Multidimensional Psychometrics of Teacher Educators’ Professional Identity: An Initial Validation with Teacher Educators in Southeast Asia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Education sciences 2469692

 

I appreciate the opportunity to read and evaluate the manuscript titled "Multidimensional Psychometrics of Teacher Educators’ Professional Identity: An Initial Validation With Teacher Educators in Southeast Asia." This manuscript examines the professional identities of teacher educators as discussed in the existing literature. I am highly interested in this subject, and I believe that with some significant adjustments, this manuscript has the potential to be published. One notable strength of this study is its quantitative approach to studying teacher identity, which is less common in a field that primarily relies on qualitative methods. Consequently, this research makes a valuable contribution to the field of teacher identity among teacher educators. Additionally, I commend the inclusion of participants in the sample who agreed with the definition of a teacher educator, as it adds further value to the study. My comments are found below.

 

Introduction

The statement you made, "...have been conducted using qualitative research methods and are not empirically supported by quantitative research," could be interpreted as implying that quantitative research is necessary to validate instruments or theoretical insights obtained through qualitative research. This statement seems to suggest a hierarchical relationship between research traditions, with quantitative research being deemed superior. Please rephrase this sentence and other similar sentences throughout the manuscript to address these concerns.

While I acknowledge that teacher identity may encompass more than two dimensions, I also recognize the importance of comprehending the theoretical relationship among the six dimensions chosen. It is crucial to understand how these dimensions are interconnected and collectively shape the teacher identity of teacher educators (see for example Canrinus, E. T., Helms-Lorenz, M., Beijaard, D., Buitink, J., & Hofman, A. (2012). Self-efficacy, job satisfaction, motivation and commitment: Exploring the relationships between indicators of teachers’ professional identity. European journal of psychology of education, 27, 115-132). Additionally, it is worth considering that there may be other relevant dimensions that should be taken into account. To provide further clarity for readers, it would be beneficial to elaborate on these aspects and provide a more detailed explanation.

Additionally, and this is for me a fundamental question, what theoretical framework underlies your definition of teacher identity. I don’t mean which domains but what is an identity and how does it work and why is it important for teacher educators. Using a clear framework about PI could have improved your search. For example you might use Burke & Stets (2009) or Akkerman, S. F., & Meijer, P. C. (2011). A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity. Teaching and teacher education, 27(2), 308-319.

Finally, why is this instrument important for other researchers? I think it is important to mention this.

Methods

You have taken significant measures to investigate the psychometric properties of your instrument, which is commendable. However, there are still some important questions that need to be addressed.

First, without conducting a second-order model where the domains are loaded onto teacher identity, how confident are you that these domains collectively capture the essence of teacher identity? It might be more appropriate to refer to them as indicators of teacher identity rather than measuring teacher identity directly. Please see Canrinus et al. and Hanna, F., Oostdam, R., Severiens, S. E., & Zijlstra, B. J. (2020). Assessing the professional identity of primary student teachers: Design and validation of the Teacher Identity Measurement Scale. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 64, 100822 for further insights on this matter.

Second, I miss how qualitative methods such as cognitive interviews helped to improve the wording of the items and the validity of the instrument in total. When I have look at the items I feel they miss face validity sometimes and items that consist of a believe and a preference hardly measure the same concept, please see for instrument development DeMonbrun et al., 2017; DeVon et al., 2007; Rattray & Jones, 2005.

Third  I would like to raise another point for consideration. Since you have administered the instrument in different countries, which is indeed a strength of your study, why did you not perform cross-country invariance tests to determine whether the items are interpreted similarly across these countries? Conducting such tests would provide valuable insights into the cross-cultural understanding and validity of the items, don’t you agree?

Discussion

I miss a clear limitation section. Something that goes beyond biases in the selection process.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have enjoyed reviewing the manuscript "Multidimensional Psychometrics of Teacher Educators' Professional Identity: An Initial Validation With Teacher Educators in Southeast Asia." Based on the previously conducted review study by Lunenberg et al. (2014), the authors developed and validated an instrument that allows quantitative measurement of teacher educators' professional identity in a southeast Asian context. As the body of knowledge on professional development of teacher educators is mainly based on qualitative studies, this manuscript provides an interesting and novel contribution to this field of research. The simple and yet transparent description of the research design, which demonstrates that qualitative and quantitative research can nurture each other, and the methods used is an appreciable strength of this work. Moreover, the manuscript is well-written and logically constructed. 
Concurrently, I would like to provide two major recommendations that, as I believe, could strengthen the manuscript.
First, although some important and recent works in the field of teacher professional development are cited, I would suggest to somewhat further elaborate professional identity, to provide the reader a more comprehensive understanding of the layered nature of the concept (see, e.g., Andreasen et al., 2019: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X18310412). For example, in section 1.2 starting from Line 59, the authors reduce professional identity to task perceptions, or the tasks for which an individual teacher educator feels responsible (Richter et al., 2019). This reduction prompts the authors to conclude that Richter and colleagues (2019), by prompting only two constructs, do not adequately capture the complexity of professional identity. However, as Richter  et al. (2019) explain, these are two factors of task perception, representing only one dimension of professional identity. Moreover, a further deepening of this variable would serve as a good basis for further substantiating the discussion, which now remains somewhat on the surface at some points (especially the first paragraphs on grasping the construct of professional identity in six dimensions).
A second concern relates to the sample. While the authors are highly transparent about the sample's composition and the procedures of data collection, and although they complement the confirmatory factor analysis with a comparison of the data across national contexts (Table 3), it remains unclear whether it is methodologically the best choice to treat the data from the three countries as one dataset. From the descriptive data, I understand that the national contexts are very different, raising the question whether the validation of this instrument could or should not be done separately for each of the countries. It would be an added value that the authors clarify in their manuscript why the choice of a single sample was made and why that is an acceptable option.  

Finally, I would add some minor recommendations:

- Sample/Discussion: I think the manuscript would benefit from a critical reflection on the procedure of the data collection.

- Measures: no information is included on how the authors dealt with missing data, if any. Even in case there are no missing answers, I think that would be good information to share with the readers.

- Discussion: The discussion on gender differences is interesting, but somewhat unexpected and apparently also difficult to frame or explain on the basis of the introduction. A solution could be to include insights on the characteristics of teacher educators (e.g., gender, age...) already in the introduction. For example, there are interesting studies on novice teacher educators and the development of their professional identity in the induction phase (e.g., Mahsa Izadinia (2014) Teacher educators' identity: a review of literature, European Journal of Teacher Education, 37:4, 426-441, DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2014.947025; Elizabeth White (2014) Being a teacher and a teacher educator - developing a new identity?, Professional Development in Education, 40:3, 436-449, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2013.782062).

- Discussion: The manuscript lacks context information about the selected countries (e.g., why were these countries selected, why multiple countries, what is special or typical about the population of teacher educators in these countries,...?). Some information on this (e.g., Line 294) could bring more relief to the discussion and would also help the reader interpret the results more accurately.  

- Limitations/ results: It is a strength that the authors consider future measures to improve the reliability of two factors (curriculum developers and gatekeepers). Would it be feasible to make these suggestions more concrete (for instance, by indicating which of the items could be omitted or by immediately including adjustments in the presentation of the results)? 

- There is some repetition throughout the manuscript. For example, the aim of the study to develop and validate a quantitative instrument with six dimensions, is mentioned several times. I would suggest re-reading the manuscript in that sense and removing the duplicates or further elborating these statements.

The manuscript is well written. I add some small comments in that regard:

- Page 2, Line 93: "was the first empirical study" suggests that the qualitative studies referred to in previous paragraphs are not empirical. 

- Page 2, Line 72: "This group do"

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I believe the authors have executed this revision quite effectively. To illustrate, on page 2, they have thoughtfully included a clear definition of identity, and the limitation section has undergone substantial enhancements. Overall, their efforts have significantly enhanced the quality and clarity of the manuscrip

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, I appreciate that the authors were recomments made. Most of my suggestions have been addressed, clarified or answered. In my opinion, the manuscript has improved, especially in terms of the literature review and limitations sections.

I add a single recommendation in terms of language, which could be corrected before publishing: lines 54-59 are difficult to read and should be optimised.