Conceptualising the Integration of Action Research into the Practice of Teacher Education Universities in Kazakhstan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is an interesting attempt to discuss the value of action research integration into teacher education system in Kazakhstan. However, there are areas which need significant improvement. 

1. The methodology is not sufficiently consistent. It is not clearly explained how the theoretical structural model was design, based on which sources and studies. 

2. In literature review part many references are from CIS countries but it is advised to include more references from the countries, which have already  introduced action research into their teacher education systems.

3. Table 1 (a close-to-practice research typology) is not clear at all and why it is needed if authors provide arguments specifically for action research. The section 1.7 is not very comprehensive and does not provide significant arguments in favor of action research. 

4. Authors should avoid direct citations when defining the key concepts.

5. APA 7th citation should be followed. 

6. Discussion part should be improved with more comparative aspects with similar studies in the field. 

7. Limitations of the study should be added. 

8. Implications for further studies are not indicated. 9. Overall, the concept of informal research is not clear . Why it should be informal? The paper is also vague about the terms of non-formal and informal learning in this specific context. 

I suggest to have the language review if the paper is accepted for publication. My recommendation would be to use the term 'novice' teachers instead of 'new' teachers. 

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

According to the abstract, structure of the literature review, and arguments made, the research questions, instrument, and findings were surprising. This paper could benefit from some backwards mapping to focus more on the development of the survey instrument and its underlying assumptions rather than approaching it from a literature of all the ways that pedagogical research has been effective. For example, how were the questions on motivation selected or validated? In the Appendix A, the question, "How much do you strive to improve your professional practice?" can give really high numbers since it is self-reported and can have bias in an educational space. There are long used and validated instruments for teacher motivation that could have been used (see Butler's (2007) Teachers’ Achievement Goal Orientations and Associations With Teachers’ Help Seeking: Examination of a Novel Approach to Teacher Motivation). Also, this was in contradiction to an unsupported statement made in the framework under 1.4 that stated that there is "insufficiently high motivation of teachers to undertake research activities" (line 162-163). So, I am confused on what is being measured and to what aim since the research should be asking questions about motivations to try new, specific research activities rather than asking general, easy to overly interpret questions. Overall, the questionnaire did not seem specific enough and I was not sure how the questions were developed in parallel with the literature review. I see that there are four blocks of questions, but it would have been helpful to have a literature review about those aspects rather than a literature review on various ideas of pedagogy and design research.

In terms of the literature review, it needs restructuring and more connection to the questionnaire, its purpose, why a survey is useful in determining the needs of a program, and why those constructs of the survey. Additionally, the literature review should look at previously used surveys that assessed similar constructs. For example, in the structural model on Cognitive, it is groups with "knowledge of main methodological approaches,..." and "knowledge about..." I did not see how this was measuring anything cognitive. Rather it seemed that the questionnaire was accessing content knowledge, which in the literature is about knowing what there is, and cognitive is more about how to strategically USE that knowledge (see, for example, Ellis (1986) The Role of Motivation and Pedagogy on the Generalization of Cognitive Strategy Training for how cognitive development is framed).

There were also points made that were unsupported (like the comment about teacher motivation quoted above) that could be removed since not relevant to the study: lines 75-78, statements about student motivation, knowledge gaps, decline in cognitive activity, etc. are unfounded and overly general, and not to mention, irrelevant to this study; section 1.4 does not actually offer a rationale for this study, and more can be said about learning the landscape of teacher education to know what to build off of to implement design action research; section 1.5 goes over definitions of formal, non-formal, and informal learning, but it not clear how it is relevant since author(s) first state that they are pulling from non-formal, but then change to informal in section 1.6; Ideas like lesson study, learning study, and informal practice-oriented research are introduced too late in the review and are also not sufficiently described since they serve as models for what (I think) the author(s) are trying to find out to implement; section 1.9 on implementing action research is more about unclear how a survey is used to do this.

Mainly, focus on the methods and pull out the relevant constructs for a reframing of this paper.

 

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks to authors for addressing the reviewer's comments. 

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to read this paper. We found your comments really helpful and are glad that we have made the required changes.  

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is much improved, but it could be stronger with multiple edits and additions.

1.    Research questions should be at the end of the introduction to know what the study will be about. These are listed in a paragraph starting at line 169, but they get lost within the different sections.

2.    In Section 1.2, there is a literature review of programmes that have used action research, but it is never defined clearly how the author(s) are defining Action Research. It could help to reorganize this section to first set up the pedagogical theory needed to develop new teachers. Then it could go into how Action Research is defined and supports that new development. After, it could come the literature review on action research programmes to show how they have been previously implemented, studies, and their results. This would then lead a little better into Section 1.3. Recommend citing the work of Hine (2013), Kitchen & Stevens (2008), or some recent pieces on it such as Manfra (2019), Onsrud et al. (2023). At the same time, it would help to incorporate terms like ‘close-to-practice’ and ‘non-formal’ into how they relate to the frame of action research so that those terms are clearer when they come up later in the paper. Mainly, Section 1.7 could be moved up to before Section 1.2 and be renamed to “Action research and classification of non-formal, close-to-practice research”

3.    In Section 1.3, it starts with context, which could be moved to the methods section as Context. In the same first paragraph, there are new definitions, which could remain in Section 1.3 and further be argued as an essential component for implementing action research.

