How Can Participating in a Forest Community and Citizen Science Program Support Elementary School Students’ Understanding of Socio-Ecological Systems?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. This is an interesting and important piece of work and I really enjoyed reading it. It does contain some minor spelling and grammatical errors and some references (e.g. reference 2) seem incomplete. Once these are corrected, I recommend that the paper is accepted for publication. 

Author Response

Thanks for the review. 

1. We have had several co-authors read through and corrected any spelling and grammatical errors.
2. We have carefully re-checked the references and added any missing information (yellow highlight)

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for this very interesting manuscript. I appreciated the subject and approach to learning more about how young students learn about systems. 

Overall, the paper is well written and easy to follow. I have a few recommendations that I think the authors should consider. 

There are a few editing and grammatical errors. For example, on page 1, line 33, “We report here on ae study of a CCS program” there seems to be an extra space after the word of and “ae” should be “a” and Line 394 has an extra period. 

 

On line 49-50, I would like to see the authors support this statement with a citation: “Fortunately, the third category - ignorance and misinformation - can be addressed by generating new knowledge and educating people to understand the system.” There is literature that argues knowledge isn’t enough to cause environmental behavior change e.g., Carmi, N., Arnon, S., & Orion, N. (2015). Transforming environmental knowledge into behavior: The mediating role of environmental emotions. The Journal of Environmental Education, 46(3), 183-201. It would strengthen the manuscript to acknowledge alternative perspectives while supporting their decision to focus on knowledge gain (which has been done well) 

 

I enjoyed reading about different approaches to teaching systems thinking.

 

The selected framework was appropriate for the study.

 

For Table 2, the heading in the first column needs to be changed. It currently says “Grade Level” but the authors should consider changing it to something like “activity” since the table is only about grade 4 activities.

 

On line 295, (n=14) is redundant as the sentence specifies that 14 students were observed.

 

The authors may want to check the pronouns they use for each of the students. I appreciate the gender neutral “they,” however, it is not used consistently. For example, on lines 556-565, she and they are used interchangeably, “Then Ella shared her management suggestion: “I would love to grow some trees in the less dense areas, because that could help nutrition for the forest.” Instead of stopping here, they continued with what a phenomena they observed in her trip to Maui to back up her suggestion.” 

 

Thank you for a well written paper. I think it will be an important contribution to the literature on sustainability education for young students. 

Author Response

Thanks for the comments: 

1. We have edited for grammatical errors and in this case have corrected the specific places noted.
2. We have added 2 citations to that sentence (blue highlight) and added new discussion and citations to the identified place in the manuscript to acknowledge the alternative perspectives and to support the decision to focus on knowledge gain. 
3. We have revised the Table 2 column heading from "Grade level" to Field Investigation Lesson".
4. We have deleted "(n=14)".
5. We have re-checked the whole manuscript and revised all pronouns to keep the gender-neutral norm throughout.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I read your article with great interest as I consider the issue being addressed very crucial: forests protection through children’s participation. The manuscript is well-written and describes in detail the methodology followed to answer your research questions. In my opinion, the paper will be very useful to researchers and educators who would like to investigate or/and implement participatory educational programs regarding forest science and protection.

I would like to suggest some minor changes for the improvement of the manuscript.

It would be helpful for the reader to have: a) A table of results where the main elements of the research findings will be presented, and b) clearly defined conclusions.

I wοuld like to ask the authors why they define the educational program as a citizen science program and not as an environmental education or education for sustainability program. Could you explain this more specifically? In the article you describe the characteristics of a CS program. But reading the stages of the program it could very well be an environmental education program. What elements of it place it most distinctly in the field of citizen science? For example, was the data collected by the students used by professionals? Was their participation more equal in relation to an environmental education program?

Author Response

Thanks for the review: 

1. We have added a new Table 4 in Results section to provide a summary of our findings. We have also added a new Conclusions section with our clearly defined conclusions.'
2. This is an important point for us to clarify so we thank the reviewer for this comment. We added a statement under Section 1.2 to explain the ways that EE and CCS programs are overlapping and the key differences between EE and CCS programs.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you so much for your submission on How Can Engaging Elementary School Students in Forest Community and Citizen Science Support Socio-Ecological Systems?

There are some comments for your study:

1.     In the introduction section, more explorations need to be added to introduce different international contextual background and international literature need to be considered.

2.     In the analytical framework, how can you use the system thinking to explore your research questions?

3.     In the method, what approaches are you used to sampling?

4.     The validity and reliability need to be reported in this study.

5.     How can you apply the results to explain the analytical model?

6.     It is still not clear that your contributions and limitations in this study.

7.     More recent 5 years reference need to added up to 60.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Thank you so much for your submission on How Can Engaging Elementary School Students in Forest Community and Citizen Science Support Socio-Ecological Systems?

There are some comments for your study:

1.     In the introduction section, more explorations need to be added to introduce different international contextual background and international literature need to be considered.

2.     In the analytical framework, how can you use the system thinking to explore your research questions?

3.     In the method, what approaches are you used to sampling?

4.     The validity and reliability need to be reported in this study.

5.     How can you apply the results to explain the analytical model?

6.     It is still not clear that your contributions and limitations in this study.

7.     More recent 5 years reference need to added up to 60.

Author Response

Thanks for the review. To address each comment: 

1. We have added several new citations from international scholars (green highlight) in the text and added the international perspectives in the introduction section.
2. We added a paragraph under analytical framework to explain that the analytical framework is used as coding scheme for analysis, to structure the findings in answering the research questions.
3. We have added description on how the teachers in three selected class in this study were recruited to participate in the program, and the methods for selecting focal classes and focal students, in the Methods section. 
4. We revised the data analysis section to make how we ensure validity and reliability in the paper.
5. We added a paragraph under the analytical framework to explain that the analytical model is used to structure the findings and to answer the research questions. 
6. We added a conclusion section that clarify the conclusions and contributions of the study. We also revised the limitations to make it clearer. 
7. We've added more references from within the last 5 years. We have sent an inquiry to the journal assistant editor about the total number of reference and confirmed that there's no minimal amout of reference needed. However, while addressing other reviewres' comments, we've now had 55 references in total. 

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is fine and qualified to be publised. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It is moderate. 

Author Response

Thanks for the second round of review. We appreciated the inspiring comments.