Welcome Refugees! The Use of Cultural Heritage to Teach Democratic Values

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting paper for the academy. Only, a few suggestions before publish it:

1. Remove de numbers (1), (2), (3), (4) in the abstract.

2. Consider remove the objectives in the Methodology and write this in the last part of the Introduction.

3. Revise the references (order) and guidelines.

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 1:

1. Remove de numbers (1), (2), (3), (4) in the abstract.

• We already removed the numbers in the abstract.

2. Consider remove the objectives in the Methodology and write this in the last part of the Introduction.

• We explain the targets of the study at the end of the introduction

3. Revise the references (order) and guidelines.

• References have been revised and modified following the guidelines.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The situation of refugees in Europe, and throughout the world, is a problem that concerns large sectors of society and has become a burning issue on the political agenda. This paper deals with this issue. There are few studies on specific educational programs for refugees that favor their incorporation into a democratic society. It aims to assess the effects of heritage education in the civic education of refugees to facilitate coexistence in the host country. The authors follow a common model in educational research. To obtain data, a pre-test and post-test questionnaire is used to assess the results of applying four training activities. It would be desirable for the authors to provide more data on the contents and timing of these activities (they could do so in the complementary documentation).

 

This research seems to assume "cultural integration" as a desirable model of reception. To facilitate the integration of refugees from countries with an Islamic culture (with enormous differences between them), information is provided on the Islamic past in the region of Murcia in an idealized way that hides or ignores the violence: “… positive examples of coexistence, tolerance and respect among the different cultures and traditions living in Europe are generally ignored…” (168-168). “…four activities reflecting the plurality and diversity of the cultural heritage of the Region of Murcia, where Islam and Christianity have coexisted peacefully. (474-475).

 

Some clarification on the epistemological framework of the research is missing. The authors seem to assume that refugees must integrate into the host society. From other perspectives, such as conflict theory or postcolonial studies, cultural diversity is considered enriching because this type of proposal does not focus on cultures of origin, nor on the relationships between cultures in contact, because there is a danger of strengthening stereotypes. and of forgetting the cultural reality of individuals. It is recommended to start from the cultural version of each person to emphasize the similarities and relativize the differences. For this, the following can be taken into account, among many other studies: UNESCO, 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Hoerder, D., Harzig, Ch., and Shubert, A. (Eds.), 2003: The historical practice of diversity: Transcultural interactions from the early modern Mediterranean to the postcolonial world. Hoerder, D., Harzig, Ch., Shubert, A. (Eds.), 2003: The historical practice of diversity: Transcultural interactions from the early modern Mediterranean to the postcolonial world. Kymlicka, W, 1996: Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.

 

The analysis of the data that has been carried out has limitations. A very small convenience sample (15 people) is used, and the SPPS is used to verify internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha) and for a very basic quantitative treatment of data (frequencies and percentages). The use of percentages for n=15 is unnecessary. It has not been completed with other instruments such as a discussion group at the end.

 

It would be convenient to review and reformulate the objectives (2.1.). The main objective that is formulated (to implement a didactic unit) does not correspond to a research objective. The didactic unit is an instrument or means to achieve the objectives. The specific objectives must be expressed in such a way that they can be evaluated (measured) based on the results: The SO.1 that is expressed as "To discover" would be more appropriately formulated as "Identify", which would be possible to quantify and relate to the participant profiles.

 

Section 2.2 (Context and participants) should also be reviewed in several aspects:

There is little relevant and unnecessary information, both from a formal point of view (e.g: pp. 127-129) and, mainly, in content. The identification of the participants should be presented in a simpler and more understandable way: It is said that 10 out of 15 are Afghans and the other five are from four African countries (it is not known from which country two originate, and from which only one). Four women participate, whose nationality is not recorded. It is suggested to summarize these data for example in the form of a table. It is interesting to mention the number of participants by gender, but this data should be taken into account for the subsequent discussion of the data,

 

There is an excess of historical data on the city of Totana and the region of Murcia that is of little relevance to the study (the number of inhabitants, precise location, mentioning Roman and Visigothic historical antecedents, etc.) that are not used in the subsequent analysis, and it is not very significant for the target audience that consults Sustainability). Some statements seem surprising, such as that "the Argaric archaeological site of La Almoloya in Pliego is the oldest parliamentary building in Western Europe", pp. 235-236): At best, it is an explanatory hypothesis not supported by historical sources.

