Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teacher attitudes towards inclusive education?

Shirli Werner; Tom P. Gumpel; Judah Koller; Vered Wiesenthal; Naomi Weintraub

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257657

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 26, 2020
4 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Mingming Zhou, Editor PONE-D-20-30355 Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Werner, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that this is an interesting topic which deserves further exploration but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Specifically, the theoretical grounding of this study needs to be strengthened. The reviewers also raised concerns with other aspects. Please attend to each of them. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 18 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mingming Zhou, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1) Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2) We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This study is excellently performed and reported. The conclusions made are based on the results and stress important issues. The importance of school support of inclusion was a nice finding. The authors state that "teachers with increased self-efficacy are more likely to have positive attitudes towards inclusion" While the authors have been generally keen not to mix correlation and causation, they could consider the possibility that causal links here could go in both directions, i.e. positive attitude toward inclusion may itself create more self-sufficiency among teacher (If a person wants something, he probably also thinks: I can manage this). - Howeve, the paper is perfect and does not need additional discussion on this topic. Reviewer #2: The Authors, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read manuscript “Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education?” It is indeed a new learning and insight about inclusive education. I congratulate the authors for taking up specially a less explored variable i.e. teacher’s knowledge about inclusive education policy. While I found the paper quite relevant in today’s context, I also have some serious concerns in the manuscript as several points are ambiguous. I have highlighted in the manuscript with comments. I also mention them below: 1. The references are mentioned as numbers which makes it difficult to see the reference to make a connect, is this the way the journal asks to give references? why line 138 has a study name? (Yadav et al.) when other studies references are numbered? please be consistent. since I have used most of the references in my work hence, I have a fair idea about the studies cited here. 2. I strongly recommend to strengthen the argument of relation between attitudes and knowledge about country inclusive policy. This can be done by giving specific information about Israel inclusive education policy and the gaps between reaching to “streets” as the authors mention, hence the need to measure it. In the current form it is loosely knit and sounds less convincing as there are lot of studies on attitudes and self efficacy. 3. The link can be: attitudes → self efficacy → knowledge about policy →need for training module . may be this is a part of a bigger study but in the current form it requires a firm argument. 4. I wonder what was the specific reason for picking up Self efficacy and knowledge about policy of education needs. Maybe it has a specific relevance to Israeli context but it has not been brought about. I wonder because there are loads of literature on teacher’s self-efficacy towards inclusion. Perhaps the authors need to make a connection in the specific country context. Moreover, there should be more information about the country specific inclusive education national policy for international readers. 5. The three aspects on which the manuscript focuses are : self efficacy, attitudes , knowledge about policy of inclusive education. Then why other variable such as school leadership , climate support system etc? 6. About the section which has mentioned aims of the study: how are 3a and 3b different? Why have authors decided to have two parts? 7. About the instrument: why were two scales chosen to measure the attitudes? When most of the items are overlapping? The MATIES is quite comprehensive and fits in the theoretical framework also. Only one item to measure knowledge about policy of inclusion? Moreover, is there any specific policy in Israel? what is the significance of teachers to know it? Generally, decisions to make school inclusive is taken by the school leaders or management not the teachers. Teachers play key role in implementing it. 8. About the instrument: details such as final items of the scale should be provided and the last part (see highlighted comments within the manuscript) seems incomplete. 9. The demographic information should be provided in a table which makes it easier to read. 10. Paper requires reorganization and the manuscript has potential to contribute in the research body. It requires a consistency in the use of terms to avoid confusions and make clear for international readers. 11. A suggestion for clear organization is as under: The three aspects of inclusion in Israel see the document Reviewer #3: The study examines an important area of school inclusion. Overall, complex and coherent calculations are made. Minor revisions are needed. The theory foundation should define more precisely the understanding of inclusion (narrow/wide) in the country studied (line 39). Master's theses or doctoral dissertations should be replaced in the literature with more recent international studies (line 41, 52). There are many Finnish studies, partly missing other European and American countries (line 56). The explanation for the country description is missing (line 61) ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes:** Meenakshi Srivastava (PhD) Reviewer #3: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Comments to PONE manuscript.docx Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-30355_reviewer with comments.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r001
