Values-Based Education for Sustainable Development (VbESD): Introducing a Pedagogical Framework for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Using a Values-Based Education (VbE) Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article provides an interesting and potentially important contribution to the field of sustainability education by providing a practical framework for its implementation within the primary school curriculum. It would be helpful for readers if the paper was explicit about the reach of its claims, e.g. UK primary schools, primary schools beyond the UK, secondary schools in the UK/elsewhere etc.

Although the paper focus uses the term  ‘education’  to imply both the provision of knowledge, skills, values etc and the gaining of knowledge, skills, values etc it maybe useful to use the term learning at times when referring specifically to student outcomes (e.g. L 259)

The paper also needs to be restructured, to gain a stronger and more coherent narrative and it needs clear methodology and results sections. At the moment the survey, which is a significant part of this work, appears only as part of the Discussion in section 4.2.

The paper makes an attempt to clarify the numerous and confusing terminology in this area of work but does not quite manage it. Sustainability education as a generic term is fine but it is not clear what roadmap and to where and which competences ESD is supposed to relate to, e.g. is it the SDG roadmap, and the QAA or UNESCO competences? Some referencing of these would be helpful here.

It is incorrect to state that there is not a widely recognized pedagogical framework to deliver sustainability education and the authors should instead provide a critical review of the literature on this. It is also incorrect to state that “a large portion of the literature available for ESD and sustainability education is in higher education, usually at the post-secondary level”, it is likely that the authors have not searched using the various terms used to describe it (EFS/EE/ESE etc)

The contention that uptake of innovative pedagogy is slow should also be evidenced with reference to the literature and the sentence “The uptake of innovative pedagogy is slow; most current education systems do not place affective learning outcomes … should be separated. At the moment it implies that all innovative pedagogy requires affective learning. The work also contends that values based education is a subset of affective education but at times uses the terms interchangeably.  The link between sustainability education and interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary also needs to be clarified and the description of these terms strengthened with reference to the literature. At the moment it is describing multidisciplinary education. While I would agree that all sustainability education is also interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary not all interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary education is sustainability education. The authors would also be advised to read the literature relating to sustainability education as intrinsic education to inform their section 1.2.

Line 70 states that the survey was undertaken on the general public but later describes participants as stakeholders. Who was surveyed, and how they were selected and recruited needs to be clearly stated as part of a currently absent methodology section. The involvement of Nigel Cohen also needs clarifying.

Survey. Were both undertaken by each participant, if not are the results linked in the analysis?

L270 – subsection?

L296 – it is not only capacity which is a barrier to curriculum change and pedagogical innovation

Table 2 – examples are all environmental, provide a broader range of examples.

L378 – what evidence is there of this? E.g. cite references

L471 – good example provided, more examples, not just of reflection would be useful here and for other pillars.

careful proof reading needed to remove the somewhat strange English in places 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript.  We carefully revised the manuscript according to your comments. Please find the detailed responses attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted with tracked changes in the re-submitted manuscript.

Sincerely,

Ruo Xi Huang

On behalf of all authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is a good research topic and there are some comments to promote the quality of this study. For example, what is theorical model? The process of the method need more detail. What is your contributions on this study? The references need to added up to more than 60 with recent 5 years . what is value based approach? it is still not very clear and need more explains on why is sustainable for your study?

Moderate. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript.  We carefully revised the manuscript according to your and other reviewers' comments. Please find the detailed responses to your comments attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted with tracked changes in the re-submitted manuscript.

Sincerely,

Ruo Xi Huang

On behalf of all authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The text brings to the debate the importance of defining a model to scaffold sustainability in the teaching and learning process. In general, it introduces this concept as an extension in the VbE model. The lack of a framework that focuses efforts on sustainability as a value is the driving force behind this work. 

However, methodological flaws still prevent the benefits of the methodology from being appreciated.

Some references must be moved next to the source. For example, in lines 210 to 214, the reference should be placed close to "Wade found..."

Line 246, what are the "... all 15 articles" you mention?

Line 270 has 3.1. Subsection. This section needs a title and it needs also an introductory paragraph.

A link to next section paragraph is needed at the end of section 2.

An introduction to section 3 it's needed.