 

3. Results and discussion

The sample (n=15) is too small to perform a significant frequency analysis. Corresponds to people of five different nationalities; Four of them are women. The data is not analyzed taking into account these variables; It would be necessary, at least, to explain why this analysis is not carried out: are there no differences between men and women? Between refugees of different origin?

Correlations are also not established between the data corresponding to the social ties of the refugees (Table 2), the democratic values ​​they express (Table 3) and/or cultural values ​​and "integration" (Table 4): The results "more positive ” or “more negative” in each of these categories correspond to the same profiles?

 

The interpretation of the data for some items is unsound: “the comparative results between the pretest and post-317 test are, in general, extremely positive“. It is not explained why an informant disappears in the post-test in Table 2. Those corresponding to item 6 reflect that 2 people state in the post-test that they speak Spanish (0 in the pre-test) but there is also an increase in one person who speaks Spanish. They say they don't speak it.

It is very problematic to interpret percentage changes with such a small sample. The "positive" variations corresponding to items 7, 8, and 13 may be due to multiple factors; for example, the desire to please the interviewer or the NGO that helps them, and not necessarily to be fully convinced of it: To improve the analysis it would be necessary to resort to interviews, focus groups or other qualitative instruments.

 

The topic of the article is very interesting. But it would need an in-depth review, with major changes

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 2:

The situation of refugees in Europe, and throughout the world, is a problem that concerns large sectors of society and has become a burning issue on the political agenda. This paper deals with this issue. There are few studies on specific educational programs for refugees that favor their incorporation into a democratic society. It aims to assess the effects of heritage education in the civic education of refugees to facilitate coexistence in the host country. The authors follow a common model in educational research. To obtain data, a pre-test and post-test questionnaire is used to assess the results of applying four training activities. It would be desirable for the authors to provide more data on the contents and timing of these activities (they could do so in the complementary documentation).

• We agree, we have incorporated the complete didactic unit to the supplementary document (although it’s originally in Spanish, the activities and its development are easily understood)

 This research seems to assume "cultural integration" as a desirable model of reception. To facilitate the integration of refugees from countries with an Islamic culture (with enormous differences between them), information is provided on the Islamic past in the region of Murcia in an idealized way that hides or ignores the violence: “… positive examples of coexistence, tolerance and respect among the different cultures and traditions living in Europe are generally ignored…” (168-168). “…four activities reflecting the plurality and diversity of the cultural heritage of the Region of Murcia, where Islam and Christianity have coexisted peacefully. (474-475).

 Some clarification on the epistemological framework of the research is missing. The authors seem to assume that refugees must integrate into the host society. From other perspectives, such as conflict theory or postcolonial studies, cultural diversity is considered enriching because this type of proposal does not focus on cultures of origin, nor on the relationships between cultures in contact, because there is a danger of strengthening stereotypes. and of forgetting the cultural reality of individuals. It is recommended to start from the cultural version of each person to emphasize the similarities and relativize the differences. For this, the following can be taken into account, among many other studies: UNESCO, 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Hoerder, D., Harzig, Ch., and Shubert, A. (Eds.), 2003: The historical practice of diversity: Transcultural interactions from the early modern Mediterranean to the postcolonial world. Hoerder, D., Harzig, Ch., Shubert, A. (Eds.), 2003: The historical practice of diversity: Transcultural interactions from the early modern Mediterranean to the postcolonial world. Kymlicka, W, 1996: Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights.

• Thank you for the comment and including new approaches. The need or not of integration is not assumed by the authors if not is mandatory in the government program of inclussion for refugees in Spain. In this case, the integration program is held by the CEPAIM Foundation and the authors, from the university focus the effort designing didactic units to empower the sense of integration in the host country.

The purpose behind the activities is not strenghting stereotypes or making invisible the refugees identity, but trying to make the newcomers feel that the host country was also related to their personal beliefs in the past. In that sense, the results show that the identification between the refugees and the new country (they admit to be identified with both countries) is growing and if they feel themselves being part of the host society they will strenght their responsibilities and their participation in the new community (Korac, 2017, Brekke, 2016)

• We incorporate a new epigraph to the structure titled “Principles and goals of the didactic proposal” to explain the approach we followed and why we selected consciously just examples of peacefully co-living (our aim is not to hide or ignore the violence if not to promote democratic values as tolerance or respect among refugees, so we thought it was coherent for the proposal to select that contents). We did not intend to held a “history lesson” but use cultural heritage and the past to promote democratic values.

In this sense, we follow the approach of Van Straaten, Wilschut and Oostdam (2018) that suggest that using historical analogies between the past and the present have the potential to encourage students to use the past to reflect on present-day affairs.

 The analysis of the data that has been carried out has limitations. A very small convenience sample (15 people) is used, and the SPPS is used to verify internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha) and for a very basic quantitative treatment of data (frequencies and percentages). The use of percentages for n=15 is unnecessary. It has not been completed with other instruments such as a discussion group at the end.

• We agree that is a limitation, although the necessity of use a quantitative analysis is due to the intellectual outputs of the Project that funds the study: to evaluate and grade the changes and progression of knowledge.
• It is true that a qualitative study held by deep interviews could make emerge more information. In our study, the implementation of both questionnaires was orally and depended on the two translators (one from farsi/persian into spanish; the other from french/arab into spanish). The difficulty of the participants to express themselves fluently was an important limitation to assess the results.
• We incorporate this limitation in the epigraph of “research procedure”

 It would be convenient to review and reformulate the objectives (2.1.). The main objective that is formulated (to implement a didactic unit) does not correspond to a research objective. The didactic unit is an instrument or means to achieve the objectives. The specific objectives must be expressed in such a way that they can be evaluated (measured) based on the results: The SO.1 that is expressed as "To discover" would be more appropriately formulated as "Identify", which would be possible to quantify and relate to the participant profiles.

• We agree. We reformulated the specific objectives following the recommendations in the last paragrahp of the introduction (as another reviewer recommended).

 Section 2.2 (Context and participants) should also be reviewed in several aspects:

There is little relevant and unnecessary information, both from a formal point of view (e.g: pp. 127-129) and, mainly, in content. The identification of the participants should be presented in a simpler and more understandable way: It is said that 10 out of 15 are Afghans and the other five are from four African countries (it is not known from which country two originate, and from which only one). Four women participate, whose nationality is not recorded. It is suggested to summarize these data for example in the form of a table. It is interesting to mention the number of participants by gender, but this data should be taken into account for the subsequent discussion of the data,

• It’s true that there were no concretion related to the origin country. We modified the data (1) Mali, (2) Morocco, 1 (Mauritane), 1 (Guinea Konakri) and (10) from Afghanistan.
• In relation to the gender, we did not find differences in their responses. We incorporate this explanation to the discussion.

 There is an excess of historical data on the city of Totana and the region of Murcia that is of little relevance to the study (the number of inhabitants, precise location, mentioning Roman and Visigothic historical antecedents, etc.) that are not used in the subsequent analysis, and it is not very significant for the target audience that consults Sustainability). Some statements seem surprising, such as that "the Argaric archaeological site of La Almoloya in Pliego is the oldest parliamentary building in Western Europe", pp. 235-236): At best, it is an explanatory hypothesis not supported by historical sources.

• We deleted unnecessary information about the town of Totana as recommended.
• Yes, we agree, even the archeologists that lead the studies in La Almoloya presented their results as an hypothesis, so consequently we, as well, in the same terms (Llul et al., 2021)

3. Results and discussion

The sample (n=15) is too small to perform a significant frequency analysis. Corresponds to people of five different nationalities; Four of them are women. The data is not analyzed taking into account these variables; It would be necessary, at least, to explain why this analysis is not carried out: are there no differences between men and women? Between refugees of different origin?

• As we said previously, we did not detect differences depending on the gender of the participants. As hypothesis, we believe that the fact of responding orally to the translator could influence the responses of the four women, although we don’t have any kind of evidence of that idea.
• Regarding to the country of origin, yes, we found differences just in one item (Item 13, How important is it for you to live in a democratically governed country?). We incorporated a more concrete explanation of that difference.

Correlations are also not established between the data corresponding to the social ties of the refugees (Table 2), the democratic values ​​they express (Table 3) and/or cultural values ​​and "integration" (Table 4): The results "more positive ” or “more negative” in each of these categories correspond to the same profiles?

• No, they not correspond to the same profile of participants. For example, to the question of do you feel at home? (item 7) or the question is it easy to adapt to Spain (item 9) the four responses “Somewhat or No” came from participants from Afghanistan.

