Prepared to Teach for Sustainable Development? Student Teachers’ Beliefs in Their Ability to Teach for Sustainable Development
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The MS touches generally an interesting point of teacher education. It, however, over-emphasises its findings. There is data from 7 countries, but many conclusions are derived and claimed for whole Europe. In every claim made, the MS should only refer either to the sample or lay down what the literature base is for claims about other countries.
The MS claims that sustainability is only an issue in teacher education in Scotland based on an analysis. This analysis cannot be comprehensive, because there are further countries in Europe beyond Scotland where sustainability is a topic in teacher education (pre- and in-service) and where corresponding standards exist. There are even universities where sustainability became the leading paradigm for the whole institution, including their teacher education programs.
There is also more research that could be taken into account, e.g. there was a study by Burmeister and Eilks in 2013 about student teachers concepts and preparedness for teaching for sustainability. Other studies were focusing teacher preparation for teaching climate change and other sustainability topics. Most came to a similar conclusion, however, things changed and the literature reported initiatives for implementing sustainability and ESD into teacher education, e.g. based on the study mentioned above Burmeister and Eilks reported in another paper how they integrated a module on ESD based on the findings form their study.
The MS also neglects to say the reader the background of the student teachers. Is there information whether they were from science, language, arts or social sciences? There are subjects that are nearer to sustainability education, e.g. biology or geography education, than others, e.g. math or sports.
In the limitations it needs to be said how the sampling might have influenced the findings, concerning regional spread and background of students.
The MS needs a careful read because there are several grammatical errors, e.g. lines 15 indicates, 71 a way or ways, 80 twice was ... and several more; 83 sentence structure.
BE or AE should be used throughout but no mixed, e.g. 112-113 programmes vs programs
Author Response
Thank you for the review and the comments. Here follows how the advices from the reviewer have been handled:
There is data from 7 countries, but many conclusions are derived and claimed for whole Europe. In every claim made, the MS should only refer either to the sample or lay down what the literature base is for claims about other countries.
The claims have been adjusted.
The MS claims that sustainability is only an issue in teacher education in Scotland based on an analysis. This analysis cannot be comprehensive, because there are further countries in Europe beyond Scotland where sustainability is a topic in teacher education (pre- and in-service) and where corresponding standards exist. There are even universities where sustainability became the leading paradigm for the whole institution, including their teacher education programs.
This has also been adjusted in the article.
There is also more research that could be taken into account, e.g. there was a study by Burmeister and Eilks in 2013 about student teachers concepts and preparedness for teaching for sustainabilit
This has been done, not only by adding Burmeister and Eliks, but also other studies that have been studying environmental education in teacher education.
The MS also neglects to say the reader the background of the student teachers. Is there information whether they were from science, language, arts or social sciences? There are subjects that are nearer to sustainability education, e.g. biology or geography education, than others, e.g. math or sports
There were some information about the student background in the paper. Some more have been added. However, the information given is limited as the scope of the article is addressed towards teacher professionalism in general.
In the limitations it needs to be said how the sampling might have influenced the findings, concerning regional spread and background of students.
As the results now is strictly related to the data and no general claims about teacher education programmes are made, only questioned, the limitations of the study should be clear from the text itself.
The MS needs a careful read because there are several grammatical errors, e.g. lines 15 indicates, 71 a way or ways, 80 twice was ... and several more; 83 sentence structure.
The article has been read through and corrected by a native english speaker with language competence.
Reviewer 2 Report
PAGE 1:
Lines 7-9 (under Abstract): Could you rephrase the sentence from the question mode to a normal one? "What is the status in teacher education today in embedding education for sustainable development and how does it relate to the focus on professional competencies in teacher education?
The author(s) seems to like the use of interrogative sentences [e.g Lines 22; 37-40]. Please rethink whether that is the best was to representing those sentences.
'Playing the devil's advocate', what does TALIS mean? Please provide the full name.
In line 24-25 (under introduction), you mention the three core knowledge types of teachers. Do you have references to back that?
Line 37-39 (Paragraph 3) in my opinion is too short to be considered a stand-alone paragraph. Consider incorporating it into the paragraph that comes before it or the one after it. Consider this suggestion also under 'results'.
PAGE 2
Line 87 (under method): Out of the 21 questionnaire items, only number 2 "Planning, carrying through and evaluating lessons" happens not to begin with a verb. Any reason for that?
PAGE 6
Is it possible to convert Table 6 into a figure?
PAGE 7
You should consider reading carefully through the paper and rephrasing certain portions of the text to enhance the clarity for readers. This shortfall is especially found under 'discussion'.
An example is Line 244-249.
