Critical Thinking (Dis)Positions in Education for Sustainable Development—A Positioning Theory Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is very well written overall and has a coherent structure. The topic is relevant in terms of identifying an area of interest and contextually important. It would probably be necessary to argue a bit more why investigating it from a qualitative perspective is an appropriate way to approach this phenomenon. In terms of limitations, it would be important to look forward to future work to further investigate this phenomenon. 

Author Response

I thank both reviewers for their comments, which helped to improve the article. Please find below the response to each of the issues raised by the two reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This submission attempts to make connections between Critical Thinking and Education for Sustainable Development through teachers’ discourse filtered through positioning theory, with a special emphasis on the use of pronouns as indicators of “otherness.”  Initially, I found the connections tenuous.  Over time, those connections raised more questions than answers. In this reviewer’s opinion:

PREMISE

• The author of this article defines terms (ESD, CT, PT) but rarely connects them

• Even with various vague references to such a connection, the author’s definition of ESD (which focuses mostly on environmental issues…and the need for critical thinking to support some notion of civic engagement, is a stretch at best. 

• The author raises issues in contemporary society as  “a threatened globe” and “the need to develop pathways to sustainability;” however, the most important concept (and, again, the connective tissue that might bind this manuscript together) is CriThiSE. The acronym is listed 7 times throughout this document and the survey/semi-structured interviews were done under their auspices, but this reviewer does not see what CriThiSE’s own research connections are, even though they were integrated in, or supervised, the study itself.

• The use of pronouns and the concept of “otherness” may be interesting, but can be understood only within the context of culture, context, teaching environment personal predilections.  This might be especially true when the “egalitarian” orientation of Norway is contrasted against some level of resistance to climate action because to do so might threaten one’s way of life…a sentiment that could be implicit or (and I don’t know this) explicit.

• Active resistance to CT in classrooms may be possible through a reference to pronouns, but that evidence feels thin.  But what about the community surrounding the teacher?  School culture?  Leadership? I don’t know because I don’t get a clear sense of the questions asked.

• One question that SHOULD have been asked involved soliciting teachers’ opinions about the connection between ESD and critical thinking (“Do you see a connection between ESD and CT?  If so, what connections?  If not, why are they separate concepts?”). Instead, the researcher asks questions about separate components and then attempts to draw conclusions from it.

• There is, however, a large body of evidence that makes a connection between CT and civic engagement or CT and ESD.

EXECUTION

• This reviewer sees no connection between the example of a TV Campaign/Auction telethon and relevant data that can be derived from it.

• While one can agree with the author that dispositions are not easily measured, where is the evidence connecting teacher dispositions in Europe with student capacity in developing CT?  Making curriculum changes or changes in school culture?

• Figure 1 (pg. 4) does not add to the reader’s understanding of the study or methodology

• The use of Implicatory Denial is a stretch. I wouldn’t necessarily characterize skiers as “turning blind eyes to weather patterns as potentially connected to global warming.”

• Critical Discourse Analysis is not reduced to the use of pronouns as indicators of orientation. It must be grounded in a reasonable sample size and consider both contextual and acontextual factors.  Similarly, solid research points to the intersection of Positioning theory and Critical Discourse Analysis.  For example, see: “Positioning Theory and Discourse Analysis: Some Tools for Social Interaction Analysis” (Triado, F., and Gálvez, A, 2008—https://www.jstor.org/stable/20762264).

• So, too, can analysis of CDA be strengthened through its application to surveys (in this case 388) that may provide a degree of validity, given their immunity from peer-pressure. One would think that CDA would be invaluable in the comparison between the survey and the interviews.

METHODOLOGY

The author (and CriThiSE colleagues, I assume) surveyed 388 respondents, leading to 34 interviews consolidated into 3 schools, from which (through opportunity sampling) 3 teachers were chosen each representing a subject. This approach is problematic for the following reasons:

• To conclude from three teachers any findings derived from “speech acts” seems implausible

• The heavy quotation from one teacher (referencing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) seems to occlude, in an unbalanced way, responses from other teachers. 

• Without seeing the general outline of interview questions OR the survey, it is hard to make sense of the responses, particularly because the sample size was so small

• It is hard to imagine the efficacy of the semi-structured interviews over findings that might be derived from a semantic analysis of the independent (and therefore minimally influenced) survey involving 100x more people than the interviews.

• There is no accounting for influences on the answers: peers, the fact that the average tenure of teachers in the profession is 14 years (and may impact the capacity to change)

• While all teachers surveyed teach all subjects, there is nothing about how the orientation to the subject may lend itself more to CT or ESD thinking.

LIMITATIONS

They represent significant challenges: 

 

• The following sentence is unclear and leans on being contradictory: “It should be noted that this study does not include a 475 classroom situation, since teachers were asked to point out CT tasks/examples explored 476 in the classroom and while doing this, giving their own opinion.” 

• The cultural norms influencing the choice of pronouns tend to elicit the researcher’s own uncertainty and undermine any conclusions drawn from CDA.

1. Incomplete Abstract

2. Spelling error on pg. 10.  Should be extent rather than extend

Author Response

I thank both reviewers for their comments, which helped to improve the article. Please find below the response to each of the issues raised by the two reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I sent an extensive review earlier: https://bit.ly/CT-dispositions.  I have reviewed the updated article again.  Conclusions below. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf