The Impact and Evaluation of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Teaching of Biology from the Perspective of Slovak School Teachers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The overall quality of the paper is high and I think it can be published after a few minor corrections. However, I do not see any particular contribution of the paper to the research of "COVID and education" problem.

Abstract. I suggest adding to keywords something about schools so that the paper, when published, could be found by a bigger number of keywords.

The Conclusion section is too short. I would like to see a more extended discussion on the results of the survey. First of all - what are the limitations of the study? Definitely, there are a few.

Author Response

First of all, on behalf of my co-authors, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your interest in reviewing our article. We appreciate the time, energy and patience spent in reading our study, writing your comments and suggestions. We tried to accept all your comments and suggestions.

Reviewer #1:

 

- The overall quality of the paper is high and I think it can be published after a few minor corrections. However, I do not see any particular contribution of the paper to the research of "COVID and education" problem.

 

Thank you for appreciating our contribution. We appreciate it very much. We have added sentences to the manuscript to better link the impact of COVID on education.

 

- Abstract. I suggest adding to keywords something about schools so that the paper, when published, could be found by a bigger number of keywords.

 

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. We have added additional keywords to the abstract. Keywords: COVID-19; remote education; biology; teacher; primary school; secondary school; tertiary school

 

- The Conclusion section is too short. I would like to see a more extended discussion on the results of the survey. First of all - what are the limitations of the study? Definitely, there are a few.

 

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. We have added the limitations of our study and extended the conclusion:

4.4. Limitation of study

The first limitation of our research is the absence of questions on gender, age, and region. We can assume that these factors can affect the number of hours of preparation for teaching or the willingness to use new applications for distance learning.

Another limitation was the low return rate of the questionnaires. Some teachers who did not fill in the questionnaire wrote to us that they do not want to express themselves on the given topic, that they have a lot of work with remote teaching, or that their education was interrupted at their school.

We tried to create questions suitable for biology teachers at all school levels. However, this was not always possible. The teachers at the tertiary school had diffi-culty answering some questions. The teaching of biology and especially the practical exercises are more intensive than in primary or secondary school. Although not many tertiary teachers participated in the research, our findings sufficiently revealed how teachers worked and what was different in their work during the pandemic period. The most important result of our study was that despite disadvantages related to re-mote education during the pandemic period (e.g., no contact with some students, lim-ited opportunities for motivation and support). Most teachers (71.53%, secondary 81.67%, and tertiary 53.85%) reported willingness to integrate technology into teaching to a greater degree after the teaching returns to its original – on-site form. It seems that new experiences in the pandemic era could lead to a positive change in the education system.

Despite the limitations in our study, we believe it provides some guidelines that provide direction for future research.

5. Conclusions

Restrictions and measures attempting to prevent the coronavirus from spreading have led to changes in the education system in which online teaching has become a primary means of education. Such transition to online teaching has created various challenges not only for students but also for teachers who had to adjust the content and curriculum with respect to the education and activity of students. Remote teaching in biology is more difficult due to the experimental nature of the subject. This study has researched how primary, secondary and tertiary school teachers perceived the outbreak of COVID-19 during the closure of schools and how they managed to adapt to the new teaching routines and activities necessary due to the remote teaching. Although these challenges arose in a unique context, which, hopefully, will not last, we can say that as far as possible, teachers had created multiple innovations overnight. Results of our research have provided us with information about the current state of coping with the pandemic state and provided us with information necessary for creating more appropriate forms of education of practical biology lessons. These findings shed light on limiting factors of remote teaching and teachers' emotional exhaustion during the COVID-19 pandemic while implementing remote education. It also serves as an encouraging look to the future of education and increases efficiency in natural science education.

Reviewer 2 Report

Research hypotheses, related to 3.2 Opinions of the teachers regarding remote teaching of biology, could be defined more clearly.

Author Response

First of all, on behalf of my co-authors, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your interest in reviewing our article. We appreciate the time, energy and patience spent in reading our study, writing your comments and suggestions. We tried to accept all your comments and suggestions.

Reviewer #2:

 

- Research hypotheses, related to 3.2 Opinions of the teachers regarding remote teaching of biology, could be defined more clearly.

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. We have tried to define them more clearly.

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The literature review is poor. The authors need to enrich it.
2. The questions of the questionnaire are not described in detail. 
3. The authors should give results of the reliability.
4. The authors should give results of the assumptions of the statistical tests.
5. It is better if the discussion section would be alone, because the section results and discussion has now very extensive text, which make it very hard for the reader to follow the resuls or the analysis. 
6. I could not assess the role of the discussion for the reason described above. 
7. A section that includes the limitations of the research should be added. 

 

Author Response

First of all, on behalf of my co-authors, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your interest in reviewing our article. We appreciate the time, energy and patience spent in reading our study, writing your comments and suggestions. We tried to accept all your comments and suggestions.

Reviewer #3:

 

- The literature review is poor. The authors need to enrich it.

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. New information and literary sources have been added to the manuscript.

 

- The questions of the questionnaire are not described in detail.

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. We have described the questions in detail in the text and added list of the questionnaire’s open and closed questions.

 

- The authors should give results of the reliability.

Reliability results were added to the manuscript.

 

- The authors should give results of the assumptions of the statistical tests.

The results of the assumptions of the statistical tests have been supplemented.

 

- It is better if the discussion section would be alone, because the section results and discussion has now very extensive text, which make it very hard for the reader to follow the resuls or the analysis.

This recommendation of the reviewer was accepted. We divided the Results and Discussion into separate sections.

 

- I could not assess the role of the discussion for the reason described above.

We hope you can better assess the discussion after making the above adjustment.

 

- A section that includes the limitations of the research should be added.

This information was added into the text: „The first limitation of our research is the absence of questions on gender, age, and region. We can assume that these factors can affect the number of hours of preparation for teaching or the willingness to use new applications for distance learning.

Another limitation was the low return rate of the questionnaires. Some teachers who did not fill in the questionnaire wrote to us that they do not want to express themselves on the given topic, that they have a lot of work with remote teaching, or that their education was interrupted at their school.

We tried to create questions suitable for biology teachers at all school levels. However, this was not always possible. The teachers at the tertiary school had diffi-culty answering some questions. The teaching of biology and especially the practical exercises are more intensive than in primary or secondary school. Although not many tertiary teachers participated in the research, our findings sufficiently revealed how teachers worked and what was different in their work during the pandemic period. The most important result of our study was that despite disadvantages related to re-mote education during the pandemic period (e.g., no contact with some students, lim-ited opportunities for motivation and support). Most teachers (71.53%, secondary 81.67%, and tertiary 53.85%) reported willingness to integrate technology into teaching to a greater degree after the teaching returns to its original – on-site form. It seems that new experiences in the pandemic era could lead to a positive change in the education system.

Despite the limitations in our study, we believe it provides some guidelines that provide direction for future research“.    

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for changing according to the comments.