Training Prospective Primary and Kindergarten Teachers on Electric Circuits Using Conceptual Metaphors
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The study presented in the article has a current and pertinent aim with regard to teacher education and the awareness of future teachers about content/pedagogical knowledge, grounded on the use of metaphors.
The document is well organized, using and adequate structure. The ideas are generally presented in a clear manner.
The following comments and suggestions are organized concerning the different sections of the manuscript:
- The abstract should be extended in order to include relevant information for the reader, like the aim of the study and the methodological options.
- In the Introduction section, the authors start by arguing the pertinence of the study, allowing the reader to get acquainted with the problematic. The aim of the study should be introduced also in this section. It would be clearer for the reader if the authors explained the necessity of this study culminating in the delimitation of the problem. Also, in line 33, the authors refer only to the involvement of prospective primary teachers, when the study reports to K-5 and kindergarten teachers’ education.
- There are some aspects of the theoretical framework to improve:
- The authors should use more recent references throughout the literature review. It is undeniable that the classics are inevitable (e.g. Shulman), but some ideas should be sustained also by more current literature (e.g. line 22); some ideas should be grounded on existing literature (e.g. lines 108, 122-125).
- It would be pertinent to clearly justify the choice for the sources used in table 1, as these categories are relevant for data analysis.
- The problem is well delimited.
- The section concerning the Methodology exhibits several weaknesses, there is a lot of important information missing:
- It is necessary to clearly identify and theoretically ground the methodological options. The authors focus only on the operationalization of the study. This raises some doubts about the type of study developed. The problem and research questions point out to a qualitative study, but the data analysis is not always coherent with this perspective. For example, in lines 174-177 the procedures described seem to be not in line with the qualitative nature of the problem. What lead the authors to this option.
- The context of the study should be described in detail (Which specializations has the master’s degree? Which subject was the base of the study? What was the role of the researchers in relation to the participants? What was the goal of the seminar? Which examples were analised with the student teachers in the seminar? How did they apply the categories described in table 1? What do the authors mean with conventional approach? What was the aim of the questionnaire/ structure/type of questions? How was the dynamics of the metaphoric analysis work/duration/type of activities/data collected?)
- Which criteria were used to select the answers from the questionnaire (line 160).
- (line 170) which products were these?
- In the Summary, the authors try to answer the research questions, however, other than that, it would be pertinent to compare the conclusions derived from the study with the existing literature.
Other aspects to improve:
- The text should be revised to correct some occasional typos (e.g. lines 22, 31, 40, 42, 49, 112); the word paragraph (lines 40 and 42) should be replaced by section.
- The references numbered throughout the text must be revised, from number 15 on.
Author Response
See the attached pdf file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper introduces the subject of metaphor in teaching physics. This is interesting: physics is a mathematical science, but deals with the real word, so it uses the common language as well. Traditional explanations in didactics of physics use some petrified expressions, like “momentum” or “potential” that find little apprehension by students. In this sense enlarging the choice of verbal expression enriches the learning.
This paper explores the capacity of 3rd university students to use metaphors in learning on electricity. Analogues with liquids are well known, even if the authors discuss it in detail in the introduction.
The outcome of the paper is that students liked creating own metaphors. This is positive. However, the “free” development of ideas by students on electricity proves to be somewhat divergent: “I am positive”, “I like to be in company of other electrons”. A professional physicist knows that such reasoning should lead to other scientific statements: a positive electron is called positron and belongs to antimatter; electrons in company, conceptually lead to superconductivity. Not saying, that I do not find explanation in the reasoning presented in the paper why the electron current heats the filament in the lamp.
So, Authors’ research is interesting, useful, but lead to a clear outcome that a free-run metaphor is useful, but without a guidance leads to misunderstandings. This should be stated in Authors’ conclusions.
Resuming, this is a piece of valuable, thoroughly done research in didactics of sciences in general, not only physics: it relates the humanities to mathematical sciences, and a “dry” mathematical formulations to the every-day language.
Minor: in the introduction, please give quotation of Galileo’s fragment of text that you have in mind: the reference is Italian and not much specified.
Check if there is not excessive self-citation in the paper. The references cancelled are 8/30 of total.
Author Response
See the attached pdf file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This article presents an interesting research study which aims to investigate the understanding of electricity through metaphors in student-teachers. In general is balanced in its various sections, however, it presents some structural weaknesses that the authors can overcome by systematic use of the literature.
An important issue is the direction in which the literature is approached in order to conduct the literature review. The key issue I would like to raise is the content of the teaching intervention with metaphors that is chosen to be carried out. I am sure that the authors are well aware that when we train teachers for kindergarten and primary education, one of our main purposes is to enable them to teach satisfactorily in schools. Therefore, the content of the knowledge we process during their education should be related to the difficulties of young learners. Because if we don't make that connection it would be like training any students and not student teachers.
This dimension is not included at all in the literature review of the article. However, it is necessary to link the choices of teaching intervention to research on the barriers and difficulties of kindergarten and primary school children. To this end, I am sending the authors some key articles that they should make use of.
The question of the relationship with the prospect of correlation with the practices of student-teachers in kindergarten or primary education is a motif that should consistently run through the development of the article. Otherwise what is the point of studying the issue of metaphors for electricity to students who are not physics majors?
At the methodological level, the work with students needs systematic clarification. For the reader it is truly paradoxical to assume that in a two-hour seminar students will be able to assimilate so much complex knowledge that they will then be able to use it in even a limited way. Also, the reference to a " conventional approach" needs clarification. What was the structure and basic content of the teaching? Was the teacher's discourse analysed to ensure that metaphors traced in the students' texts were not used? Is this analysis available? Was this teaching relevant to the students' future teaching practices?
The results and the discussion are no doubt interesting, but they are in a general reference area with an emphasis on metaphors, as is logical. The point is to systematically discuss which of these metaphors are meaningful to students, i.e. relevant to their future practices, based on an analysis of the proposed literature on the difficulties of kindergarten and primary school children.
Comments for author File: Comments.rar
Author Response
See the attached pdf file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Despite having taken into account the suggestions and comments made in the 1st review, there are still aspects to identify and substantiate from a methodological point of view, both in the abstract and in the section on methodology. The manuscript continues to highlight operational aspects rather than conceptual ones. The authors should lean on the problem and its nature and seek to theoretically explain the methodology and method that are appropriate. Only then it makes sense to describe the instruments and procedures.
Author Response
Thank you for your suggestion that made us better clarify the research methodology of our paper. The main changes are listed below. Some references have also been added.
Lines 19-25. We stated more effectively the nature of the problem in the introduction
“[…] metaphor is primarily conceptual, and secondarily linguistic, gestural, and visual. There are metaphorical ideas everywhere and they affect how we act” [1]. As a consequence, it is crucial for teachers to be able to both understand the concepts conveyed by children´s language when they speak, and the implications of what they themselves say when they teach. Normally, during their training in science and science education, teachers are not made adequately aware of the power of language in conveying concepts nor are they instructed to identify potential misunderstandings through a linguistic analysis.
Lines 68-70
The 4th section “Methodology and data analysis” contains the methodological ground and the description of the didactic intervention
Lines 191-205. In the "4. Methodology and data analysis" section, we added a paragraph describing the methodology adopted and its rationale:
This research takes the form of a single case study [50] of a mixed type, i.e. both qualitative and quantitative [51]. In a first qualitative phase, we wanted to actively engage the students taking part to our survey and gave them a test with open questions on the disciplinary content. In fact, we felt that our intervention would be more effective if it was able to involve the students in first person, making them express on a topic just covered in class, on which they had to prepare themselves and, not secondarily, which they would one day have to teach. Then, in a second test, we made them reflect on some of their own expressions taken from the first one, using conceptual metaphor explicitly. Finally, in order to be able to describe and synthesize the students’ results, we conducted a quantitative analysis going through the interpretation of the their expressions and categorization of the metaphors they contained. A purely quantitative analysis with a preconstructed questionnaire would have been less effective, relegating students to a passive role and not allowing them to feel directly involved. On the other hand, a purely qualitative analysis would not have allowed us to formulate a summary of the effectiveness of this intervention.
Lines 7-11. In the abstract we have briefly summarized the methodology:
… we conducted a single case study with a mixed qualitative-quantitative methodology.
Reviewer 3 Report
The revised version of the article carefully and heurisrically answers all the questions and suggestions we made about the original text.
It is now clear in the text that these students are chosen because they are following a program that allows them to understand the issue of metaphors in basic electricity.
Otherwise, the article is very well structured, meets absolutely all quality criteria.
Author Response
Thank you for the valuable suggestions.
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
I have nothing to add to the prior comments, other than stating that the authors attended the suggestions.
