transparently. Pleas,e comment when the correlations are meaningful, the reliability factors sufficient, effect-sizes medium or high. Also, please, mention what this means, what is this good for in the science education discourse.

Author Response

Find attached authors reply.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Dear authors,

thank you for resubmitting your manuscript. You have done a good job in addressing all the comments I made in my first review.  Nevertheless, I have noticed one more issue in the manuscript that I would like to ask you to address before I can recommend "accept in the present form":

In Appendix D, questions 1-5 are not questions they are statements. Therefore, in my opinion, it is not really clear what tasks were given to the participants. In addition, there are quotation marks that should not be there. Maybe some translation errors have occurred here?

Author Response

Find attached the authors response. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

I am happy about the changes the authors made. I value the clarity with which they explained their results.

Congratulations and good luck to your paper.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer 2 Report

I’d like to divide the review into two parts: my opinion on the study and my opinion on the paper.

As far as the study is concerned, I find it difficult to see how it might serve to science education community. The reason is in the main research tool. I find its content problematic from the following reasons:

·        True/false items offer a 50% chance of a correct answer, and therefore are risky as far as the false-positive answers are concerned.

·        Some items explain previous ones which makes it harder to evaluate what a pre-conception is and what is just a demonstration of good reading skills.

·        Item 6 makes no sense.

·        One item from Appendix C is already asked in the preceding test.

Also, the authors did not explain the reason why they chose electrostatics as the main issue. Is the use of CCM topic-specific? Why to start on this topic then?

As far as the paper is concerned, I’d like to make several comments to the design and the overall elaboration. The research question 1 is confusing for me. CCM is a technique which is supposed to affect students’ (pre)concepts. Connection with a specific topic makes no sense. This is later reflected in the results on the rows 345 and 346 “positive correlational relationship between pre-service teachers’ conceptual understanding of electrostatics and the conceptual change model”. This connection makes little sense as you can observe the effect of CCM employed as a part of the classroom instruction, but correlation between the model and students’ knowledge is odd.

Pg. 4, r. 142, 143: The text after “figure 2” is redundant.

The whole sentence followed by the citation 33 is unnecessary.

r. 152 – enrolled in the … course Which one? Please, explain in more detail.

r. 170 what are the well-known misconceptions? Please, support this with literature.

r. 171, 172 What is the meaning of this sentence? What id the students have different misconceptions?

Please, divide the Procedure’s description and the Data collection part to make the text more readable.

I don’t see the point of Fig. 2 being used. A verbal description s sufficient. Moreover if you provided readers of a process diagram, it’d be more helpful.

As far as the statistics is concerned, there are several imperfections which need to be addressed. First, the normality seems not to be done. Without this information, the use of parametric tests is unsubstantiated. Also, for the Likert-scale data which are discrete, mean makes no sense as the respondents answered only 1, 2, 3, 4, therefore nothing in between. Median values are supposed to be used and automatically non-parametric tests.

 When speaking about the data, their analysis etc., please use past tense.

Please, consider posing hypotheses at the beginning of page 6. You test them anyway using the tests and it makes the text clearer than the explanation you try to provide.

r. 236 Please, add information about Pearson’s correlation to the Data analysis chapter. First mention of this in the Results is a bit too late.

Table 1 – Please, add spaces between < and .

Reliability of the scales should be added (Cronbach’s α)

Please, add information about the tests you used to the Data analysis part. You shouldn’t describe them in the results.

What was the reason of using two tests for effect-size?

What kind of Hedge’s test did you use?

Please, comment on the tests’ interpretation in the Data analysis section so the 1,6 is a clear value when it appears in the Results.

I don’t see any added value of the graphs (Fig. 3-5). Verbal description is sufficient.

r. 300, 301 – This belongs to the Methodology

Also, why did you identify only two categories? I find it too “black &white” as many partially correct conceptions could have been identified. The “mostly accurate” category is a legit one used in many studies.

The first sentence of the Discussion is redundant. Readers know what is supposed to be written in this part ?

The numerical values are not necessary in this part. On the contrary, it makes the part harder to read.

r. 350-360 – I think you need to be more careful here. Sure the students learnt something, but after a certain amount of focus on the topic. For you to make such a claim, a second group of students instructed without CCM should be tested to see the effect. Without this it’s like saying that “the group who watched TV watched more TV than before”.

r. 389 There are two separate citations, although only one bracket is correct.

r. 405-407 I think you don’t have evidence for such conclusion in your research

The last part of the conclusion does not correspond with the study. Please, consider leaving it out.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I really enjoyed reading your manuscript. Overall, I have the following (rather) minor suggestions for changes to your manuscript:

(1) To my mind, I would appreciate it if you could come up with a more catchy title for your manuscript. The current title is, in my opinion, a bit vague and therefore possibly misleading.

(2) Line 160-169: I miss information on the development of the questionnaires (are they self-developed or are they based on previous research?). In addition, you should provide arguments that the instruments you use are sufficiently valid to answer the research questions you have specified above.

(3) Figure 3, 4, 5: Please add the labeling for the y-axis to your bar charts (I assume that it represents the number of participants?). In addition, I would appreciate it if you could reduce the font size of the titles of these figures.

(4) Figure 6,7 : Please add the labeling for the c-axis to your bar charts (I assume that it represents the number of participants?). In addition, I would appreciate it if you could reduce the font size of the titles of these figures.

Kind regards,

[name has been removed to ensure the integrity of the peer review process]