Belonging and Global Citizenship in a STEM University

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents the results of a study that aimed to understand the relationship between students’ sense of belonging in a STEM university and their global citizenship practices. The study used a qualitative design and semi-structured interviews with 32 university students from diverse backgrounds. Results suggest that sense of belonging is a critical component of citizenship, impacting how students develop into global citizens.

From my point of view, this is a very relevant piece of research as it addresses key concerns of universities related to their mission, highlighting practical implications for (global) citizenship education. The fact that this was conducted with STEM students, a population that is still under-researched adds to the study’s relevance. Furthermore, the study is timely as it is conducted within a challenging time when sustainability and citizenship issues are seen as imperative in political and educational agendas. Therefore, I feel that the article should be published in this special issue with some minor revisions, as suggested below.

1.Literature review: I feel that the literature review on global citizenship education is slim and could be more detailed (e.g., I missed reading some references to the work of David Killick, Martin Haigh and Vivienne Caruana).

2. Methodology

2.1. In Table 1 you mention that there were 15 female participants, 13 men and 1 non binary. Yet, in the discussion you state that all participants were women. Could you please explain this? Also, how representative was the sample?

2.2. Could you please elaborate on the type of study? Was this a qualitative descriptive study? A case study? Grounded theory (you do mention that systematic data analysis progressed over the last two years and continued through coding as a means of developing a cohesive conceptual framework from the data)?

2.3. Was the interview guide tested for face validity and content validity? What was the role of the follow-up interviews? Could the interview guide be added as an appendix?

2.4. You mention field notes were taken? What for? Which information was included in the field notes? Were they taken during and/or immediately after the interviews? How were they analysed?

2.4. What type of data analysis method did you use? Was this inductive content analysis?  

3. Results: I really enjoyed reading the results section, which was very well illustrated with quotes from students’ interviews. Still, I wished some of the students’ quotes were more integrated in the text and not joined together as lists. This occurred more frequently in section 4.1 Experiences of Belonging at Imperial.
4. Discussion and conclusion: Could you please elaborate more on the links between the results, i.e., how do students’ experiences of belonging and their experiences of community relate to their sense of global citizenship?
5. English and overall presentation: The paper is clear and written in an appropriate manner. I have made some minor corrections in the revised file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and positive feedback. I address each of your queries below in bold and have revised the manuscript with tracked changes.

1.Literature review: I feel that the literature review on global citizenship education is slim and could be more detailed (e.g., I missed reading some references to the work of David Killick, Martin Haigh and Vivienne Caruana).

Thank you for these additional recommended references. I have read the work of Killick, Haigh, and Caruana and cited them in the manuscript (see: literature review and discussion sections).  

1. Methodology

2.1. In Table 1 you mention that there were 15 female participants, 13 men and 1 non binary. Yet, in the discussion you state that all participants were women. Could you please explain this? Also, how representative was the sample?

Apologies for the confusion. The reported numbers are correct. In the discussion, I refer to to the gender-specific issues and the women participants in this study that felt they had to work harder to prove that they belong in the STEM institution. I have clarified this in both section 4.3.1 Gender equality and the discussion section.

When recruiting participants, we used a purposive sampling strategy, and aimed for a diverse range of experiences to be brought forward by the students who volunteered to interview. 

2.2. Could you please elaborate on the type of study? Was this a qualitative descriptive study? A case study? Grounded theory (you do mention that systematic data analysis progressed over the last two years and continued through coding as a means of developing a cohesive conceptual framework from the data)?

This study used a phenomenological approach to understand meaning-making of lived experiences; in the case of this research, we were interested in participants’ meaning-making of their experiences as university students at a STEM university. Data was analyzed using a thematic analysis approach (see: Braun & Clarke).

 

2.3. Was the interview guide tested for face validity and content validity? What was the role of the follow-up interviews? Could the interview guide be added as an appendix?

The interview guide was not formally tested for face validity and content validity. The items were primarily taken or adapted from current measures and covered themes identified from earlier qualitative work investigating citizenship and belonging.

This research is part of an active research program where there is still ongoing data collection and analysis, and preparation of manuscripts for publication. We will publish the full protocol alongside our final publication. As this is an active research project, we are holding off on publishing the full interview guide until the research project is complete. Several questions from the interview guide are presented in the methodology section of the paper.

2.4. You mention field notes were taken? What for? Which information was included in the field notes? Were they taken during and/or immediately after the interviews? How were they analysed?

Field notes were taken during the interview to make note of participants’ answers to the interview questions and to mark any themes or comments that would be interesting to come back to later in the interview and/or in a follow-up interview. The field notes were kept as reference notes and only the transcripts were formally analysed using NVivo. The methodology section has been updated for clarity.

2.4. What type of data analysis method did you use? Was this inductive content analysis?  

Thematic analysis was used. First, broad themes were identified in the data (belonging, community, issues of global citizenship), then codes were developed to better understand the sub-themes. This detail is now written in the manuscript (3.2.2 Data Analysis).   

1. Results: I really enjoyed reading the results section, which was very well illustrated with quotes from students’ interviews. Still, I wished some of the students’ quotes were more integrated in the text and not joined together as lists. This occurred more frequently in section 4.1 Experiences of Belonging at Imperial.

 

Thank you for this feedback. Student voice is central to this research, and initially the quotes were been presented as standalone text to draw the reader’s attention to them. I have attempted to better integrate more of the quotes into the body of the manuscript and have selected a remaining few poignant quotes as standalone text.

 

1. Discussion and conclusion: Could you please elaborate more on the links between the results, i.e., how do students’ experiences of belonging and their experiences of community relate to their sense of global citizenship?

 

The theoretical framework upon which the study is based is that belonging is both a component of and type of citizenship. In this regard, students’ lack of belonging (feelings of exclusion or marginalization) are reflected in the kinds of issues that they engage with inside and outside of the university. For example, students like Participant 13, who experienced anti-Asian racism for the first time, became more interested in issues of racism elsewhere and the Black Lives Matter movement. Furthermore, women and nonbinary students felt a lower sense of belonging because they constantly have to prove themselves to their male peers and teaching staff, and are more passionate about issues of gender equality.

 

1. English and overall presentation: The paper is clear and written in an appropriate manner. I have made some minor corrections in the revised file.

 

Thank you for this feedback. Thank you also for catching the typographical errors, which I have now corrected in the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author/Authors;

I reviewed the article titled "Belonging and Global Citizenship in a STEM University". Interesting study; I think it will contribute to the literature.

My minor revisions suggestions to the author/s are;

1) To check the up-to-dateness of the references

2) Using more references especially in the analysis part of  in-depth interviews. So that the literature and analysis will be more integrated.

3) Improvement on the conclusion part.

Good luck for the revisions; and congratulations for this interesting and well organized article.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your feedback. I address each of your queries below in bold and have revised the manuscript with tracked changes.

My minor revisions suggestions to the author/s are;

• To check the up-to-dateness of the references

The references cited are the most commonly referenced literature in the field of studying sense of belonging. I have added additional recent citations to the literature review section on global citizenship education.

• Using more references especially in the analysis part of  in-depth interviews. So that the literature and analysis will be more integrated.

Thank you for your feedback. I present the findings from the interviews in the Results section, and provide further analysis in the discussion section, which I have revised to make links to the literature more clear.

• Improvement on the conclusion part.

As the reviewer did not specifically note particular additions, I have attempted to revise the primary findings to be more clearly articulated in the manuscript (see final 2 paragraphs).

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.