 The interpretation of the data for some items is unsound: “the comparative results between the pretest and post-317 test are, in general, extremely positive“. It is not explained why an informant disappears in the post-test in Table 2. Those corresponding to item 6 reflect that 2 people state in the post-test that they speak Spanish (0 in the pre-test) but there is also an increase in one person who speaks Spanish. They say they don't speak it.

• Regarding to the disappear of one of the participants in the post-test, it was one of the Moroccoan participants. That day he abbandoned the activity because he had to go to the employment service to make an interview. Obviously, in his mind, the search of a job is completely prioritary. We incorporate this explanation in the epigraph “context and participants”.
• In the case of their skills to speak spanish. None of them were capable to speak fluently spanish, neither before the activity, nor after the activity. It is evident, that the purpose of the study was not to improve their communication skills, but we found important to make the question, because the lack of communication could influence their sense of identification. Some of them, learnt in 4/5 months (they arrived in august and the didactic unit was implemented in january) the basic words to introduce themselves, to say the age and adres sor to ask how are you? Maybe they were too optimistic with their communication capacities.

We incorporate this concrete explanation to the results.

It is very problematic to interpret percentage changes with such a small sample. The "positive" variations corresponding to items 7, 8, and 13 may be due to multiple factors; for example, the desire to please the interviewer or the NGO that helps them, and not necessarily to be fully convinced of it: To improve the analysis it would be necessary to resort to interviews, focus groups or other qualitative instruments.

 The topic of the article is very interesting. But it would need an in-depth review, with major changes

• We fully agree on that reflection. In fact, the authors (and also the teachers from the Foundation and the translators) discussed several times about that idea. We agree that a deep interview (maybe with a selected simple) will improve the study and will make emerge a lot of new information. Sadly, during the implementation, even the interview had to be carried out through the translator, so even in that case, we could find that desire to please the interviewer.
• Anyhow, we incorporate this reflection and this limitation as an option to improve and continue the study in te future in the conclusions. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

First of all, please, let me congratulate you on such up-to-date, interesting and important topic!

Albeit, I’m not entirely sure why the journal of Sustainability and not for example Heritage & Society? I understand that this is submitted for the special issue on Innovative Resources for the Educational and Sustainable Use of Heritage but I don’ really see the sustainability part in it. Or the link must be made more obvious.

The paper itself is a nice nexus of tangible and intangible heritage, identity, democratisation, values, education and social sciences.

The structure is clear and the article is easy to follow, the language is good (as far as I can tell).

I like how the background info has been weaved into Materials and Methods chapter.

The activities carried out in phase two seem really interesting! Please reflect on that a bit more. Was there much discussion on what to do and in which order? I propose to include a photo of the exterior of the church/sanctuary of Saint Eulalia or a collage of the mentioned artefacts. If possible a map of mentioned locations of visitations would also be good.

One aspect that bothers me a little is the schooling language, i.e. teaching. I understand that it is Heritage Education and so on. But you also speak of inclusive education, which should be about at least reflective guidance if not about co-creating and participatory processes. You name refugees and migrants as students at least twice [rows 200 and 267]. Do you want to take this patronising view? I have absolutely no doubts that this kind of teaching of democratic values is useful for refugees and migrants – but maybe you also learned something along the way? – but this is not reflected upon in the paper.

I read the tables with results somewhat differently than you (for example what can be considered as “extremely positive” outcomes), please have a look at the list of questions below with row numbers.

Results reads as results – not infused with discussion as promised in the heading. Please reflect more on what kind of activities worked, what not and why, what did the participants say during the interactions etc.

Another concern is in the field of ethics. I see that “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study”. But refugees and migrants are vulnerable group, they may have been experienced a lot to voice their opinions is true manner. Can you comment on that, please?

The last major confusion that I have is with specific objectives’ names and their correspondence with the blocks of supplementary data [row 273 and forward]: (1) To discover their social links with the host society vs. The social values of the migrants regarding their adaptation to the new country – it is not exactly the same thing; (2) To analyse their perceptions of the institutions and citizen participation vs. Values concerning democracy, participation, institutions and the Constitution, (3) To compare their conceptions of the host country’s culture and values vs. Cultural values regarding the presence of Islamic religion and culture in 280 European culture. In addition to specific objective number three, where do you get Spain’s values? – I think I have heard of World Values Survey [269] but this needs to explained further and actually no comparisons are made.

 

Minor issues.

Abstract – loose the numbers (1), (2) etc.

