Mobile Technology as an Alternative Teaching Strategy Amidst COVID-19 Hiatus: Exploring Pedagogical Possibilities and Implications for Teacher Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work is an interesting investigation on the use that Pakistani teachers made of mobile technology as an alternative teaching strategy to guarantee access to education during the COVID-19 pandemic. A questionnaire is used as a tool and the findings are interesting in order to strengthen the pedagogical possibilities offered by mobile technology in education. There are some issues that are susceptible to improvement that are indicated below:

- The abstract doesn’t explain who the participants are or how many are them. The abstract don’t clearly communicate the central contribution of the manuscript.

- The aims of the article should be made clearer. Why is such a description useful or necessary? What does such an analysis provide for readers of the journal? Will this be relevant to a broad, international audience? What else could this analysis teach us? 

- Method: the instrument is not well explained. Is it your own creation? How many questions did it have? What was its structure? Was it validated? It would also need to explain how exactly the data was categorized. Was it through a category system?

- The results could be presented in formats that facilitate their understanding (e.g. tables or graphs).

- To do this work it is necessary to have the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Institution. What is it the number of this approval?

 I hope these comments help to improve the version of the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing our article on the use of mobile technology by Pakistani teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We appreciate your thoughtful comments and suggestions for improvement, and we have taken them into account as we revise our manuscript.

• In response to your first comment regarding the abstract, we agree that it could have been more clear and more informative. To address this, we have revised the abstract to include more details about the number of participants and the central contribution of the study. We hope that this revision will make the abstract more informative and engaging for readers.
• Regarding your second comment on the aims of the article, we agree that it is important to provide a clear explanation of why this analysis is useful and how it can be relevant to a broad, international audience. In the revised version, we have included a more detailed explanation of the aims of the article and how our findings can be valuable to readers.
• We appreciate your comment about the questionnaire used in the study. Since this study is based on a qualitative paradigm so we used open-ended questions, allowing participants to share their experiences with mobile technology, the challenges they faced, and what is ‘needed’ to make teaching through mobile technology successful. Nevertheless, we have revised the methodology section to provide more information about the interview’s structure and process. We hope that these revisions will make the methodology more transparent and understandable for readers.
• In response to your suggestion to present the results in formats that facilitate their understanding, we have included some visuals to help readers better comprehend the findings. We believe that this will make our results more accessible and informative for readers.
• Finally, we apologize for not including details on ethical considerations in the manuscript. We have included this information in the revised version to ensure that our study was conducted in an ethical and responsible manner. In particular, ethical considerations were taken into account throughout the study. Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and their confidentiality was ensured through the use of pseudonyms. The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the institutional ethics committee. Data were collected and analyzed with respect to participants' privacy, dignity, and cultural sensitivity. Any potential risks or harms to participants were identified and minimized. Overall, the study was conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines for qualitative research.

Thank you again for your helpful feedback. We hope that our revisions have addressed your concerns and improved the quality of our manuscript.

Best regards,

[We the Authors]

Reviewer 2 Report

This study examines how teachers in Pakistan leveraged mobile technology as an alternative teaching strategy to provide access to education during Covid-19 this unprecedented times. Through interviews and qualitative analysis, the authors argued that the importance of embracing new pedagogical possibilities offered by mobile technology and the need for effective teacher professional development in the post-pandemic era.

This study is original and has a few merits that could contribute to the scholarship of field. Firstly, the study topic is important to the field as mobile technology has becoming increasing popular for teaching and learning. Secondly, the author presented a clear literature review for the background and theoretical framework and study. Finally, although a few key references are missing, the article has good references to support its study.

 

However, there are a few major issues with the article that affects the study quality, such as:

1. The paper is title as “Mobile Technology and Pedagogical Possibilities amidst COVD-19 hiatus: Implications for Teacher Development”, but there is no references and discussion regarding teacher development. In fact, “teacher development” only appeared once, which is in the title. If the author wants to discuss more about teacher development, there should be comprehensive literature regarding this topic. Otherwise, it might be better to remove it from the title.
2. Research question is missing in the article. What is the research question? 
3. How did the mobile learning actually happen with the participants. The article only mentioned sending materials, how about assessment? assignment submission? grading? 
4. For a qualitative study, researcher’ bias, validity, reality and trustworthiness need to be discussed.  In addition, data triangulation is also missing. These made this qualities study not valid, reliable, and trustworthy. 
5. Many unfounded arguments. For example, author stated that “Although most of the teachers lack technological skills and proper use of mobile modes, still they seem to embrace”; “whether it is effective or not: it is the only workable solution in COVID-19 situation.” How did the author decide most of the teachers lack technological skills? The authors might need to provide more information regarding the teachers in Pakistan.  In addition, why is it the only workable solution? Considering besides mobile phone, there are still laptop, desktop, computers that are not considered as mobile device but can be used for remote learning and teaching.
6. Many challenges the author mentioned are not just for mobile teaching. “Jacob (interviewee) states that “there is a predetermined schedule of student’s presentations as an assignment which is disrupted when he/she does not have the stable internet at that time.” Aforementioned view is complimented by Sajid (interviewee) as “in 60 minutes’ mobile class, almost 20 minutes of I and my students spend on ‘can you hear me?’ asking a question, students respond: sorry sir I have lost my connection.” These could be applicable for remote teaching rather than mobile teaching. Author might need to clarify participants’ response here.
7. Writing is not friendly to readers, and extensive editing of English language and style required. For example, the author has misused “however” multiple times, e.g. “however” is not needed in page 1, Paragraph 2, and line 2.  The author also stated that “Different technologies, though, have unique characteristics; however, mobile technologies, such as smartphones and tablets, are now widely used as teaching and learning tools [25].” The entire sentence just does not make sense. There are also many extremely long sentences, which are hard for author to convey its key ideas. For example, author wrote “This study will be significant to inform authorities to investigate the experiences of teachers leveraging mobile technology to achieve teaching goals in emerging teaching conditions and to generate critical discourse for envisioning (mobile) pedagogy to deliver and augment education under normal conditions.” , and “Regardless of their level of preparedness, the crisis event that resulted in a transition to remote and mobile teaching options - whether it be through asynchronous or synchronous modes - has been challenging for novice teachers because it requires substantial changes in pedagogical strategies, content, and context to get full credit of remote and mobile learning technologies.” — Extremely long sentence, also, what does “get full credit of remote and mobile learning technologies” mean? 
8. Language issues in Tables. For example, in Table 1, instead of Sex, Gender (Male, Female) might be a better term. For each school, the author can just use A, B ,C, D instead of adding school to each of the letter.
9. Design Model for Effective Educational Experience (DMEE), why not DMEEE?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your thorough review of our article. We appreciate your feedback and have addressed each of your points below.

• We appreciate your feedback on the title and agree that we could have included more discussion of teacher development in the article. We have added more discussion regarding teacher professional development in the post-pandemic era.
• We apologize for the oversight in not including our research question in the article. Our research question was: "How did teachers in Pakistan leverage mobile technology as an alternative teaching strategy during Covid-19, and what are the implications for pedagogy and teacher development?"
• We have added a section in the methodology to address how mobile learning actually happened with the participants, including assessment, assignment submission, and grading.
• We have added a discussion of researcher bias, validity, reality, and trustworthiness. Additionally, we have addressed data triangulation in the methodology section.
• We acknowledge that our statements regarding teachers lacking technological skills and mobile technology being the only workable solution may require more information. We have added a discussion of the teachers' technological skills in the introduction and have clarified our statement regarding mobile technology being the only workable solution.
• We agree that some of the challenges we mentioned may also apply to remote teaching in general. We have revised the language to make this distinction clear.
• We appreciate your feedback regarding the writing style and language. We have edited the article extensively to improve readability and clarity.
• We have revised the language in Table 1 to address the issue with using "sex" instead of "gender." We have also revised the labeling of the schools.
• We appreciate your suggestion regarding the Design Model for Effective Educational Experience (DMEE)/DMEEE. We have revised this since it was meant to be the dynamic model of educational effectiveness (DMEE)- so we are using this abbreviation.

Thank you again for your review and suggestions.

Best regards,

[We The Authors]

Reviewer 3 Report

1. It is necessary to explain more clearly: (1) the problem under study; (2) the research questions; and (3) the research objectives.

2. The objectives of the research have not been made explicit, so it is not possible to assess whether the arguments and the discussion of the results are coherent, balanced and convincing.

3. It is very difficult to assess the conclusions of the work when the research questions, the hypotheses and the objectives of the research are unknown. In the conclusions it is necessary to return to the objectives of the investigation and respond to them.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for providing constructive feedback. We appreciate your thoughtful comments and suggestions for improvement, and we have taken them into account as we revise our manuscript.

• We have carefully revised the manuscript to provide a more detailed explanation of the problem under study, research questions, and research objectives. We have added a dedicated section to the introduction, where we provide a clear and concise overview of the problem and our research questions. Additionally, we have revised the research objectives section to provide a more detailed description of our study's specific goals and expected outcomes.
• We appreciate your comment regarding the explicitness of our research objectives. In response to this feedback, we have made a significant effort to clarify our objectives throughout the manuscript. Specifically, we have revised the research objectives section to provide a more detailed description of our study's specific goals and expected outcomes. We have also made sure to consistently refer back to these objectives throughout the manuscript and ensure that they are reflected in our arguments and discussions of the results.
• We agree with your comment on “conclusions of the work” that it is challenging to assess without a clear understanding of the research questions, hypotheses, and objectives. In response to this feedback, we have made a concerted effort to clarify our research questions and objectives throughout the manuscript. We have also ensured that our conclusions directly address and respond to our research objectives, providing a clear and concise summary of our findings in the context of our original research questions.

Thank you again for your review and suggestions.

Best regards,

[We The Authors]

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Good job. Thank you for your explanation about the review of you manuscript.