A New Concept of the Informatics Curriculum in the Czech Republic: Teacher Reflection on the First Year of the Transition Period
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled A new concept of the Informatics curriculum in the Czech Republic: Teacher reflection on the first year of the transition period. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.
I see great potential in the study for further follow-up research.
However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.
This study refers to 56 scientific references, resources and publications. Some of the references used are not up-to-date and of insufficient quality, and are therefore not a suitable theoretical basis for this study. The reference list is poorly and inconsistently formatted. In the study, reference [57] is used in the last paragraph, but the reference list contains only 56 references. I recommend supplementing, correcting and unifying the references used and the list of references.
This study represents a contribution in this area of research.
The basic ideas of the submitted manuscript are interesting.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you very much for your helpful comments. The comments are numbered and our responses can be found below.
Best regards,
Ivana Simonova
Corresponding author
REVIEWER 1
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Thank you for inviting me to be a reviewer of the manuscript entitled A new concept of the Informatics curriculum in the Czech Republic: Teacher reflection on the first year of the transition period. This document is really impressive in terms of your efforts to demonstrate the power of your study.
R1/1: I see great potential in the study for further follow-up research. However, some passages of the study are very descriptive and lengthy. This is sometimes confusing. Therefore, I would suggest shortening and simplifying them.
Answer: We would reply to this comment in agreement with R2/4. We understand that some parts of the article can be long and descriptive. However, our aim was to introduce the educational system of the Czech Republic. Arising from this knowledge, it is easier to consider some attitudes of teachers and problems of the schools which may be different from those in other European countries.
R1/2: This study refers to 56 scientific references, resources and publications. Some of the references used are not up-to-date and of insufficient quality, and are therefore not a suitable theoretical basis for this study. The reference list is poorly and inconsistently formatted. In the study, reference [57] is used in the last paragraph, but the reference list contains only 56 references. I recommend supplementing, correcting and unifying the references used and the list of references.
We agree that some resources are dated in e.g. 1980s (Melody, Papert, UNESCO, …). However, we think they should be cited as they bear basic ideas still valid these days, which latest sources arise from. The list was re-formatted, missing information was added, numbering was corrected.
R1/3: This study represents a contribution in this area of research.
R1/4: The basic ideas of the submitted manuscript are interesting.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper examines teacher reflection on the first year of the transition period, where this reflection is done on a new concept of the Informatics curriculum in the Czech Republic. Some comments follow.
1- There is a thorough description of the development of the notion of computational thinking, which is a merit of the present paper.
2- A Native English Language should edit the paper, where many language issues are there. For example, the sentence "were first implemented in higher in education" or the sentence "(four and five items)", or "some of them were worked out in several to obtain detailed answers"
3- I wonder why the authors have a section named "Literature review". This is just six lines. They can mix it with the previous section.
4- I enjoyed reading about the Czech Republic, but I wonder what it relation to the present research is.
5- The tools section lacks detailed description of the questionnaire. This section should give examples on the items for each type of scale.
6- The methodology lacks the data analysis section that describes the statistical tests used and why they were used.
7- I wonder why the results include percentages and graphs only. What about the statistical tests?
8- The authors intend to examine improvment, but they did not examine whether this improvement is significant.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you very much for your helpful comments. The comments are numbered and our responses can be found below.
Best regards,
Ivana Simonova
Corresponding author
REVIEWER 2
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The paper examines teacher reflection on the first year of the transition period, where this reflection is done on a new concept of the Informatics curriculum in the Czech Republic. Some comments follow.
R2/1: There is a thorough description of the development of the notion of computational thinking, which is a merit of the present paper.
R2/2: A Native English Language should edit the paper, where many language issues are there. For example, the sentence "were first implemented in higher in education" or the sentence "(four and five items)", or "some of them were worked out in several to obtain detailed answers"
The text was proof-read by a native speaker. The above-mentioned sentences were re-written.
R2/3: I wonder why the authors have a section named "Literature review". This is just six lines. They can mix it with the previous section.
We re-structured this part; The paragraph was included in previous section.
R2/4: I enjoyed reading about the Czech Republic, but I wonder what it relation to the present research is.
As mentioned above in R1/1, our aim was to supply the readers with related information about the Czech Republic, mainly the inhabitants, and an insight into the Czech system of education. Through the lens of the information, readers can better understand teachers´ answers and opinions.
R2/5: The tools section lacks detailed description of the questionnaire. This section should give examples on the items for each type of scale.
We added information about items included in questionnaires and the samples.
R2/6: The methodology lacks the data analysis section that describes the statistical tests used and why they were used.
R2/7: I wonder why the results include percentages and graphs only. What about the statistical tests?
R2/8: The authors intend to examine improvment, but they did not examine whether this improvement is significant.
Comments R2/6, 7, 8 deal with statistic processing of data. First, we intended to conduct a statistic analysis using statistic tests. But finally, after a long consideration, we decided that it would be more contributive to consider frequency of occurrence in single phenomena, as we finally did. To be honest, we think that now, when we are close the end of the second year of the transition period, the results and the format we have are more helpful. We can show them to the teachers as a result of their feedback, and to the organizers of teacher training to discover how to continue in the future. We are also going to present them to the Ministry of Education, and to compare with their results – the Ministry does not use statistic tests and significant differences in their reports.
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents a new concept of the Informatics subject in the Czech Republic. He personally gave me an insight into the structure of the course in a clear and concise way.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you very much for your feedback.
Best regards,
Ivana Simonova
Corresponding author
REVIEWER 3
Open Review
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The paper presents a new concept of the Informatics subject in the Czech Republic. He personally gave me an insight into the structure of the course in a clear and concise way.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The comments were followed.