Revision 1
7 May 2021 Author Response May 3rd, 2021 Prof. Mingming Zhou, Ph.D.; Academic Editor RE: PONE-D-20-30355 - Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education? Dear Dr. Zhou, We would like to thank you and the reviewers for your helpful feedback and comments on this manuscript. We have attempted to revise the manuscript accordingly. Please see our responses below to each comment. 1. The references are mentioned as numbers which makes it difficult to see the reference to make a connect, is this the way the journal asks to give references? since I have used most of the references in my work hence, I have a fair idea about the studies cited here. References are numbered according to Plos One guidelines. 2. I strongly recommend to strengthen the argument of relation between attitudes and knowledge about country inclusive policy. This can be done by giving specific information about Israel inclusive education policy and the gaps between reaching to “streets” as the authors mention, hence the need to measure it. In the current form it is loosely knit and sounds less convincing as there are lot of studies on attitudes and self efficacy. We have significantly revised the introduction, to which we have added information on Israel’s special education law and changes in policy in this field. 3. The link can be: attitudes → self efficacy → knowledge about policy →need for training module . may be this is a part of a bigger study but in the current form it requires a firm argument. A suggestion for clear organization is as under: The four aspects of inclusion in Israel While this model is intriguing and worthy of future exploration, we cannot speak to its viability based on the current data. The model we propose here reflects the variables examined in the context of this study and our conceptualization of the relationships between them. Nevertheless, we believe that our in-depth revision of the introduction section make the theoretical links between the variables in our study clearer. 4. I wonder what was the specific reason for picking up Self efficacy and knowledge about policy of education needs. Maybe it has a specific relevance to Israeli context but it has not been brought about. I wonder because there are loads of literature on teacher’s self-efficacy towards inclusion. Perhaps the authors need to make a connection in the specific country context. Moreover, there should be more information about the country specific inclusive education national policy for international readers. In this revision, we have added information on Israeli’s inclusive education policy. Further, we have attempted to clarify the study model, the associations that examined in this study, and the significance of this work, both in general, and specifically in the Israeli context. 5. The three aspects on which the manuscript focuses are: self-efficacy, attitudes , knowledge about policy of inclusive education. Then why other variable such as school leadership , climate support system etc? In the section titled “Teachers' self-efficacy, knowledge of policy, school support and attitudes towards inclusion”, we clarify that school support of inclusion is one of the variables that we aimed to study. This construct is expressed by school leadership and climate, as defined by previous studies in the field. 6. About the section which has mentioned aims of the study: how are 3a and 3b different? Why have authors decided to have two parts? We have removed hypothesis 3b. 7. About the instrument: why were two scales chosen to measure the attitudes? When most of the items are overlapping? The MATIES is quite comprehensive and fits in the theoretical framework also. Only one item to measure knowledge about policy of inclusion? Moreover, is there any specific policy in Israel? what is the significance of teachers to know it? Generally, decisions to make school inclusive is taken by the school leaders or management not the teachers. Teachers play key role in implementing it. We decided to use the two scales as we felt that, in combination, they provided a more comprehensive picture of teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion. We have added this explanation to the methods section. Indeed, only one item was used to measure knowledge of inclusion policy. We have added this as a limitation of the study. As stated above, in the introduction section, we added information on Israel-specific policy. Furthermore, the introduction now makes the case for the importance of conducting this study specifically among teachers. 8. About the instrument: details such as final items of the scale should be provided and the last part (see highlighted comments within the manuscript) seems incomplete. Example items from the scales are provided. We did not use an overall scale score. Additional information has been provided to further describe the scales. 9. The demographic information should be provided in a table which makes it easier to read. We carefully considered this possibility. While we ordinarily prefer a table presentation, we felt it would be less appropriate for the demographic information in the current paper. The data presented is not complex and includes both continuous and categorical data, such that, we believe a presentation in the text is more straightforward for readers. 10. Paper requires reorganization and the manuscript has potential to contribute in the research body. It requires a consistency in the use of terms to avoid confusions and make clear for international readers. Sections of the paper have been significantly revised in response to this comment. We have carefully reviewed the current manuscript to ensure clarity, succinctness, and consistent use of terminology. We hope the editor and reviewers will find the revisions made to the manuscript to be satisfactory. We hope this manuscript, in its current format, will be found suitable for publication in Plos One. Thank you again for the opportunity to revise this article. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r002
17 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Mingming Zhou, Editor PONE-D-20-30355R1 Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education? PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Werner, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 01 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Mingming Zhou, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: Thank you for incorporating the suggestions. the manuscript is more comprehensive now, however, I still struggle with the link between self efficacy and knowledge about inclusion policy. specifically point 3 AND 5 of the previous comments. Those points still need to be addressed clearly. Reviewer #3: The article was revised in accordance with the review. Explanations of Israeli policy can be found and the presumed connections have been presented conclusively. Overall, complex and conclusive calculations are made. The theoretical foundation for understanding inclusion in the country under study is now defined. Master's theses or dissertations have been replaced by recent international studies. More country studies have been added. The explanation of the country description is now available. The revision now presents the country-specific regulation and makes clear the importance of the study for Israel. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: Yes:** Dr. Meenakshi Srivastava Reviewer #3: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r003
Revision 2
3 Jul 2021 Author Response July 3rd, 2021 Prof. Mingming Zhou, Ph.D.; Academic Editor RE: PONE-D-20-30355R1 - Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education? Dear Dr. Zhou, We would like to thank you and the reviewers for your helpful feedback and comments on this manuscript. We have attempted to revise the manuscript accordingly. Please see our responses below to each comment. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. We have reviewed our reference list and hope that it fits with journal guidelines. Reviewer #1 did not have any additional comments. Reviewer #2: Wanted us to further address the link between self efficacy and knowledge about inclusion policy, specifically to further address points 3 AND 5 of the previous comments. We added those previous comments here. 3. The link can be: attitudes → self efficacy → knowledge about policy →need for training module . may be this is a part of a bigger study but in the current form it requires a firm argument. A suggestion for clear organization is as under: The four aspects of inclusion in Israel 5. The three aspects on which the manuscript focuses are: self-efficacy, attitudes , knowledge about policy of inclusive education. Then why other variable such as school leadership , climate support system etc? We have reviewed these two comments. While we did feel that these two points are clarified in the manuscript, we did attempt to clarify them further. The two parts bellow were added to this revision. “School leadership has been consistently linked to teacher self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes [40, 41, 42] and has a direct relationship with school organizational climate [43, 44] and institutional support [24].” “Put together, teacher beliefs in self-efficacy in implementing inclusionary practices have been found to be related to their attitudes regarding inclusion [46, 47]. Likewise, policy engagement and understanding is a clear aspect of organizational health and has been linked with leader self-efficacy [48]. Further, direct pre- and in-service training is clearly linked to perceived self-efficacy [49].” We hope the editor and reviewers will find the revisions made to the manuscript to be satisfactory. We hope this manuscript, in its current format, will be found suitable for publication in Plos One. Thank you again for the opportunity to revise this article. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r004
8 Sep 2021 Decision Letter - Mingming Zhou, Editor Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education? PONE-D-20-30355R2 Dear Dr. Werner, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Mingming Zhou, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing the comments. The manuscript reads better in the current form. congratulations for the hard work and patience. Reviewer #3: The article version meets the requirements. The revisions have improved the quality of the article. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: Yes:** Meenakshi Srivastava (PhD) Reviewer #3: No https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r005
Formally Accepted
10 Sep 2021 Acceptance Letter - Mingming Zhou, Editor PONE-D-20-30355R2 Can self-efficacy mediate between knowledge of policy, school support and teacher attitudes towards inclusive education? Dear Dr. Werner: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Mingming Zhou Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257657.r006

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