To give power to the use of VbE, a clear justification of the pillars must be displayed. This means that it must be show how each pillar solves a problem that was found in section 2. Maybe this could be done by extending table 2.

In line 370, you mean VbE?

Subsection 3.1 must be only about VbE because you are starting from the foundations of VbESD, that will be explained in section 3.2. And the 7 (original) pillars must be explained here. 

The need of an eighth pillar must be explained as a starting point of section 3.2. 

Lines 634 - 723 must be inside the description of the eighth pillar. It shows how this pillar is connected to everything else. And maybe this condition suggests that sustainability is not a pillar but something like a context or guiding directive. It is possible that it can be described as something bigger than a pillar. This description its important because it will show why this is a new model and not only the implementation of VbE in the sustainability context.

Discussion section is not a discussion, is the description of the general methodology. And it lacks of the description of the population.

Section Building the VbESD concept and framework has the wrong number.

Who were the stakeholders that you mention on line 780? Then you cite them in line 809 as "above-mentioned audiences" but they were mentioned. Maybe they are describe in lines 819-825? But the last lines are described as a wish so it is not clear if they participated.

Survey results are a justification of the need of the VbESD model but not of its effectiveness. The results of the SIVbESD could validate the model if the sample is made up of experts. However, SIVbESD has a lot of less participants than those that were indicated as needed by the authors (there are two values for this, one in line 828 and another one in line 1360).

Discussion should be centered in contrasting this work's results to those of other methodologies. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript.  We carefully revised the manuscript according to your and other reviewers' comments. Please find the detailed responses to your comments attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted with tracked changes in the re-submitted manuscript.

Sincerely,

Ruo Xi Huang

On behalf of all authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors:

First of all let me congratulate you on the work presented. However, I would like to make two considerations that can improve the work.

Firstly, it would be useful if you could add at least 5 more current references in terms of date.

Secondly, it would be convenient to dedicate a specific section to talk about the selection and design of the method in the work.

For the rest, I would like to reiterate my congratulations.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 4,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript.  We carefully revised the manuscript according to your and other reviewers' comments. Please find the detailed responses attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted with tracked changes in the re-submitted manuscript.

Sincerely,

Ruo Xi Huang

On behalf of all authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

It can be publised.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we are extremely grateful for your time in reviewing our paper and giving it your approval for publication. We greatly appreciate the help and feedback you provided during this review, and wish you the best in your current and future endeavours.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, thank you for making the modifications to the paper. Mainly, all of them cover the comments made before.

This work is very important and has a lot of potential. Everyone will agree that a framework like yours is needed, as surveys results state. However, the effectiveness of the framework has not being tested yet. As a research, there is no hypothesis to prove or discussion to know the limits of the framework. That would prove that you are extending the frontiers of knowledge. And you agree to this in response to comment 17 "comparisons to other models may not be feasible as VbESD has not been implemented yet (and we do not consider there to be significant value/impact in comparing preliminary interest and support for a model)."

You should seek to answer the question "what is the added value that our framework gives to students?". Without this, we only have suppositions. And to achieve this, you must implement the framework first.

This work it's on initial steps and it's not suitable for a journal publication yet.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you so much for taking the time to review our manuscript again. We have revised the manuscript according to your comments. Please find the detailed responses in the attached document and the corresponding revisions highlighted and in track changes in the re-submitted manuscript.

Sincerely,

Ruo Xi Huang

On behalf of all authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, I stand by my previous review. Without an implementation and from the perspective that this work is in initial stages (which has been admitted by you), this work is not ready to be published as a journal. I highly recommend that, in its current state, it be presented at a conference.

I reiterate that this work has a lot of potential for the future.

Given this, I copy my previous review.

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This work is very important and has a lot of potential. Everyone will agree that a framework like yours is needed, as surveys results state. However, the effectiveness of the framework has not being tested yet. As a research, there is no hypothesis to prove or discussion to know the limits of the framework. That would prove that you are extending the frontiers of knowledge. And you agree to this in response to comment 17 "comparisons to other models may not be feasible as VbESD has not been implemented yet (and we do not consider there to be significant value/impact in comparing preliminary interest and support for a model)."

You should seek to answer the question "what is the added value that our framework gives to students?". Without this, we only have suppositions. And to achieve this, you must implement the framework first.

This work it's on initial steps and it's not suitable for a journal publication yet.