Contextual Changes and Shifts in Pedagogical Paradigms: Post-COVID-19 Blended Learning as a Negotiation Space in Teacher Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting article which can make an important contribution to understanding how BL works in practice.. However while its promises to talk about comet and contextual changes in pedagogy, this is not apparent in the article.

Further, key concepts remain underdeveloped and defined, including the notion of pedagogy. This makes it a bit difficult for the reader to tie the review of the literature to the findings.

At a methodological level, details of the tool is lacking. It is unclear on what theoretical framework the survey was based, what prior testing of the survey was done, etc. Also, there is very little description provided about the context of the study itself.

Form an ethical point of view there is very little discussion of ethics. It would be helpful to address the ethics issues substantively and meaningfully.

Finally, it is unclear to the reader what the significant or contribution to the filed this article makes. It would be helpful to make this clear in the revised version.

If these above changes were made, this article would warrant publication.

Author Response

Answers to Reviewer 1:

1) This is an interesting article which can make an important contribution to understanding how BL works in practice. However while its promises to talk about comet and contextual changes in pedagogy, this is not apparent in the article.

We thank Reviewer 1 for the important comment. We find it essential to our study as it enables us to clarify the unique focus and contribution of the study. We agree that the study's contribution is to add another layer to understanding the practical implementation of BL. However, this understanding is dependent on how "pedagogy" is conceptualized. In this regard, in our study, we followed Megahed's and Ghoneim's wider definition of pedagogy which relate to practices as well as to the considerations for their activations (see page 2, lines 53-57). In addition, we relate to BL as a paradigmatic context with the notion that a structural-organizational change may shape pedagogy in its broad sense.

2) Further, key concepts remain underdeveloped and defined, including the notion of pedagogy. This makes it a bit difficult for the reader to tie the review of the literature to the findings.

Leaning on the response to the previous comment, we elaborated across the manuscript the key concepts -context, BL, curriculum, and pedagogy- as well as the connection between them (see page 3, lines 139-142; and page 4, lines 157-161).

3)  At a methodological level, details of the tool is lacking. It is unclear on what theoretical framework the survey was based, what prior testing of the survey was done, etc. Also, there is very little description provided about the context of the study itself.

We added more details about the research tool including the context in which it was designed (see page 6, lines 225-232).

4) Form an ethical point of view there is very little discussion of ethics. It would be helpful to address the ethics issues substantively and meaningfully.

 We discussed ethics related to the focus groups' participants on page 5 lines 206-210. We added more ethics issues concerning the filling of the questionnaire (page 4, lines 195-196).

5) Finally, it is unclear to the reader what the significant or contribution to the filed this article makes. It would be helpful to make this clear in the revised version.

We thank Reviewer 1 for the important comment. We articulated in the Discussion section the two main contributions of our study. One contribution relates to the discourse of 'pedagogy' in the context of BL. The second contribution relates to the role of 'context' in educational settings (see page 13, lines 513-515).

All the corrections are in the attached revised manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting article. The debate in the literature is wide and there is yet lot of room for discussion on that.

About the literature, some arguments to support the change process towards the adoption of blended learning models, you can also refer to Caporarello, L. & Inesta, A. (2006). "Make blended learning happen: conditions for a successful change process in higher education institutions", EAI Endorsed Transactions on e-Learning, 3(12).

About your study: did you experience any challenges/issues? if so, it would be nice also to hear which ones and how you have handled them.

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 2

1) About the literature, some arguments to support the change process towards the adoption of blended learning models, you can also refer to Caporarello, L. & Inesta, A. (2016). "Make blended learning happen: conditions for a successful change process in higher education institutions", EAI Endorsed Transactions on e-Learning, 3(12).

We thank Reviewer 2 for referring us to Caporarello's and Inesta's paper. We added arguments from their paper to support the BL timetable change described in our study (see pages 1-2, lines 44-46).

2) About your study: did you experience any challenges/issues? if so, it would be nice also to hear which ones and how you have handled them.

We can point to a methodological challenge related to the closed questionnaire. As we used an existent evaluation questionnaire it did not include assertions directly related to the lecturers' considerations. We handled this gap by activating focus groups discussing the lecturers' consideration for activating their practices (see page 12, lines 479-482).

All the corrections are in the attached revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a timely study of the differences in teaching and pedagogy when teaching virtually versus face-to-face.  Realizing that the necessity of "trying new things" was brought about by the closing of schools due to the Corona virus pandemic, the authors could provide a bit more context about whether the STs were teaching virtually (and with or without mentor teachers), and whether this situation could have provided additional information for this study (perhaps in the limitation statements).

The authors need to ensure that the font size is the same across the manuscript.

The authors need to carefully proofread the manuscript for typing errors. One question is why some years in the reference list are bolded and other are not?

In the Discussion section, the paragraph (third from bottom) that begins "Policymakers and stakeholders" is a bit confusing.  The paragraph contains many questions, some of which are in quotes and others not. Consider a different way to present the questions so it is less confusing.

Lastly, were there any indications that the TEs prepared (either through statements or otherwise) their intent to have STs become more self-directed in their learning? Could an explicit discussion/directions regarding this issue help STs understand that this is expected and why it is necessary?

Author Response

Answers to Reviewer 3

(1) This is a timely study of the differences in teaching and pedagogy when teaching virtually versus face-to-face.  Realizing that the necessity of "trying new things" was brought about by the closing of schools due to the Corona virus pandemic, the authors could provide a bit more context about whether the STs were teaching virtually (and with or without mentor teachers), and whether this situation could have provided additional information for this study (perhaps in the limitation statements).

The first comment deals with the question of whether the students experienced distance teaching in their practicum. Our Model discuss only "college based "courses - we emphasized it in line 35 in the introduction.

(2) The authors need to ensure that the font size is the same across the manuscript.

Some of it happened due to template transformation, we corrected it.

(3) The authors need to carefully proofread the manuscript for typing errors. One question is why some years in the reference list are bolded and other are not?

The document was re-read carefully and typographical errors were corrected.

(4) In the Discussion section, the paragraph (third from bottom) that begins "Policymakers and stakeholders" is a bit confusing.  The paragraph contains many questions, some of which are in quotes and others not. Consider a different way to present the questions so it is less confusing.

We rephrase this paragraph, hoping it is clearer now (see lines 483-495) in the attach file.

(5) Lastly, were there any indications that the TEs prepared (either through statements or otherwise) their intent to have STs become more self-directed in their learning? Could an explicit discussion/directions regarding this issue help STs understand that this is expected and why it is necessary?

It is implicitly found in line 376 quoted here:

"On the other hand, TEs’ choices regarding the most successful pedagogy, as well as their objective to promote self-directed learning (see Table 5), suggests that, in the new post-Covid educational arena, they recognize the need to prepare STs for online teaching in more explicit way."

We emphasized it by the supplement in red color.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article has been adequately revised