Exploring Changes in Epistemological Beliefs and Beliefs about Teaching and Learning: A Mix-Method Study among Chinese Teachers in Transnational Higher Education Institutions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript explored change in Chinese teachers’ epistemological beliefs and beliefs on teaching and learning via an international pedagogical training program, using a mixed-method approach. This topic is timely and important, and the manuscript has potential contributions to the higher education community. However, several main issues need to be addressed before it is ready to be published.

1. The authors claimed that it was a longitudinal study in the title; however, the research design did not follow a proper longitudinal methodology. I would suggest the authors claim it as a mixed-method study.

2. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the topic of changes in teacher beliefs, especially in the context of international collaboration. Particularly, many studies reported Chinese teachers’ epistemological beliefs and beliefs on teaching and learning via international pedagogical training programs. Thus, a literature review on this topic is needed, to help the readers identify the research gap and unique contributions of this study.

3. More elaboration on the research context is needed, such as the learning objectives of the TNHE program, learning principles, learning contents, working hours, assessment methods and so on.

4. This study used a mixed method, however, data collection and data analysis in the qualitative part is missing. What interview protocol was used in the semi-structured interview? How was the interview protocol designed and tested? How did the authors code the transcript and build a code book? What was the content of the code book? What strategies to ensure the validity of coding were adopted?

5. Which language was used in the questionnaire? If the questionnaire was in Chinese, what strategies to check the validity of the translation were used?

6. It could be helpful if the authors could further elaborate on the implication of findings in this study in the section of the discussion.

Good

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have revised our manuscript accordingly. Below, we provide the point to point responses. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The research topic is relevant and original. The object of quantitative research is operationalized. The theoretical framework encompasses the four dimensions of teachers' epistemological beliefs: Innate Ability (IA), Learning Effort and Process (EFP), Authority Knowledge (AK), and Certainty Knowledge (CK). The quantitative research instrument corresponds to the theoretical model. Convergent validity was assessed using Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE).

We have doubts about the research questions: Are there any changes in epistemological beliefs? and How do Chinese teaching faculty's epistemological beliefs and beliefs on learning and teaching change? If we raise the question of how it is changing, it is obvious that it is changing. Therefore, the question of whether it is changing is meaningless.

Questionnaire items were rated on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 6 (totally agree). It must be stated that in the case of ordinal scale the data is non-parametric. However, the authors claim that a paired sample t-test was conducted to investigate the changes in the sample's epistemological beliefs and beliefs about learning and teaching since working in TNHE. T-test is used for parametric data. We suggest using the Wilcoxon criterion for comparison of longitudinal study data.

We recommend explaining how the reliability and representativeness of the quantitative research sample was ensured.

 

The methodology of qualitative research is unclear. We miss the explanation of the qualitative research strategy, the accuracy of the qualitative research data analysis. The qualitative research questions presented in the appendix do not reflect the essence of the research. We suggest that part of the qualitative research be revised or removed.

 

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have revised our manuscript accordingly. Below we provide the point to point responses. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Revisions

An interesting article that explores the epistemological beliefs and beliefs about teaching and leaning of Chinese academics working in higher education alongside western colleagues using mixed methods.

The study was positioned in some literature but be careful, epistemological beliefs are not knowledge.

Lines 66-67 should be authority of knowledge and certainty of knowledge.

The article contains a thorough statistical analysis. It would be useful however to tell the story of the statistics and not just quote the numbers. How is the Likert scale coded, 1-5; 1-7?

The article contains a lot of information, and the sometimes-large paragraphs contain a lot of information which would be easier to follow if smaller paragraphs separating the ideas would be easier to follow.

In the Materials and Methods in lines 120-121 why “Therefore pre- and post” as that doesn’t appear to follow from the previous sentences?

In line 229 the changes were not before and after the survey, rather changes in the responses before and after surveys.

You need to explain how you scored the surveys and how you get CT and TT. How did you combine the results?

You need a reference to justify the effect size is large.

Line 253 something is missing

Lines 258-260 it is not constructivist beliefs but more constructivist beliefs.

In lines 260-285 you are making a lot of claims but not including much evidence. Separating out the information in smaller paragraphs would be helpful.

You need to be consistent in the analysis. In line 321 you said there was a change in belief, but the change is 0.30. In line 3.22 you claim a slight increase, but the change is 0.31. This is inconsistent

There were some sections where the writing could be clarified.

Do not use acronyms in the abstract without defining them

Line 4 should be “global” not “glocal”

The sentence in lines 45-45 are unclear.

The last paragraph before the materials and methods is disjoint.

Author Response

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript. We are grateful for the insightful comments on and valuable improvements to our paper. We have revised our manuscript accordingly. Below we provide the point to point responses. We hope the manuscript after careful revisions meet your high standards. We welcome further constructive comments if any.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for your effort in revising and improving the quality of the manuscript. I enjoy reading the paper.

Fine,

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your time and effort that dedicated to providing your comments on our manuscript. We are so glad that changes and revision which are in accordance with your comments have  improved the quality of the manuscript.  We have also integrated additional references in our minor revised version.

Best regards,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf