What about the Migrant Children? The State-Of-The-Art in Research Claiming Social Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I thoroughly enjoyed the article and found no issues with it. It was very informative and appreciated the point of view. They clearly addressed the young child audience as participants and the importance of their work with this demographic. The review of literature to support their work was extensive. Every element of the work and process was justified.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 comments and suggestions:

 

 

Point 1. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and found no issues with it. It was very informative and appreciated the point of view. They clearly addressed the young child audience as participants and the importance of their work with this demographic. The review of literature to support their work was extensive. Every element of the work and process was justified.

Response 1. Thank you, I am so glad for your nice comments and that you liked our manuscript. I am currently working on revising it, especially improving some english language and style issues.

 

Sincerely Yours

Sidsel Boldermo

Reviewer 2 Report

To cite a few examples, ‘has’ is used instead of have, and the word ‘that’ in line 68, ‘the’ in line 72 and ‘since’ in line 74 are all problematic. Line 48 might be replaced with ‘revolving’ but there are also whole sentences throughout the text where the meanings are unclear e.g. lines 49-54 , and 63-66.

There are also occasional overstatements that are probably not intended e.g. in line 56 the authors might add the word ‘sometimes’.

While Samuelsson, I and Kaga, Y (Eds), The contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society. Paris: UNESCO is included in the references, there are relevant papers included in that publication that do not appear to have been included in the analysis. This may represent a notable gap in the literature reviewed.

Despite all of this the scholarship and analysis is valuable and I feel strongly that the paper should be returned for revisions rather than rejected. In revising the paper the following further developments should also be considered:

More effort should be made to justify the (however plausible) assertion that Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development needs to address the issues of migration, multiculturalism and ‘belonging’.

The authors might usefully discuss the relationship between ‘belonging’, social cohesion and ‘solidarity’.

A consideration of the concept of ‘interdependency’ is desirable as it applies to interdependency between species, between humanity and nature, between nations and in multicultural sociaties.

Some reference to the UN declaration on the Rights of the Child might also be expected in the discussion.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 comments and suggestions:

 

Thank you for Your very useful comments and suggestions! I am currently working on revising the manuscript in line with Your suggestions, together with my co-author.

 

Response to comments and suggestions:

Point 1. To cite a few examples, ‘has’ is used instead of have, and the word ‘that’ in line 68, ‘the’ in line 72 and ‘since’ in line 74 are all problematic. Line 48 might be replaced with ‘revolving’ but there are also whole sentences throughout the text where the meanings are unclear e.g. lines 49-54 , and 63-66.

Response 1. After finishing the manuscript, hopefully today, I will have the paper checked and improved by the MDPI English editing service. I hope that it will improve the manuscript considerably.

Point 2. There are also occasional overstatements that are probably not intended e.g. in line 56 the authors might add the word ‘sometimes’.

Response 2. I will read through the paper and modify such overstatements.

Point 3. While Samuelsson, I and Kaga, Y (Eds), The contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society. Paris: UNESCO is included in the references, there are relevant papers included in that publication that do not appear to have been included in the analysis. This may represent a notable gap in the literature reviewed.

Response 3. As for the publication by Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga (Eds), The contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society. Paris: UNESCO, this publication has not been part of the literature reviewed as it came already in 2008, and the timeframe of this review was set from 2013 – 2017/18. However, my co-author and I acknowledge the fact that there are relevant papers in this publication that should be included in our review’s introduction and discussion, in order to more thoroughly justify and discuss issues of migration, social cohesion and `belonging` related to Early Childhood Education for Sustainability.

Point 4. More effort should be made to justify the (however plausible) assertion that Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development needs to address the issues of migration, multiculturalism and ‘belonging’.

Response 4. My co-author and I agree that this assertion needs stronger justification and we have written this in more detail into the manuscript and included several references, among other from Pramling Samuelsson and Kagas's report.

Point 5. The authors might usefully discuss the relationship between ‘belonging’, social cohesion and ‘solidarity’.

Response 4. I have found this relationship among other described to some extent in the report by Pramling Samuelsson and Kaga, but also by other, and especially the relationship between belonging and social cohesion is meaningful in this context, so I have applied it especially in the introduction. As solidarity is an important concept worthy of mentioning in the context of sustainability, I am also aware that since we haven`t investigated it together with ’belonging’ in our review of the literature, perhaps we should be a bit careful in introducing it without reviewing the literature another round?

Point 6. A consideration of the concept of ‘interdependency’ is desirable as it applies to interdependency between species, between humanity and nature, between nations and in multicultural sociaties.

Response 6. Thank you for this very useful suggestion, as this term is relevant in the context of the results and findings we have made in the review, and is thus meaningful to apply in the discussion and conclusions.

Point 7. Some reference to the UN declaration on the Rights of the Child might also be expected in the discussion.
Response 7. We the authors totally agree, and references will be applied.

 

Sincerely Yours
Sidsel Boldermo

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Well done. In my opinion a good follow up paper might identify the empirical evidence that the needs of ethnic minority children are not being met, and show how this has an impact upon sustainability. In the UK Salaman Rushdie identified the "Empire Within" the UK in the 1980s. There is now an interesting research literature concerned with European demographics that identifies the economic necessity of increasing immigration. Popular politics is widely opposed...

https://public.wsu.edu/~hegglund/courses/389/rushdie_new_empire.htm

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-immigration-population-news-statistics-facts/

https://www.boredpanda.com/racism-in-the-eu-map-bezzleford/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic