When Terror Strikes: The 2015 Paris Attacks in Religious Education Classrooms in Norway

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting contribution using framing theory on the Paris attacks in classes. It has significance for more general topics and is value for teachers and teacher educators. 

Some small comments for consideration: 

Part 2 is small and divided in three. Could this part be reorganized. For example - the context part can be moved to the next section which is about the teachers but starts with the attack. 

83: Quartermaine should be spelled with an e at the end

338: "this is not to be preferred" - It is not very clear what you mean. 

and lastly - not everything is a frame. Framing can be seen as a bit frozen in the discussion. When is a statement opening for new frames for understanding?

Author Response

Thank you for the review. 

I have corrected the spelling errors. 

Concerning part 2, I agree that it might be structured in another way. However, in order to avoid restructuring the article too much, I propose to keep it in its present form.

The question about frames is certainly relevant and I will consider it further when developing this line of research. Frames might be a too static and even unprecise term, when used to cover a wide range of statements. I did not take this comment as something that was necessary to correct in the article, so I have not adressed it. It is, however, a constructive and valid point for further consideration.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is interesting, well written and transparent. It presents a particularly interesting material, since the events traced in the classroom is a real time event (at the time). This makes the results more interesting than their one-case appearance could suggest. The writer do not claim too much based on the data presented, but leaves the reader with much food for thought.

In addition to this overall very positive judgement, there is one element this reviewer would like to comment on. The research question focuses on how the Paris attack are addressed, with focus on the 'pedagogical' and the 'lessons in themselves'. There is a declared focus on the 'pedagogical' that can be developed. In reality there is little discussion about pedagogy, e.g. in comparison with discussion about media. This may have to do with the interest or competence of the author. The teachers are seen as transforming 'the event into a pedagogical issue' (448), which is seen as a 'key task' and linked to 'the particular subject' (450). The final part of the article hints that the 'pedagogical framing' may restrict students from engaging with 'issues in a way they find relevant' (465). This appropriate observation/analysis is locating the case reported in the very center of  educational thought and it would have been interesting to reflect a little more, exactly at this point. One way of approaching this could be to make use of the term 'framing' in light of educational theory, e.g. by Basil Bernstein who writes about 'classification and framing of educational knowledge'.   

Author Response

Thank you for the review.

I have not made any alterations to the article based on this review. However, I do welcome and appretiate the comment. There is certainly room for delving deeper into pedagogy here, and it might also be that a better term for the present article would be 'didactics', at least the way it is being used in my national context. I do, however, hope to develop this further to include more educational theory. So the comment and suggested reading is useful. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors need to take into account the following considerations:

-Introduction: a theoretical justification for the importance of research is missing.

- Research design: A greater internal structure of the article is needed- Including the methodology, sample, instruments and results sections

- Results: you can improve your explanation

- The discussion section is missing

-Conclusions: this section must be rewritten. Specifying the ideas obtained from the research

Author Response

Thank you for the review. 

I take the suggestions offered to be mainly formal in nature, concerning the structure of the article. As such, I lean on the other reviews and propose to keep the main structure of the article. I will still comment on the points, though.

I do believe I have provided a theoretical justification for the importance of the research, by contextualizing it both inside the discussions about controversial issues and about terrorism in RE. 

I chose not to include too much information about the research design, as it contains a very limited data set from a qualitative case study. I thus mainly chose to give background for what sort of data was analysed. However, I have now included a footnote for clarification and included a reference to a publication where the methodological aspects of the case study is discussed in detail.

Although I agree that my explanations could be better, the comment is so general that it is difficult to accommodate. Based on the other reviews, I hope the quality of the explanations is sufficient for publication. 

There is no separate section named discussion. However, section 4 is primarily dedicated to discussing the material. 

I have included another paragraph about the unease of the teachers in the conclusion. The ideas obtained in the research should now be sufficiently covered.

Reviewer 4 Report

My comments are in the attached document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for a thorough review. I found it very constructive and it gave interesting perspectives on the material.

In accordance with the suggestions in the review, I have expanded the conclusion with a paragraph concerning how the teachers' unease with the issue also seems to restrain the discussion further.

I have corrected the language issues mentioned.

I suggest not to include more information about the teachers and the classes. However, I have highlighted the fact that all classes are in the 3rd year (grade 12) as this is the only year of secondary school they have RE. 

I will certainly think about the final questions asked. I suggest not to thematize them in the article. I will, however, consider them when developing my research on this topic further.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Please include the discussion section.

Author Response

Section 4 is the discussion section, although I chose to use another wording for the headline. The article thus include the sections asked for in the template provided by the journal, although not in the same order, and with deviations in the wording of the headlines. 

The results presented in section 3 are discussed in section 4.

I propose to keep the current headlines, unless it is a formal requirement to follow the template to the letter.