[Row 13] Hyphenate pretest, posttest → pre-test and post-test, also in the remainder of the paper, if it is not against the tradition.

 

1. Introduction

The notion of Heritage Education [row 47] gave arouse the concept of Heritage Education [52] – seems tautological.

[52] The word ‘arouse’ is used twice, in the beginning of the line and at the end.

[55] Maybe if you have a Spanish acronym OEPE you could spell it out, too.

 

2. Materials and Methods

Specific objectives (S.O.) written like that seem weird, is it customary in sociology? You refer back to them but still mention the title/content of the Specific Objective – thus is the shorthand necessary?

[130] What do you mean by ‘far-reaching’ here?

[164] Not sure how relevant it is to spell out CEPAIM is as it is explained, what it does.

[176–177] “the border area was pacified” – how? Currently writing this review in Spain but my knowledge of the history of the country is apparently lacking.

[189] Spaces before and after the titles are different, compare to [126, 263].

Majority of the participants were Muslim. The need to assimilate (– this somehow reads as a negative thing) to democratic values [193] – are all of the refugees and migrants from Muslim non-democratic countries?

[235] Argaric – I would claim that this term needs a short explanation.

[268 and onwards] Was the questionnaire done orally? English in this paragraph could be better.

[292] “¹ Authors’ own elaboration” – is this necessary? Also in other cases.

[296] This sentence’s meaning has been conveyed before.

[297 and onwards] In the second phase the four activities – were these on consecutive days or also days apart? Were the 15 participants always together? How big was the accompanying entourage?

[301] SPSS and its version has been mentioned before (without the IBM part) – maybe once would suffice? Especially when the only one place where SPSS was used is for two rows in the table 1. Tables 2–4 are just percentages.

 

3. Results and discussion – Discussion with a capital letter?

[308–313] The items mentioned in the text and in table 2 do not coincide entirely…

[318] “extremely positive” – only in one point, really. Knowledge of Spanish (item 6) ‘No’ has increased, that they have lost the connection (item 8) to the country of origin completely, adapt to Spain (item 9) has dropped (table 2). 

[319–320] Is teaching Spanish really neglected in formal education?!

[324–325] What was the time span between pre- and post-test?

[430] “albeit only slightly” – I don’t think that over 14% is too bad result.

[433] “the percentage fell by 14.3%” – it has risen from 0%. I think the expected outcome should be that the cultures are not so different after teaching Islamic part of Spanish culture but now they perceive their original culture more different?

[447] 42.9% is the share of people who in post-test don’t know whether Islamic part of Spanish culture – increasing from 0%! How this can be positive outcome of the teaching (in the table 4)?

[456] “show similar results” – similar but slightly dropped – maybe the number of respondents was smaller? Also, if they don’t know the constituents to Spanish culture (14.3%) after the activities – how can you evaluate the project succeeded?

 

4. Conclusions – the first half reads like a summary not deductions from the so to say social experiment.

[478] Not social values of the migrants but links to the host society – this is not the same thing.

The last paragraph could tackle the issue of language (or social values apart of democracy) as well.

 

Good luck!

Author Response

Answers to reviewer 3:

First of all, please, let me congratulate you on such up-to-date, interesting and important topic!

Albeit, I’m not entirely sure why the journal of Sustainability and not for example Heritage & Society? I understand that this is submitted for the special issue on Innovative Resources for the Educational and Sustainable Use of Heritage but I don’ really see the sustainability part in it. Or the link must be made more obvious.

• The use of cultural heritage as a way to integrate newcomers and refugees suppose than, in the future, that new citizens will feel heritage as part of themselves promoting the sense of a sustainable preservation of the past.

The paper itself is a nice nexus of tangible and intangible heritage, identity, democratisation, values, education and social sciences.

The structure is clear and the article is easy to follow, the language is good (as far as I can tell).

I like how the background info has been weaved into Materials and Methods chapter.

The activities carried out in phase two seem really interesting! Please reflect on that a bit more. Was there much discussion on what to do and in which order? I propose to include a photo of the exterior of the church/sanctuary of Saint Eulalia or a collage of the mentioned artefacts. If possible a map of mentioned locations of visitations would also be good.

• We included the whole didactic unit with the complete sequence of activities in the supplementary material. In each activity we can find some pictures and even in the activity 3 a map of the Region of Murcia.

One aspect that bothers me a little is the schooling language, i.e. teaching. I understand that it is Heritage Education and so on. But you also speak of inclusive education, which should be about at least reflective guidance if not about co-creating and participatory processes. You name refugees and migrants as students at least twice [rows 200 and 267]. Do you want to take this patronising view? I have absolutely no doubts that this kind of teaching of democratic values is useful for refugees and migrants – but maybe you also learned something along the way? – but this is not reflected upon in the paper.

• We fully agree on this idea. We learned a lot from each other, but in this case the didactic action was carried out under the funding of a european Project. Because of that administrative issue, the researches leaded the experience and the participants as “students”. Our idea was not run the activities under a “patronising view”, in fact, in the activity one, two and three, the sample participated showing their creations: the comic of their lifes, their ceramic objects and also there was an intersting debate during the role-playing activity analysing the results of the “elections”.
• We incorporate these ideas on the epigraph “didactic proposal”

I read the tables with results somewhat differently than you (for example what can be considered as “extremely positive” outcomes), please have a look at the list of questions below with row numbers.

Results reads as results – not infused with discussion as promised in the heading. Please reflect more on what kind of activities worked, what not and why, what did the participants say during the interactions etc.

• We agree and we incorporated the discussion about the activities and the results. We did so when commenting the ítem 8 (very related to the proposal: activities 1 and 4); ítem 11 (very related to the activity 3).

Another concern is in the field of ethics. I see that “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study”. But refugees and migrants are vulnerable group, they may have been experienced a lot to voice their opinions is true manner. Can you comment on that, please?

• In terms of ethical research, in our University is mandatory to obtain, previously, the informed consent when working with people. This case was not different, we explained, through the translators all the activities and the didactic proposal, and also before implementing the first questionnaire they were informed of the research and of the fact that all the information emerged would be anonymous. All of them, accepted the participation.
• We incorporate this idea in the epigraph “Informed consent Statement”

The last major confusion that I have is with specific objectives’ names and their correspondence with the blocks of supplementary data [row 273 and forward]: (1) To discover their social links with the host society vs. The social values of the migrants regarding their adaptation to the new country – it is not exactly the same thing; (2) To analyse their perceptions of the institutions and citizen participation vs. Values concerning democracy, participation, institutions and the Constitution, (3) To compare their conceptions of the host country’s culture and values vs. Cultural values regarding the presence of Islamic religion and culture in 280 European culture. In addition to specific objective number three, where do you get Spain’s values? – I think I have heard of World Values Survey [269] but this needs to explained further and actually no comparisons are made.

• We reformulated the Specific objectives, according also to another reviewer. They are now at the end of the epigraph “Introduction” and easier to be understood. S.O. 1 change into “To identify social links”, S.O. 2 To analyse the perceptions and S.O. 3 To compare their conceptions about the host country’s culture”
• In the last case, the comparison is carried out between the pre-test and the post-test, so we evaluated the previous knowledge they already had about characterstics of Spanish culture to the later knowledge they acquired through the activities. In this case, the target was not to compare to those of World Value Survey. We adapted some questions of WVS to our questionnaire because, World Value Survey is also participating as partner in the same Project that funded the study. We incorporated also this explanation when talking about WVS in the epigraph “Instrument and procedure”.

Minor issues.

Abstract – loose the numbers (1), (2) etc.

• Done

[Row 13] Hyphenate pretest, posttest → pre-test and post-test, also in the remainder of the paper, if it is not against the tradition.

• Done

1. Introduction

The notion of Heritage Education [row 47] gave arouse the concept of Heritage Education [52] – seems tautological.

[52] The word ‘arouse’ is used twice, in the beginning of the line and at the end.

[55] Maybe if you have a Spanish acronym OEPE you could spell it out, too.

• Changes done

2. Materials and Methods

Specific objectives (S.O.) written like that seem weird, is it customary in sociology? You refer back to them but still mention the title/content of the Specific Objective – thus is the shorthand necessary?

• We reformulated the specifi objectives

[130] What do you mean by ‘far-reaching’ here?

• The Project is carried out in 6 different countries, not just in Spain, although partner and context had designed its own materials, tools and activities. The European Comission funded the whole Project.

[164] Not sure how relevant it is to spell out CEPAIM is as it is explained, what it does.

• They collaborated in the Project and their presence was very necessary to develope the activities.

[176–177] “the border area was pacified” – how? Currently writing this review in Spain but my knowledge of the history of the country is apparently lacking.

• Between 1243 (Alcaraz agreement to incorporate the muslim kingdom of Murcia to Castile) and 1492 the kingdom of Murcia was the border of Castile and Granada, what provoked a lot of incursions from both sides to fight and steal. It was an unsecure area until the conquest of Granada and its incorporation to Castile. After 1492 there were no border and no violence.
• According to another reviewer we cancelled this information about the history of Totana, because it was no much relevant to understand the teaching process.

[189] Spaces before and after the titles are different, compare to [126, 263].

• Change done

Majority of the participants were Muslim. The need to assimilate (– this somehow reads as a negative thing) to democratic values [193] – are all of the refugees and migrants from Muslim non-democratic countries?

• No, being muslim is not a negative thing at all. In fact, the activities were carried out in a momento when all the refugees receiving protection from CEPAIM Foundation were muslim, but that is not the most usual. Usually there are migrants coming from Latin America or Eastern Europe (for example now). We just adapted the activities to the type of participants we had as it’s explained in “context and participants”.
• Also in “context and participants” is explained that all the countries were suffering violent opression, in the case of Afghanistan because of religious issues, but in the cases of Guinea Konakri, Mali and Mauritane there are different violent conflicts. In all of them there are no democratic systems, The only case with a democratic system is Morocco, but, as we explained in the paper the 2 participants came from the RIF region, a pro-independentist region where political repression is much present.

[235] Argaric – I would claim that this term needs a short explanation.

• Done

[268 and onwards] Was the questionnaire done orally? English in this paragraph could be better.

• Yes, was carried out orally as the participants were not capable to write in Spanish.

[292] “1 Authors’ own elaboration” – is this necessary? Also in other cases.

• It is just to clarify the origin of the information contained in all the tables

[296] This sentence’s meaning has been conveyed before.

• Done

[297 and onwards] In the second phase the four activities – were these on consecutive days or also days apart? Were the 15 participants always together? How big was the accompanying entourage?

• Yes, the activities were implemented in two consecutive days. Yes the participants share apartments in Totana funded by the CEPAIM Foundation. We incorporate this explanation in “context and participants”

[301] SPSS and its version has been mentioned before (without the IBM part) – maybe once would suffice? Especially when the only one place where SPSS was used is for two rows in the table 1. Tables 2–4 are just percentages.

• The SPSS package was used in the complete analysis, even de frequence and percentage analysis was carried out under SPSS (all the tables and figures from SPSS are in the supplementary material)

3. Results and discussion – Discussion with a capital letter?

• Done

[308–313] The items mentioned in the text and in table 2 do not coincide entirely…

• Mostly coinciding, but sometimes, just to make more fluent the reading, we decide not to repeat the same words. Eventhough, they are all numbered, both in the tables and in the text.

[318] “extremely positive” – only in one point, really. Knowledge of Spanish (item 6) ‘No’ has increased, that they have lost the connection (item 8) to the country of origin completely, adapt to Spain (item 9) has dropped (table 2).

• We further the explanation for ítem 6

[319–320] Is teaching Spanish really neglected in formal education?!

• It is neglected in terms of the education of migrants and refugees. Sometimes, formal education don’t pay attention to such an important matter for newcomers.

[324–325] What was the time span between pre- and post-test?

• 3 weeks. We incorporate this explanatio in the epigraph “teaching proposal”

[430] “albeit only slightly” – I don’t think that over 14% is too bad result.

• We agree and leave just that is a “positive result”.

[433] “the percentage fell by 14.3%” – it has risen from 0%. I think the expected outcome should be that the cultures are not so different after teaching Islamic part of Spanish culture but now they perceive their original culture more different?

• No, previously, 100% of participants thought that their culture was very different from the culture of Spain. In the post-test just 85.7% think the same. So there is a new 14.3% of participants that, thanks to the activities, now think the both cultures have some similarities.
• We reformulate the sentences because it was not very clear.

[447] 42.9% is the share of people who in post-test don’t know whether Islamic part of Spanish culture – increasing from 0%! How this can be positive outcome of the teaching (in the table 4)?

• No, it’s the opposite idea. In the pre-test 33.3% of the participants agree that islamic arte was present in Spanish culture. And 66.7% disagree on that. In the post-test, 42.9% of participants think that islamic culture is also present in Spain, so there is an important grow (from 33.3 to 42.9 %).

[456] “show similar results” – similar but slightly dropped – maybe the number of respondents was smaller? Also, if they don’t know the constituents to Spanish culture (14.3%) after the activities – how can you evaluate the project succeeded?

• The results were positive in terms of progression of knowledge. We evidenced an increase in contents like “elections and participation” (item11), in “Spanish Constitution” (ítem 10) and also in contents like Spanish cultural heritage, where the participants did not know that the islamic art was present in south Spain, and after the didactic proposal, there was an increase in this sense (ítems 12c and 12d).
• In terms of democratic values, it was no the target of the proposal to change their personal values, but we can evidence a change of attitude in ítem 8, so the use of cultural heritage encourage their sense of identification to the host country and being part of the new community.

4. Conclusions – the first half reads like a summary not deductions from the so to say social experiment.

• We agree, the idea was tu put in context all the conclusion, but maybe is too repetitive, so we reduce this part.

[478] Not social values of the migrants but links to the host society – this is not the same thing.

• We fully agree and we reformulated the idea.

The last paragraph could tackle the issue of language (or social values apart of democracy) as well.

• We agree. We added a last paragraph to also comment limitations and prospectives for the future.

Good luck!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The new version improves the initial one and clarifies some doubts.

It is not possible to remedy one of the limitations that had been pointed out in the first evaluation report: having resorted to a statistical analysis with such a small sample (n=15). However, the authors now assume this limitation and express it explicitly. This is very honest and revalues the conclusions. Information. The paper provides original and interesting information in the field of non-formal education. I think the new version now meets the standards required for publication in Sustainability.

Author Response

• Thank you for your revision. We trully think that helps us to improve and clarify some elements of the research that, maybe, will help other academics to understand such difficult investigations outside the academia.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The clarity of the paper has been slightly improved but no major changes were made. 

The project report may present percentages calculated based on 14-15 participants but in academic journal this is not good. 

I would still incorporate things from supplementary material to the main text as this is electronic journal and no extra fees will be taken. 

Also supplementary has been updated but it is all in Spanish. If you would like that something similar could be repeated elsewhere, English version is better. 

Include the explanation about the connection to sustainability in the paper. 

Add your answer to reviewer 2 in the paper about women's responding orally to the translator could influence the responses.  

Author Response

Answer to reviewer 3:

The clarity of the paper has been slightly improved but no major changes were made. The project report may present percentages calculated based on 14-15 participants but in academic journal this is not good. 

• We agree that is a limitation as a quantitative study directed to an academic journal, where usually researchers managed bigger samples. In our case, the simple is small because of the characteristics of the program where we worked outside our institution involving a foundation, newcomers migrants and solicitant of international refugee status.
• The necessity of use a quantitative analysis came imposed and it is due to the intellectual outputs of the Project that funds the study (it’s an Erasmus+ KA2 project where we had present quantitative data of evaluating our programs and didactic proposals): the goal of the Project is to evaluate and grade the changes and progression of knowledge using different elements related to cultural heritage.
• We incorporate this limitation in the epigraph of “research procedure” (lines 302-308)

I would still incorporate things from supplementary material to the main text as this is electronic journal and no extra fees will be taken. Also supplementary has been updated but it is all in Spanish. If you would like that something similar could be repeated elsewhere, English version is better. 

• The complete didactic unit was designed in spanish because it had to be mandatory, by the agreement between our University and the foundation, delivered to the CEPAIM Foundation that we were working with.
• Obviously, although the idea of the experience could be replicated in other parts, the activities are focused on Murcia’s cultural heritage and are based on specific museums, monuments and archeological sites in the Region of Murcia (Museum of Santa Clara, La Almoloya, La Santa de Totana, Murcia’s catedral, Museum of San Juan de Dios, etc.). The use of these concrete activities and heritage elements is not replicated.
• We added this explanation in the epigrahp “Teaching proposal” (lines 210-214)

Include the explanation about the connection to sustainability in the paper. 

• We added an explanation of the sustainable preservation of the cultural heritage through the use of it in teaching and learning processess. (lines 500-503).

Add your answer to reviewer 2 in the paper about women's responding orally to the translator could influence the responses.

• Added this explanation “Analysing the results in relation to the gender of the participants, the study did not identify any difference between men and women. As hypothesis, we believe that the fact of responding orally to the translators (both men) could influenced the responses of the four women.” (lines 334-337)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx