‘Don’t Say It’s Going to Be Okay’: How International Educators Embrace Transformative Education to Support Their Students Navigating Our Global Climate Emergency

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents the results of an interesting research.
I think that authors have made a good job.
Here there are some comments that I expect can help to improve some specific issues.

1. It is suggested to check the title.
The article does not focus specifically on how teachers conceptualize sustainability.
Nor does it analyze in detail the strategies teachers use to empower students.

2. Abstract.
An abstract must be provided.

3. Introduction.
I think that a greater effort should be made in the theoretical introduction.
An article with a phenomenological focus like this should be based on a more robust review of recent research.
Currently, the article contains 22 bibliographic references. Only 13 of them date from the last 5 years.

4. Methods.
4.1. More information should be provided on the questions planned for the interviews.
How were these questions designed? What criteria were used?
4.2. Also, more information about the encoding process should be provided. Were the categories previously created or did they emerge from the interviews themselves?
Did you use any software?
4.3. More information should be provided on the development of the interviews (where and when they were conducted).
4.4. More information should be provided on the selection of participants. What criteria were used to select these participants from all the teaching staff?

5. Results.
In the description of the participants it says that "they taught or supervised the curricular programming ..."
Did you try to analyze whether there are differences in the responses of the participants who teach directly and the participants who do not?

6. Discussion.
6.1. The way to start the discussion with a literal quote from an interview and a cartoon is not appropriate.
It does not appear to be a summary of the content of the article nor is it closely related to the rest of the discussion.
6.2. It should be noted the limitations of the study and what new lines of research arise from the results obtained.
Limitations may be related to the small sample size and the specific characteristics of this sample (wich is not representative of Singaporean teachers).

7. Formal issues.
7.1. The paper is not presented in the journal's format.
7.2. The meaning of ESE must be explained the first time it appears.
7.3. Page 11. The table appears above the text and prevents its reading.
7.4. It happens the same on page 18 and table 2.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This was an enjoyable and interesting read and I thank the authors for their work. I also appreciated the writing style – there is a good flow in the line of argument and an effective use of English of high quality.

Hence, my comments are meant to help with a few typos and a couple of conceptual issues that I have notices.

Line 38: Consider using ‘positive’ instead of ‘positively’

Line 39: Have been or has been? (I think this whole paragraph could be restructured so that your argument can become clearer to the reader).

In lines 76-77, in particular there is a pseudo-paragraph break, which I have noticed in other parts of the text as well.

In some sense, it is a misnomer to characterize Section 3 as a Lit Review. Instead, the authors devote a large part of this section in explain the focus and purpose of their analysis (“we analyzed how”…” We also focused considerably on”). I do not think that this section as it is can be considered as a lit review.

In lines 556-561, it is not clear that you describe three different stances, i.e. 2 shifts in teaching styles. Perhaps if you added the word ‘then’ in line 559 the meaning would become clearer: “She then moved to encouraging…”

In your discussion, I appreciate that you tried to situate your findings vis-à-vis the literature (I think this is necessary in any academic article), but why restrict yourself to the Deep Adaptation framework? It would be useful to compare your findings with other pieces of literature as well.

I think there is something wrong with the dashes in lines 761-764

Concerning your conclusion, I think your single-paragraph would work well in a literary piece of work, but since this is an academic article perhaps you might consider to connect your conclusion with your data, i.e. what have you learned from the teachers’ responses.

Finally, I would like to add that the article is informative of many different issues, for instance I appreciated that it went all the way down to discuss the core of the ‘minimizing our ecological footprint’ vs quality of life dilemma.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I am very sorry to have to say it, but I consider that this manuscript is not publishable in an academic journal of impact. The sample is extremely short and does not allow generalization of the findings, the design of the instrument and the research is not rigorous and there is not excessive depth neither in the theoretical framework nor in the discussion of the results. I believe this manuscript should be presented to a divulgative journal, since in the academic field it lacks sufficient rigor and depth.

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate your concerns and, where possible, we have worked to address them. As this is a phenomenological study, we relied on a typical smaller sample size (i.e., up to 10 persons), as per Starks and Trinidad (2007). Also, as our research is qualitative, we agree that it does not allow generalization of our findings and we have acknowledged other limitations of our study; nonetheless, many themes emerged from participants, who shared their perspectives about how ESE is implemented at their school, what sustainability meant for them personally and professionally, and how their understanding of their students’ motivations and needs guided their pedagogical decisions. We believe readers may find their insights-along with our organization and discussion of them-valuable, and they may also provide useful ideas for designing future research studies. Finally, we have worked in our revised paper to bolster both the theoretical framework and the discussion of the results, as well as add considerable more contemporary sources to back up our claims. Thank you again for taking the time to read our paper and sharing your feedback.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

thanks

Author Response

See notes/reply to academic editor.