4.    In section 1.4, the statistic about defended dissertations from 2020-2022 does not seem relevant to the paper. Also, the citation about the SWOT-analysis is not specific to teacher education programmes. So, it is unclear how that relates to your rationale.

5.    Section 1.7 should be written out in paragraphs rather than bulleted as a list. Right now, it seems more like a summary of the whole introduction and could just be written as such.

6.    At the end of Section 1.8, there is a list of research that the study claims to have benefitted from, but it would serve better to use those citations in Section 1.7 and to be explicit about how those studies informed the approach. It does nothing for the reader to just see a list of citations.

7.    Point 6 is similar for Section 1.9. The author(s) cite that they learned things from different implementation studies, but they are not explicitly saying what was learned from those studies. For example, it is not clear how methodologies were useful about the study by Seymour-Rolls nor how their conceptualization was useful.

8.    From lines 408-431, the author(s) do not really say much that adds to the argument for what needs to be added to pedagogy and action research in Kazakhstan. It is very general. Could be omitted.

9.    Reading more into Section 1.9, it is unclear why this information was not used in Section 1.4, which is the Rationale. These sections are too disjointed and the paper could use some reorganization so that these parts of the arguments are together and cohesive.

10.At line 465, the author(s) then talk about what defines advantages of action research, which should go way earlier in the paper such as Section 1.2, where action research should be defined.

11.From line 505, more context is given, which should go in the Rationale or could even go into the Methods section for context. For example, the points 1) through 3) are conceptual considerations, whereas, points 4) and 5) are contextual for the implementation.

12.For section 2, the research questions are too many, and they are not all addressed in this article or seem redundant for what is being addressed. For example, addressing question 1 seems to then support addressing question 2. Question 5 does not seem like a research question since it is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and it is not clear that having a category or not would prepare a future teacher. Possibly needs rewording so that it is clear what is being asked. Question 6 seems unrelated to the literature and purpose of the paper. Question 7 seems the most important to the paper since it is more about what research activity is needed to increase the quality of university teachers to then implement action research. Consider moving up and making that more of a focus overall.

13.The author(s) did not address a main concern I had about the development of the research activity framework. The literature review does not address the development of the survey constructs. There could be a lot of the literature review omitted and replaced with concepts to justify the conceptualization of the theoretical structural model of university teachers’ research activity. Why is this important to know? This also would address my concern about the research questions, where the last question seems to be the actual question being addressed in this article. But this gets buried in the Methods, which could still be more expanded upon and brought up. Think about what in the literature review justifies your survey approach rather than signaling all the changes you need to make to a university future teacher programme.

14.Furthermore, the literature cited for motivation takes a goal orientation theory perspective, which does not get discussed at all until the survey. Plus, this is not enough to frame motivation since you also should justify how each question was developed based on the framing of motivation. There are many different (and sometimes conflicting) ways that researchers have framed motivation and achievement goals.

15.The methods still need more fine editing and description of the development of each construct in the questionnaire. It says in the methods that the experts assessed the relevance of each question with a conceptual framework, but that conceptual framework is not discussed in relation to the questionnaire.

16.Each stage of the research is not fully explained. Seems incomplete.

Minor edits:

1.    There are inconsistencies in whether the article capitalizes ‘Action Research’ or ‘action research.’ Recommend just not capitalizing at all for any instances.

2.    Large space after first paragraph in Section 1.

3.    At lines 188 and 191, Buribayev et al. is not labeled with the numeric citation. Also, only the author’s last name should be cited like what you edited with previous citations.

4.    Sentence at line 196 is too long. Consider something like the following: “There are many variables of concern for teacher learning at pedagogical universities. For example, there is insufficiently high motivation of teachers to undertake research activities; a lack of knowledge on combining formal disciplinary research knowledge and close-to-practice forms of research; a lack of collaborative research environment. Incorporating action research into future teacher programmes addresses the need to develop their research competencies but also their capacity to continue research while in school.”

5.    The sentence that follows at line 201 is also too long and the first part is unnecessary [“The need to increase the re-201search activity of teachers at pedagogical universities is also obvious,”] If it were obvious, you would not have to provide a rationale. Rather, the sentence could start with “Action research is a crucial factor in …” It should try to connect the concepts of what is needed for teachers and how action research can address the needs. Right now, the paragraph mixes the two.

6.    Likert scale is mentioned in methods, but it is not clear how many choices or what terms were used on that scale.

7.    Line 665 needs rewording: “Expert validation was carried out by three experts: …”

To be honest, there are more edits I could suggest, but I was limited to three days to complete this review. Please consider revising and reorganizing to really center the questionnaire, a rationale for its constructs and its usefulness to implement action research. Maybe in that order.

There are many run-on sentences and paragraphs that don't really contribute to the overall argument. Could use a close set of edits after all the other suggestions given.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your really helpful comments. We have responded to them and we believe that the paper will be stronger because of your suggestions. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf