Effects of Sustainable Strategic Planning Applications in Primary Schools on the Effectiveness of Total Quality Management Practices
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
your paper brings a valuable input to managerial and sustainability sciences. It raises a key issue which is to agree perspectives of managerial staff and teachers and obtain optimal outcomes with respect to sustainability. Especially in such an important area, primary education. There are several remarks I would like you to share with you.
First of all, at the first sight, the title of the paper may imply that there will be some apps/or any other measures used in the study and their effect on total quality management practices will be investigated. Whereas, when I read the aim of the study is: "to determine whether the evaluations of managerial employees and teachers working in primary schools of sustainable strategic planning practices in schools affect their perceptions of the effectiveness of total quality management (TQM) practices". In the aim the word "perception" appears, so maybe you could think of changing the title into more precise and informative? Besides, you should explain more clearly, why this is “sustainable” strategic planning (maybe in the Introduction?).
In the line 31 "good strategic planning" should be explained. There is its explanation from the line 35. Firstly, you could explain a more generic term (strategic planning and its requirements) and then move to TQM.
From the line 162 you start presenting "other methods", but they are not supported with references. Would you consider adding them?
I would like to also clarify if "managerial employees and teachers" from the Abstract constitute the same groups mentioned in the hypothesis ("The evaluations of administrators and teachers")?
Regarding "2.1. Questionnaire design", how did you test the validity and reliability of a research instrument? Could you add this information in the section?
Could you add a section about research participants? (they were described in the Results section).
Headings and rows in Table 2 should be changed from uppercase into lowercase.
Concluding remarks should consider the aspects of sustainability. Apart from theoretical, practical implications, please add the third section on Sustainability and locate your study in this context. I hope that Sustainability journal publications will be helpful to build a strong link between your topic and sustainability.
Kind regards.
Author Response
Thank you very much for taking the time to evaluate our article. We have made the necessary corrections in the article, trying to respond to all your criticisms. Now our article has become better quality. We thank you.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript.
We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 1:
Comment 1: First of all, at the first sight, the title of the paper may imply that there will be some apps/or any other measures used in the study and their effect on total quality management practices will be investigated. Whereas, when I read the aim of the study is: "to determine whether the evaluations of managerial employees and teachers working in primary schools of sustainable strategic planning practices in schools affect their perceptions of the effectiveness of total quality management (TQM) practices". In the aim the word "perception" appears, so maybe you could think of changing the title into more precise and informative?
Besides, you should explain more clearly, why this is “sustainable” strategic planning (maybe in the Introduction?).
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. Therefore, we have changed the title as “Effects of Sustainable Strategic Planning Applications in Primary Schools on the Effectiveness of Total Quality Management Practices”. To explain more clearly, why this is “sustainable” strategic planning, we’ve added a new paragraph instead of the first paragraph of introduction.
New paragraph is as follows: “Todays, the concept of sustainable development is the key issue in all documents at global, European and even national levels, including educational development planning guidelines. Sustainability has become a decisive factor in the choice of strategy and the preparation of development, action and investment plans. Sustainable development planning involves the use of many variables, forecasting and applying a systematic approach. Primary schools develop their long-term sustainable development strategies for a certain period of time. In this case, a primary schools sustainable strategic plan can be considered as the cornerstone of an educational institution. In addition to defining a plan, it is indispensable to define strategic planning missions, principles, and most importantly, vision and values.[1,2]”
Comment 2: In the line 31 "good strategic planning" should be explained. There is its explanation from the line 35. Firstly, you could explain a more generic term (strategic planning and its requirements) and then move to TQM.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. Since the expression in this comment has been removed, no changes have been made.
Comment 3: From the line 162 you start presenting "other methods", but they are not supported with references. Would you consider adding them?
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have supported this mention with a reference.
Comment 3: I would like to also clarify if "managerial employees and teachers" from the Abstract constitute the same groups mentioned in the hypothesis ("The evaluations of administrators and teachers")?
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. Therefore, we have use “administrators” instead of “managerial employees” throughout the manuscript.
Comment 4: Regarding "2.1. Questionnaire design", how did you test the validity and reliability of a research instrument? Could you add this information in the section?
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. Therefore, we have use “administrators” instead of “managerial employees” throughout the manuscript.
Comment 5: Regarding "2.1. Questionnaire design", how did you test the validity and reliability of a research instrument? Could you add this information in the section?
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. We’ve provide some information on validity and reliability as follows:
“The initial content validation were done by four experts in the field of education who have enough experiences in management practices of the different educational programs in the primary education level.
In order to test the reliability of the questionnaire, that is, the degree to which the questionnaire produces stable and consistent results, before the hypotheses are tested, the reliability of the measurement scales should be checked. In general, the reliability of the construct should be greater than 0.7 in order to meet with the general requirement of reliability for research instruments. It is found that the Cronbach’s values for the independent variable and dependent variable are .856 and .791 in a row, confirming reliability.”
Comment 6: Could you add a section about research participants? (they were described in the Results section).
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We’ve added a section titled as “research participants”.
Comment 6: Headings and rows in Table 2 should be changed from uppercase into lowercase.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We’ve changed from uppercase into lowercase in Table 2.
Comment 7: Concluding remarks should consider the aspects of sustainability. Apart from theoretical, practical implications, please add the third section on Sustainability and locate your study in this context. I hope that Sustainability journal publications will be helpful to build a strong link between your topic and sustainability.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We’ve added a section titled “Sustainability Remarks” as follows:
“In a context where the concept of sustainability has become so important, representing one of the columns of social and economic development and a new challenge to excellence for any school that is widely accepted to play a teaching role, have been called to extend their activities, presenting themselves as operators for social change [32].
Schools need to address and evaluate the sustainability of their values, syllabuses and techniques used in educational activities in the education processes. Quality control and strategic planning are no longer enough for most schools' educational activities. Sustainability control and sustainability assurance needs to be built into every educational process of their activities in order to be ultimately prosperous in today's and tomorrow's education world.”
Reviewer 2 Report
The text sent to me for a review is interesting but it needs some more work.
Underneath are my suggestions to the authors.
In the Abstract cross out the sentence about the hyposthesis as it does not tell anything about the hyposhesis - nor direction neither what was acctually hypothetized or rephrase the sentence and fill it with some meaning.
Introduction is nicely organized into subpart, which is reasonable, but some parts require strenghtening - for example when authors write about theroretical background perphaps they should use more widely from experiences of others (look into "Total Quality Management (TQM) Practices of School Administrators in Relation to School Performance among Teacher Education Institutions in the Province of Quezon" or 'Implementing Total Quality Management in Education: Compatibility and Challenges"), as broadening the introduction to more than just a region-specific situation of Turkey may be more interesting for a broader audience. I am aware that the authors briefly mention other approaches (the Japanese model, the Hoshin planning ect. - page 4), but I think it requires more explanation on the benefits/negatives of each in relation to education system and why in Turkey this particular one was used and also refering to earlier home-based approaches (like a paper "An instrument for measuring the critical factors of TQM in Turkish higher education) may be sensible. But I leave it up to the authors.
In the Methods section where the authors describe research instruments I could not find any information on validity and reliability of the tools used. Please provide.
How were the teachers selected? Were they selected from a larger pool of teachers? How were they approached? Was participation in the survey voluntary? Do you have a consent statement? Please add the information.
Then, in the Results section we can see the Crombachs' alpha and other reliability coefficients - should they belong to the methods section where the instruments are described?
Discussion is a little superficial, maybe not trivial, but it is certainly not deep, while this kind of study would call for a in-depth analysis and discussion of the findings against the findings and conclusions of other authors. (look into : Linkages between Total Quality Management and the Outcomes-based approach in an education environment).
Author Response
Thank you very much for taking the time to evaluate our article. We have made the necessary corrections in the article, trying to respond to all your criticisms. Now our article has become better quality. We thank you.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript.
We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 2:
Comment 1: In the Abstract cross out the sentence about the hyposthesis as it does not tell anything about the hyposhesis - nor direction neither what was acctually hypothetized or rephrase the sentence and fill it with some meaning.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We’ve changed first sentence as follows: “This paper addresses the evaluations of administrators and teachers working in primary schools of sustainable strategic planning practices in schools and their perceptions of the effectiveness of total quality management (TQM) practices.”
Comment 2: In the Methods section where the authors describe research instruments I could not find any information on validity and reliability of the tools used. Please provide.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. We’ve provide some information on validity and reliability as follows:
“The initial content validation were done by four experts in the field of education who have enough experiences in management practices of the different educational programs in the primary education level.
In order to test the reliability of the questionnaire, that is, the degree to which the questionnaire produces stable and consistent results, before the hypotheses are tested, the reliability of the measurement scales should be checked. In general, the reliability of the construct should be greater than 0.7 in order to meet with the general requirement of reliability for research instruments. It is found that the Cronbach’s values for the independent variable and dependent variable are .856 and .791 in a row, confirming reliability.”
Comment 3: How were the teachers selected? Were they selected from a larger pool of teachers? How were they approached? Was participation in the survey voluntary? Do you have a consent statement? Please add the information.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. We’ve provide some information as follows:
“This research was based on an online survey conducted between February 15, 2021 and February 28, 2021 on 400 randomly chosen teachers and/or administrators of primary schools in Ankara, Turkey. The participants were reached through the EMA Research Company. The population of primary school teacher and administrators in Ankara Province are 27000: about 15000 woman and 12000 men. Participants had volunteered to participate in the study. The participants were first contacted via e-mail, and they were informed about the aim of the research and asked for their consent to be interviewed.”
Comment 4: Then, in the Results section we can see the Cronbachs' alpha and other reliability coefficients - should they belong to the methods section where the instruments are described?
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. It is seen that the reporting is done in this way in almost all of the studies in which path analysis was performed. However, we have reported the reliability coefficients under Questionnaire design section..
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Effects of Sustainable Strategic Planning Applications in Pri-2 mary Schools on the Effectiveness of Total Quality Manage-3 ment Practices”.
The topic is very important but the conceptual analysis made in the text isn´t quite deep. The most literature consulted isn´t quite current and the sample isn´t quite large (which is a limitation for your work.). I would like to thank the efforts by the authors of the manuscript and congratulate them on the work. Overall, the writing isn´t clear, the goals are well described, the introduction should explain the objectives of the study based on the review of the previous literature and the conclusions aren´t properly made and presented. I consider that the constructs proposed in the abstract of the work are quite well explained. Therefore, the manuscript doesn´t contribute significant knowledge of the scientific literature and doesn´t cover existing gaps in the field.
Overall it's a work that could be improved adding greater conceptual clarity in the ideas presented. Personally I would focus on describe and explain what is the novelty of the work compared to other published studies on same topic (in "Conclusions").
It assumes a good work of study conforms to the objectives and establishes a good starting point for further research on the topic and its practical implications.
Best wishes for authors.
Author Response
Comment 1: Overall it's a work that could be improved by adding greater conceptual clarity in the ideas presented. Personally, I would focus on describe and explain what is the novelty of the work compared to other published studies on the same topic (in "Conclusions"). It assumes a good work of study conforms to the objectives and establishes a good starting point for further research on the topic and its practical implications.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with these comments. We’ve added some new sentences both introduction and conclusions related to the novelty of the work.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Firstly, I would like to thank the efforts by the authors of the manuscript and congratulate them on the work. I recognize that they have considered almost all considerations of the Reviewers. Clearly, all the comments from Reviewers have contributed to a better quality of the manuscript. I have checked in the revised manuscript are corrected the most of errors found by the reviewers, both formally and content.
Secondly, I have verified that the information is presented in a clear and organized way in subtitles. It assumes good work with great potential.
Thirdly, in the Discussion section appears practical and educational implications and future directions correctly described. I have found the manuscript show a paragraph of study limitations.
Finally, taking into account the changes made to the manuscript by the authors, I consider that the manuscript can continue with the review process, taking into account the opinion and suggestions of other Reviewers.
Best wishes for Authors.
