Exploring University Staff Views on Providing Continuing Education for Professional Engineers in Denmark: Using the Q Methodology

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Up-to-date topic and methodology, clearly expressed content, interesting results. My main concerns are related to:

1. Research question (lines 49-50) is too broadly formulated.

Which specific aspects of CE do the authors explore when trying to find out the university staff views on how best to provide CE: methods/design/tools/time frame/institutional settings/forms of CE, etc. 

2. A lack of research hypothesis

I was not able to find what hypothesis the author/s try to check. The hypothesis/ses should be related to the research questions. Then, the literature review should reflect those hypotheses.

3. Literature review

The author/s point out (line 178-180) that the key themes for successful implementation of CE have been identified on the basis of the literature review. So, it is crucial to know how the references discussed in the literature review section (section 2) have been identified i.e. which method have the author/s used when selecting those sources - a systematic literature review, a narrative review, etc. It is important to know whether these references are representative for the relevant literature as they build the foundation of the empirical part of the study i.e. the seven aspects of CE being examined (line 178-181). 

4. Methodology

I propose a brief discussion of the pros/cons/relevance of Q methodology in relation to the specific research purposes to be included in Section 3 given that this is the only empirical method used by the author/s to answer the research question and to prove the hypotheses.

5. Study's contributions

A discussion on the contributions/added value of the research findings should be included, preferably in the first section (Introduction). 

Conclusion: I recommend a revision which to improve the soundness/coherence/representativeness of the research outcomes. 

  

 

 

Author Response

1. Research question (lines 49-50) is too broadly formulated. Which specific aspects of CE do the authors explore when trying to find out the university staff’s views on how best to provide CE: methods/design/tools/time frame/institutional settings/forms of CE, etc? 

Response: Thank you for your comment. In Denmark, universities provide various CE activities for professional engineers, with joint efforts from academic researchers, educators, leadership, and administrative officers. Within this context, in this study, we did not focus on a specific CE implementation but used a holistic approach to understand how they view important aspects of CE design and implementation for professional engineers. We added more elaboration on this point in the Introduction.

2. A lack of research hypothesis

I was not able to find what hypothesis the author/s try to check. The hypothesis/ses should be related to the research questions. Then, the literature review should reflect those hypotheses.

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. The aim of this study is to develop a holistic understanding of the university staff’s views on important aspects of CE implementation for professional engineers (CEE). Since the Q methodology is to understand individuals’ subjectivity using a statistical analysis method, we phrased our research question in a qualitative way. We have an assumption that people in different positions in the university (e.g., academic staff, leadership, administrative officers, etc.) might emphasize different aspects of CEE implementation, while the results did not show a clear pattern based on participants’ positions. We added more elaboration on this point in the updated version, marked in blue.

3. Literature review

The author/s point out (line 178-180) that the key themes for successful implementation of CE have been identified on the basis of the literature review. So, it is crucial to know how the references discussed in the literature review section (section 2) have been identified i.e. which method have the author/s used when selecting those sources - a systematic literature review, a narrative review, etc. It is important to know whether these references are representative for the relevant literature as they build the foundation of the empirical part of the study i.e. the seven aspects of CE being examined (line 178-181). 

Response: Thank you for the suggestion. A scoping review was conducted to understand important aspects of CE implementation, and the framework was developed based on the scoping review, the authors’ prior research in CE, and expert review. Specifically, both internal experts, who have researched university CE for decades, and external experts, who have rich experience in CE practices, were involved in the expert review and informal consultation process to ensure the content validity of the framework. We added more information about this in the sections of the literature review and methodology, which are marked in blue.

4. Methodology

I propose a brief discussion of the pros/cons/relevance of Q methodology in relation to the specific research purposes to be included in Section 3 given that this is the only empirical method used by the author/s to answer the research question and to prove the hypotheses.

Response:  Thank you for the suggestions. We added more elaboration on why we adapted Q for this study, as well as its strengths and limitations in the updated version, marked in blue in the section of methodology.

5. Study's contributions

A discussion on the contributions/added value of the research findings should be included, preferably in the first section (Introduction).  Conclusion: I recommend a revision which to improve the soundness/coherence/representativeness of the research outcomes. 

Response: Thank you for the suggestions. We added related statements in both sections of the introduction and conclusion.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The work is very interesting, both in terms of the topic (which seems still understudied) and in terms of the methodology chosen to carry it out.

The paper is correctly founded, with a comprehensive literature review. However, there are some points that could be improved in order to give robustness to the paper:

1. Problematization of the topic

While a section is devoted to talk about the challenges linked to continuing education (CE) some of them are not clearly presented as challenges but as important items to be considered when designing a CE program. For instance, success is linked to learning activities based on labour market needs. While this would be an important factor to bear in mind, no challenges are mentioned about this topic: are labour market needs clear enough? Do universities staff in charge of the design of CE activities clearly understand these market needs?... Similarly, other topics are mentioned but not problematized (evaluation, marketing…).

Linked to this lack of problematization, it is not clear which is the objective of the paper when you skip to the methodology section. When reading “Methodology” a question arises: methodology to do what? (last paragraphs above do not point to the objective of the paper, but talk about relevant elements of CE activities).

 

2. Clarifying some methodological aspects

While the methodological section is really well structured and fully explained, there are some aspects that seem not clear enough. Specifically, the process of concourse construction has some gaps (e.g.: “data from interviews conducted by the research group”- These interviews are not clear; numbering of the Q statements, …).

 

3. Conclusions link to results

While the conclusions section seems correctly addressed, there are some of these conclusions that refer to aspects not mentioned in the results section. For instance, technology is highlighted as important (as also referenced in the literature review section) but none of the factor groups had mentioned it. Moreover, it would be interesting to deeply understand the relationship within the topics mentioned within each factor. Which is the interpretation of authors regarding the fact that those who focus on Organizational aspects did not pay attention to the Pedagogical aspects?

 

I strongly recommend to authors to address these three points, particularly the third one, in order to improve the quality of the paper.

Author Response

The work is very interesting, both in terms of the topic (which seems still understudied) and in terms of the methodology chosen to carry it out. The paper is correctly founded, with a comprehensive literature review. However, there are some points that could be improved in order to give robustness to the paper:

1. Problematization of the topic

While a section is devoted to talk about the challenges linked to continuing education (CE) some of them are not clearly presented as challenges but as important items to be considered when designing a CE program. For instance, success is linked to learning activities based on labour market needs. While this would be an important factor to bear in mind, no challenges are mentioned about this topic: are labour market needs clear enough? Do universities staff in charge of the design of CE activities clearly understand these market needs?... Similarly, other topics are mentioned but not problematized (evaluation, marketing…). Linked to this lack of problematization, it is not clear which is the objective of the paper when you skip to the methodology section. When reading “Methodology” a question arises: methodology to do what? (last paragraphs above do not point to the objective of the paper, but talk about relevant elements of CE activities).

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. We agree that challenge is a significant aspect of CE implementation, and it is important to know how university staff address/overcome various challenges in CE designs and implementation. In this paper, we only focused on aspects of good CE implementation due to the limitation of Q methodology – participants can only react to one question by ranking the statements, and the statements should be comparable and related to one topic. It would be interesting to focus on participants’ viewpoints on diverse challenges in CE in our future work.

We added more elaboration on the objective of the paper, why Q methodology was chosen to answer the research question, as well as its strengths and limitations in the updated version, marked in blue.

 

2. Clarifying some methodological aspects

While the methodological section is really well structured and fully explained, there are some aspects that seem not clear enough. Specifically, the process of concourse construction has some gaps (e.g.: “data from interviews conducted by the research group”- These interviews are not clear; numbering of the Q statements, …).

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. We added more elaboration on the process of concourse construction in the updated version, shown in section 3.2, marked in blue.

 

3. Conclusions link to results

While the conclusions section seems correctly addressed, there are some of these conclusions that refer to aspects not mentioned in the results section. For instance, technology is highlighted as important (as also referenced in the literature review section) but none of the factor groups had mentioned it. Moreover, it would be interesting to deeply understand the relationship within the topics mentioned within each factor. Which is the interpretation of authors regarding the fact that those who focus on Organizational aspects did not pay attention to the Pedagogical aspects?

I strongly recommend to authors to address these three points, particularly the third one, in order to improve the quality of the paper.

Response: Thank you for pointing out this issue. In this study, technology refers to the digital, physical, and pedagogical technology that supports decision-making and enables university staff to take on tasks (Leavitt 1965). Digital resources were identified as medium-level important aspects by Factors 1 & 2, as shown in their composite Q sorts, and Factor 3 highlighted the significant importance of pedagogical technology. More elaboration was added in the updated version.

We have an assumption that people in different positions in the university (e.g., academic staff, leadership, administrative officers, etc.) might emphasize different aspects of CEE implementation, while the results did not show a clear pattern of viewpoints based on participants’ positions. Participants’ demographic information (e.g., gender & roles) was added in the updated version. We agree it would be very interesting to explore the relationship between viewpoints, especially why specific groups of participants held these opinions, which needs evidence from qualitative data (e.g., interviews). We also added more elaboration on the interpretation of the factors and addressed the need for qualitative data as a limitation of this study and future research direction.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I recommend the article for publishing.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive comments.