Young People’s Perceptions of World Cultural Heritage: Suggestions for a Critical and Reflexive World Heritage Education
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper title: Young People’s Perceptions of World Cultural Heritage: Suggestions for a Critical and Reflexive World Heritage Education It is a rather local case study, which gives rise to reflection and to start a very interesting debate. A study that gives us to understand the need to improve and reduce Eurocentricity, starting with the youngest people in education.
I have some suggestions and / or questions:
Why only in Lower Saxony Germany? If you do it from all over Germany, maybe it will be seen spatial differences, such as north-south, east-west, etc.
The comparison between different age groups, the resulting differences or similarities would surely enrich the study.
The articles use a neutral language, not gender. please change-it throughout the document. That is, when it speaks of one person or another by having a numerical name (i.e G4-2) it should be a neutral language.
Por otro lado, se han observado algunos errores en el documento que he adjuntado en pdf así como algunos comentarios.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your detailed feedback, which has been very helpful.
In line 18 we changed “students’ perception” to “young people’s perceptions”. Throughout the text though, the term students’ has been marked several times. Is this due to the typology of the apostrophe?
In line 155 to 161 we explain the chosen age group and the focus on students in Lower Saxony. This specific age group was chosen with regard to the school curriculum of Lower Saxony, Germany and its linkages with World Heritage Education. It has to be noted, that school curricula and textbooks are different in each federal state of Germany. Since one of the overall aims of the study was to set a ground for the development of learning material for textbooks, only students from Lower Saxony participated in the study. The geographical focus is also connected to the funding by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony. It is required, that studies funded by this institution are based in Lower Saxony. Nevertheless, we do agree, that in a further study the geographical scope should be extended (within Germany but also beyond). We included this point in the discussion.
Throughout the text, all references of a specific gender have been changed to neutral language.
Kind regards
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is very interesting because it reports on an experiment involving young students, who have been led to express themselves in a personal way on the aspects of the Unesco system of World Cultural Heritage (WCH). The results are obvious and suffer from some limitations (and the authors declare them) above all by revealing Eurocentric thinking patterns. (It would therefore have been interesting to involve school groups from different parts of the world even via the internet in order to see if they too have a tendency to show fondness for their country)
The note does not indicate whether the study groups and related questions are constructed by their teachers or whether they result from the students' preparation in that topic.
Communication defects are not considered as probable defects of the Unesco system such as the lack of absolute knowledge of the history and artifacts of some peoples without financial means or of isolated or even unknown peoples. There are also no references to archaeological heritage.
Author Response
Dear reviewers,
Thank you for your detailed feedback, which has been very helpful.
In line 155 to 161 we explain the chosen age group and the focus on students in Lower Saxony. The focus. This specific age group was chosen with regard to the school curriculum of Lower Saxony, Germany and its linkages with World Heritage Education. It has to be noted, that school curricula and textbooks are different in each federal state of Germany. Since one of the overall aims of the study was to set a ground for the development of learning material for textbooks, only students from Lower Saxony participated in the study. The geographical focus is also connected to the funding by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony. It is required, that studies funded by this institution are based in Lower Saxony. Nevertheless, we do agree, that in a further study the geographical scope should be extended (within Germany but also beyond). We included this point in the discussion.
In line 173-176 we have included more information on the origin of the 12 groups. The groups were formed by the students (voluntary participation), not by the teachers.
Of all groups, only one declared that they had previously dealt with WCH in school (line 190-193). This group formed an exception, as the participants took part in a school project on the WCHS in Alfeld. The imbalanced global distribution of WCH, focus of this paper, had not been a topic of their project.
During the first focus group session, in phase 1.b. the participants discussed several specific WCH sites (archaeological heritage among other) that were previously selected by the researcher. Since the results of this part are not discussed in this paper, there is no reference to archaeological heritage.
In line 602-605 we consider, that the students probably lack knowledge about the UNESCO system and could thus only rely on the basic information they received as well as their own assumptions. This also linked to the current gaps in WH education which fail to address critical issues such as the defects of the UNESCO system (see section: World Heritage Education: objectives and blind spots).
Kind regards
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper analyses an interesting topic such as the perception of the population about the World Heritage Site and its relationship with the SDGs. Carrying out this type of study in the selected group (students) is a very relevant issue. Its relevance is justified because, depending on how they perceive these issues and how they are explained to them at school, they will act in the future.
Taking into account the structure recommended by the review, the following changes should be carried out, which will improve the results.
First, the aims of this article must be worded more accurately. The reference in lines 49-51 is excessively generic, which makes it difficult to evaluate its achievement. It is also necessary to incorporate a research hypothesis. Likewise, to avoid confusion in the reader, all the references to aims should be included in this section and delete, for example, the references made in the “Methods and sampling” section (lines 177-178).
Secondly, the “Methods and Sampling” section should include information that allows a better understanding of the working method used and thus be able to implement it in other studies. Specifically, it should be explained:
- The factors that explain the origin of the 12 groups participating in the study (table 1). It should point out what reasons explain the choice of the 5 selected cities and the high number of groups related with the city of Hannover.
