Teachers’ Self-Efficacy during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece: The Role of Risk Perception and Teachers’ Relationship with Technology

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your manuscript. Permit me to highlight a number of issues with the manuscript that must be addressed before it can be accepted for publication.

Page 2, Paragraph 2: Bandura's Model. I believe it more closely resembles a theory than a model. Could the authors kindly check?

I believe that this manuscript lacks concrete and specific research objectives or research questions derived from a clear identification of research gaps. I would recommend that authors include research objectives or research questions.

1.1 Present Study: In-service teachers and pre-service teachers were two distinct groups. Why was it grouped together in this study? I recommend the authors to provide a solid and convincing justification for this. As samples are an essential part of a survey or correlational study.

Does the combination of in-service and pre-service teacher samples sufficiently address the problem statement?

I would like to suggest that the author transcends the cultural context. Perhaps there are gaps in research in Greece or in the Balkans? This may justify the necessity of studying in Greece.

Specific teachers’ characteristics such as gender and teaching status. What research gaps identified in the literature justify this investigation into the relationship between gender and teaching status?

Hopefully, the authors will find my comments to be helpful.

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions for improvement. We have addressed these issues and incorporated them into the paper. Our responses to specific comments are below:

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1. Page 2, Paragraph 2: Bandura's Model. I believe it more closely resembles a theory than a model. Could the authors kindly check?

Response 1: Thank you for spotting this. This has now been reworded.

Point 2. I believe that this manuscript lacks concrete and specific research objectives or research questions derived from a clear identification of research gaps. I would recommend that authors include research objectives or research questions.

Response 2: We have now included research questions. The introduction of the manuscript now ends with the following:

“Therefore, to achieve the aims of the present study, the following research questions (RQ) were formed:

RQ1. Do teacher characteristics (i.e. gender and teacher status) relate to TSE, COVID-19 risk perception and relationship with technology amid the COVID-19 pandemic?

RQ2. Does teachers’ COVID-19 risk perception predict their TSE in person and in distance teaching?

RQ3. Does teachers’ positive relationship with technology contribute to TSE (in person and in distance teaching) within the context of Covid-19 risk perception?”

Point 3. 1.1 Present Study: In-service teachers and pre-service teachers were two distinct groups. Why was it grouped together in this study? I recommend the authors to provide a solid and convincing justification for this. As samples are an essential part of a survey or correlational study.

Does the combination of in-service and pre-service teacher samples sufficiently address the problem statement?

Response 3: We made the following changes:

Lines 77-79,  the following sentence was included:

As this research is one among the first attempts to study those experiences of Greek teachers, to focus on gender differences and teaching status seems a plausible starting point

Lines 310-311: “teaching status” was explained further (in-service versus non-in-service).

Lines 377-379, the following sentence was included:

Another limitation is that only the teaching status of teachers was investigated as a situational factor, resulting to a limited picture regarding the study of the contribution of other situational parameters  

Point 4. I would like to suggest that the author transcends the cultural context. Perhaps there are gaps in research in Greece or in the Balkans? This may justify the necessity of studying in Greece.

Response 4: The last sentence of the Introduction changed to:

According to the authors’ knowledge, no relevant to the above mentioned research has been conducted in Greece, and overall no studies have investigated the role of teachers’ specific COVID-19 related risk perception on their perceived self-efficacy in relation to face-to-face and distance education One could argue that distance teaching eliminates exposure to the virus and the possibility of transmitting the infection, leading to lower risk perception among teachers. 

Point 5. Specific teachers’ characteristics such as gender and teaching status. What research gaps identified in the literature justify this investigation into the relationship between gender and teaching status?

Response 5: 1.1. Present study: The first paragraph changed to:

The current study addresses the gaps mentioned above by examining TSE in both face-to-face and distant learning environments during COVID-19 pandemic, and by exploring the impact of multiple domains of teacher’s use of technology and COVID-19 risk perception on their TSE. As this research is one among the first attempts to study those experiences of Greek teachers, to focus on gender differences and teaching status seems a plausible starting point .To this end, the first aim of the study was to explore in-service and preservice teachers’ self-efficacy scores in instruction and engagement during the 2020-2021 school year at the different instructional levels (i.e. face-to-face and distance learning). To our knowledge, TSE at both instructional levels amid the COVID-19 pandemic has only been investigated in a USA sample [4]. We were interested to investigate self-efficacy in Greece, thus extending this line of research in a different cultural and educational setting. We also wanted to investigate whether specific teacher characteristics (i.e. gender) or situational conditions, (i.e. whether in an in-service condition or not) were related to self-efficacy scores. Previous studies have found that TSE increases with teachers’ experience [15] and reported that female teachers have higher self-efficacy in instructional strategies and student engagement [16]. The present study sought to examine whether a similar pattern would be found in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reviewer 2 Report

Highly relevant topic, and good sampling size. Consider triangulating/multistep method - include focus group interviews to validate results.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Point 1. Highly relevant topic, and good sampling size. Consider triangulating/multistep method - include focus group interviews to validate results.

Response 1: The suggestion was included the Conclusion section (lines 383-385): “Triangulating/multistep method including focus group interviews to validate the results would also be beneficial”.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, your article deals with a very interesting issue. I would like to highlight some aspects that could be improved:

The theoretical framework and references used throughout the article are correct and recent; however, it is recommended to try to include more references to discuss these data with other studies conducted in other European countries.

The methodology needs to be more precise: how were participants contacted, were questionnaires sent by email, what was the response rate received based on the contacts made?

Information on the questionnaires is missing: how were they validated, what is the questionnaire? The complete questionnaire should be included, even if only in annexes, so that all the questions can be seen and the study can be replicated, which is essential for the scientific community.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Point 1. The theoretical framework and references used throughout the article are correct and recent; however, it is recommended to try to include more references to discuss these data with other studies conducted in other European countries.

 

Response 1: Two more references were included (lines 331 and 361-363, respectively) in the discussion section (#33 and #34 in the References). These are:

Cataudella, S.; Carta, S.M.; Mascia, M.L.; Masala, C.; Petretto, D.R.; Agus, M.; Penna, M.P. Teaching in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Pilot Study on Teachers’ Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy in an Italian Sample. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2021, 18, 8211. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18158211.

Gobbi, E.; Bertollo, M.; Colangelo, A.; Carraro, A.; di Fronso, S. Primary School Physical Education at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Could Online Teaching Undermine Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Work Engagement? Sustainability. 2021, 13, 9830. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/su13179830.

 

 

Point 2. The methodology needs to be more precise: how were participants contacted, were questionnaires sent by email, what was the response rate received based on the contacts made?

 

Response 2: 2.1.: Participants and Procedure: We have added the following sentence (lines 136-139):

The questionnaire was administered via online Qualtrics survey platform and was accessed by participants using a designated link, which was disseminated through the researchers’ and teachers’ social networks, and e-mail listservs resulting in the snowball sampling technique   

 

Point 3. Information on the questionnaires is missing: how were they validated, what is the questionnaire? The complete questionnaire should be included, even if only in annexes, so that all the questions can be seen and the study can be replicated, which is essential for the scientific community.

 

Response 3: We have added the following sentence (lines 151-155):

The scales included in our study can be originally found in the studies of Gerhold’s [17], Tschannen-Moran [7], and Teo [18, 19]. The items of the final questionnaire were translated from English into Greek by a competent speaker of both languages and then discussed with teachers for the understanding and clarity of the content.