Also, in Lines 277-279, you use the phrase "feel themselves" twice (also found in the 'abstract') Additionally those sentences are not easy to understand and should be rephrased.
And while you are at it, you should seek help for further editing of the English language.
Author Response
Many thanks for the comments. Here is how I have dealt with them:
Lines 7-9 (under Abstract): Could you rephrase the sentence from the question mode to a normal one? "What is the status in teacher education today in embedding education for sustainable development and how does it relate to the focus on professional competencies in teacher education?
The author(s) seems to like the use of interrogative sentences [e.g Lines 22; 37-40]. Please rethink whether that is the best was to representing those sentences.
The manuscript has now gone through a language check and this and many other sentences have been corrected.
'Playing the devil's advocate', what does TALIS mean? Please provide the full name.
A full name is given now.
In line 24-25 (under introduction), you mention the three core knowledge types of teachers. Do you have references to back that?
The reference is no. 3.
Line 37-39 (Paragraph 3) in my opinion is too short to be considered a stand-alone paragraph. Consider incorporating it into the paragraph that comes before it or the one after it. Consider this suggestion also under 'results'.
Is handled by the language editing.
Line 87 (under method): Out of the 21 questionnaire items, only number 2 "Planning, carrying through and evaluating lessons" happens not to begin with a verb. Any reason for that?
Planning is also a verb, only in a different tense than the other. The reason for using this tense is because the activity and the competence to do this activity involves several actions.
Is it possible to convert Table 6 into a figure?
Yes, but the figure would be complex if is should handle all the information in the table. A possibility could be to have both the table and a figure, but we think the table is sufficient easy to ready.
You should consider reading carefully through the paper and rephrasing certain portions of the text to enhance the clarity for readers. This shortfall is especially found under 'discussion'.
The article has been corrected by a native English language speaker with professional competence in English language.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear author,
Your article gained my interest since I find the topic very important today, and I find it valuable.
Here are some comments from my readings:
The introduction takes the reader into the issue straight away although I find the background section quite short.
The methods and the development of the questionnaire is well described and sounds valid. Just one aspect, why did you choos the Likert in 5 steps, that has been questioned since it tends to put the answers so close to the middle.
Furthermore I miss an important part of conducting research : ethical considerations. How did you do the study regarding research ethics? I think you should add something about that.
The results is in general easy to follow and the tables clear. The first part is easy even for those not so familiar with statistics, but the section of PCA from line 146 is different. Here you could revise it a bit by writing a bit more about why and how PCA was used, now the language is more strict or technical so the reader is left in some confusion, for example in table 2 there is a quite high number on reflection on ethical issues, but that is not mentioned later on. The same goes ofr table 3, yes there is high reliability but which items are put togehter in each index the reader might ask. Perhaps you could end your section of results with a few sentences summing up it all.
The section of discussion is good and shows many aspect of the results. It further raises a lot of questions, not only for research but also teacher education all over the world.
In the last section regarding limitations, you could problematize the construction of your questionnaire where the very last question was clearly of another kind and how that migt affected the results since you aimed for it to be integrated.
Thanks for an interesting article!
Author Response
Many thanks for the comments and advices. Here is how we have responded to them:
why did you choos the Likert in 5 steps, that has been questioned since it tends to put the answers so close to the middle.
There are different approaches to how many steps a Likert scale should have. By having a odd number of steps, it is easier to test skewness and kurtosis, as the scale will have a mid point.
The first part is easy even for those not so familiar with statistics, but the section of PCA from line 146 is different. Here you could revise it a bit by writing a bit more about why and how PCA was used, now the language is more strict or technical so the reader is left in some confusion, for example in table 2 there is a quite high number on reflection on ethical issues, but that is not mentioned later on. The same goes ofr table 3, yes there is high reliability but which items are put togehter in each index the reader might ask. Perhaps you could end your section of results with a few sentences summing up it all
We have added some more information which hopefully will make what have been done more clear.
In the last section regarding limitations, you could problematize the construction of your questionnaire where the very last question was clearly of another kind and how that migt affected the results since you aimed for it to be integrated.
We made some modifications of the claims in the article which should make this limitation clear in the article itself.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The revised paper has undergone improvements and the author(s) should be commended for that.
What I am still not "comfortable" with, personally, is the citations within an abstract.
With exceptions - like a continuation of one's work or when a concept, theory or a central theme underpins the work being reported - I am of the view that the abstract is the mini IMRAD (Introduction. Methodology.Results and Discussions) and Conclusions/Recommendations of the paper and should be devoid of citations.
So please apply this comment to justify the inclusion of citation(s) in the abstract.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
You are right. The notes got in the abstract through modifications of the manuscript. They're now out.