- Table 1 (line 135) refers to a pretest. This leads us to ask why only 4 students took part? and what relationship does the pre-test have with the focus groups? This question should be explained.
- It should be specified (lines 142) if the 2 focus groups were made to each of the 12 groups or were grouped. This should be worded, as it is written, it is not clear.
-Table 2. It should be specified if phase 1 corresponds to focus group 1 and phase 2 to focus group 2. As it is written, the relationship between these phases and the aims of the two focus groups is not clear.
-The relationship between the analysis of the photographs and the two focus groups should also be specified. It should be noted if the analysis of the photographs is carried out in the second focus groups.
- Line 165, it should be stated which were the criteria used to choose the areas to be visited.
- In the Results section, reference is made to certain key terms corresponding to the responses given by the respondents (figure 1, figure 2 and figure 3), but it is unknown whether these responses had been pre-established by the authors or they arise spontaneously by the respondents. This question has to be explained in the Methods section.
Finally, in the Discussion Section, the authors should discuss the results in the broadest context possible. References to other researches that analyse this issue beyond the area of study of this article is insufficient. It should be developed; otherwise, this paper is too local. It should be also incorporate limitations of the work highlighted.
Some formal matters have to be checked and corrected:
-Line 23, the quote is wrong.
Line 43, add the year related to Von Schorlemer's paper
Lines 105 and 112, references 25 and 26 and, 29,30 and 31 does not conform to what is stated in “Instruction for authors” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions).
Lines 172,173 y 174, delete the use of italics in the words “place” and “space”
Line 513, reference 65 should be reviewed. The author’ name and surname does not match the one listed in the reference list
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your detailed feedback, which has been very helpful.
In line 20 the date of von Schorlemers publication was added.
In line 57-66 we have worded the aim of the study and of this particular article more precisely. The study aimed at exploring the perceptions, meanings, attitudes and values of the participants towards WCH in order to develop learning materials, that use the perspectives of young people as a starting point. The aim of this specific paper is to present and discuss the perspectives regarding the criteria of WCH and the imbalanced global distribution of WCHS. The paper further presents personal and universal meanings participants ascribe to a specific WCHS in Lower Saxony. Due to the nature of this explorative study and lack of data to rely on, we did not formulate hypotheses in advance. We could therefore not meet you request to include a research hypothesis.
In line 155 to 161 we explain the chosen age group and the focus on students in Lower Saxony. This specific age group was chosen with regard to the school curriculum of Lower Saxony, Germany and its linkages with World Heritage Education. It has to be noted, that school curricula and textbooks are different in each federal state of Germany. Since one of the overall aims of the study was to set a ground for the development of learning material for textbooks, only students from Lower Saxony participated in the study. The geographical focus is also connected to the funding by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony. It is required, that studies funded by this institution are based in Lower Saxony. Nevertheless, we do agree, that in a further study the geographical scope should be extended (within Germany but also beyond). We included this point in the discussion.
In line 173-176 we explain, how the participants were acquired at their schools. The groups were formed by the students (voluntary participation), not by the teachers.
In line 179-193 we have included more information on the origin of the 12 groups and the schedule for the two focus group sessions and the site visit. We updated table 2, so that it becomes clear, that all of the 12 groups took part in two focus group sessions. As explained six groups were from Hanover, a city without a WCHS, and six groups came from the three WCH cities in Lower Saxony (Alfeld, Goslar and Hildesheim). From every WCH city, two groups participated in this study. It was decided to equally include students from a WCH city and a non-WCH city to allow comparisons between the groups.
In line 196-197 we explain the necessity of the pre-test with the testing of the questions, stimuli and the technical set-up.
In line 199-222 we shortly explain the origin of the terms in figure 1 and 2 which refer to the categories used during the qualitative content analysis.
In line 238-241we explain, that the 6 groups from Hanover could choose a WCHS in Lower Saxony according to their interest. The 6 groups from a WCH city visited the heritage site of their town.
In line 270-277 we explain the origin of the terms in figure 3. In course of the reflexive photography, participants produced a written text and were shortly interviewed. The text and the interview were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Since the categories used during this analysis had to reflect the personal meaning of the participants, they were not developed prior to the data collection but derive from the data itself.
In line 458-463 we added some information on differences between the photos taken by the group from Hanover and the groups from a WCH city.
In the discussion (525-529) we highlight, that even though the study had a clear thematic focus on WCH and the participants came from Lower Saxony only, the results correspond with studies that go beyond WCH and were conducted in other geographical contexts. The described challenges (e.g. Eurocentric worldviews) are not only relevant in the context of WHE, but for education in general. Further, we refer to studies exploring young people’s perception regarding the Global North and South (600-602) and history (611-615).
In line 644-647 we suggest, that further studies should extend the geographical scope and include World Natural Heritage.
In the conclusion (653-658), we refer to one aim of ESD for 2030 (foster critical thinking) to support our call for a critical and reflexive WHE.
In line 674 we corrected the name of the author.
Kind regards
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have included the suggestions made in the previous review. The doubts and comments raised have been successfully achieved.
