Teachers’ Pedagogical Competence in Finnish Early Childhood Education—A Narrative Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your interesting manuscript “Teachers’ Pedagogical Competence in Finnish Early Childhood Education – A Narrative Literature Review”. Since this study probably have many authors that are experts in this research field in Finland (line 236-238), and many of the references thus are removed, I can only point out a limited range of improvement:

1.       In the abstract you state in line 5: “Pedagogical competence is understood to be the special competence or set of teachers.” Please clarify. This sentence did not make sense to me.

2.       Line 22: The word “introduction” should be in bold letters.

3.       You state your aim in line 55, but is that the same as the “research question” that should be addressed in your analysis (line 189)? Please clarify.

4.       You state that there are different approaches to pedagogy in ECE defined by Kangas et al. (line 82-84 and below). I wonder why this is not included in the discussion for comparison? It seems to be a weak connection between the theory presented and the discussion of the findings.

5.       In “data and methods”, you describe very well the process of data selection. But how did the overall categorization process take place? It seems that there is some sort of analysis of the content data. Was it data driven (inductive)? And who did this categorization and naming of the 14 different categories? This is important to clarify to improve transparency – especially as some of the authors’ papers are included in the review.

6.       Table 1: Why is there letters (A, B, C.. Q, P) in front of the subcategories? And why are some of these lacking or jumping over letters in the alphabet?

7.       All tables: This is probably a very minor issue, but I think it would look better to adjust how the hyphens divide words. Instead of “curriculum man-agement” in two lines (table 2), why not write “curriculum” in one line and “management” in line 2? There are also commas at the end of meanings some places, and nothing other places. E.g. “goals of education,” and “learning”. I suggest minor improvements of all tables.

8.       The aim of this paper was to examine the teachers “pedagogical competence” within a Finnish ECE context, and you identify three overall categories that are “meta”, “professional” and “practical” teacher competences. I can actually see that these findings are in accordance with what we find in a Norwegian outdoor context while examining “The teachers’ role for engagement in foraging and gardening activities in kindergarten” (Bergan et al., 2023). Would it be an idea to broaden your discussion to compare it to a Nordic context of “pedagogical competences”?

9.       Since I assume that you represent the leading researchers on the field of ECE pedagogy in Finland, I would encourage you to propose definitions of “pedagogical competences” to policy makers in your discussion or conclusion. You say this definition is lacking or challenging (line 386 – 397). I think you should propose definition(s) to the research field, based on your findings. And I would suggest that you look ahead of what is needed to more clearly define “pedagogical competence” in ECE settings in Finland (and later in the Nordic context). I agree that the teacher’s pedagogical competence is more than practical skills! The importance of pedagogical competence and leadership in ECE settings are under communicated. I suggest you strengthen your voice to policy makers on behalf of your findings.

I wish you good luck on your revision and publication!

Reference

Bergan, V., Nylund, M. B., Midtbø, I. L., & Paulsen, B. H. L. (2023). The teacher’s role for engagement in foraging and gardening activities in kindergarten. Environmental Education Research, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2023.2181271

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments and thought concerning our manuscript. In the file attached we carefully answer to each of your comments concerning the revisions we have made for our manuscript. 

With best thanks

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The purpose of this article was to review how pedagogical competence is defined in the Finnish literature on ECE. The first sentences of the abstract need to be more carefully specified, clarified, as pedagogy is a scientific discipline, and pedagogical competence refers to the competence required of or possessed by teachers, not a team of teachers. It is necessary, in the introductory part of the text, to organize the terms with different degrees of generality, to choose the terms more carefully (36 suggests instead of learning - educating; 37 instead of pedagogy - education; 54- pedagogy is an overarching concept to pedagogical competences, pedagogy as a science is concerned with, among other things, the study of these competences; can pedagogy be one of the competences? 431). 

The rest of the text dispels a number of initial doubts. Different approaches to pedagogy in ECE are clearly described, indicating the approach present in the Finnish literature. More difficult to read is the text on Teachers' pedagogical expertise in ECE. Dividing it into paragraphs would make it easier to read. In a manner consistent with a narrative literature review, the process of selecting the articles chosen for analysis is indicated, along with a clear rationale. While I understand the reasoning behind the removal of texts on team collaboration from the analysis (as this is more often the case outside the classroom), I wonder about the advisability of removing competencies related to collaboration if, for example, two teachers are present in classes with students with special educational needs. The different categories of ECE teachers' pedagogical competencies found in the analyzed articles were reasonably, substantively and logically correct. In the discussion, the authors referred to the main results of their research in the context of the reports of other authors, pointed out the possible applications of the obtained results and the directions of further research. The selection of literature is appropriate. Mainly new literature was used. A number of items have been made confidential, which is explained in the text of the article.     

 

The construction of some sentences makes them difficult to read (14-16; 67-70 too long sentence; 311-312; 340-342); I suggest dividing the text into shorter paragraphs (64-80 and 118-149).  

Monor punctuation errors

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for reviewing our work and providing valuable feedback. We appreciate the time and effort you have put into evaluating our paper. Below, we address each of your comments in detail in the attached file.

With best regards

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf