Zambian Civic Education Teacher Students in Norway for a Year—How Do They Describe Their Transformative Learning?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is clear and well written, and addresses an interesting case.

The research methods chosen are appropriate to the questions and the focus of the study, and are well executed.

It's important that the authors spend a little more effort on:

(a) explaining what 'civic education' means in this context. I assume this is a Zambian school subject area, but it is not familiar to an international audience, so a paragraph indicating which students it is taught to (age groups) and the content of the courses would be valuable.

(b) explaining the applicability and significance of this work for others. Most readers of Sustainability are neither Zambian nor Norwegian, and are not involved in civic education, teacher education or intercultural experiences. In order to justify publication, the paper must establish, explicitly, the usefulness of the findings for someone other than the authors. The conclusions currently are descriptive, but some consideration of their applicability in other contexts is crucial.

The English grammar and expression throughout is very good but not perfect: in the first sentence of the Abstract, the word should be 'encourages'. There are minor errors of this kind throughout.

I wish the authors all the best with revising the paper for publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your review report, and the following changes have been made:

Language improvement through out the document, grammer, spelling mistakes and reformulations. We have added a few sentences here and there to explain more explicit what CIVIC Education is. We have also explained the applicabilty and significance of our study for others. We argue that students from social sciences and teacher education can be important change agents for sustainable development in their communities after reframing their perspective from a year abroad. This should not be limited to only a few countries like Zambia and Norway or only within teaching programs, but at a bigger scale globally. Both authors have done language improvements and tried to follow both reviewers comments as far as we could within the time given.

Norway/Zambia, Bergersen and Muleya

Reviewer 2 Report

I have made many comments in the manuscript.  The paper is a good first draft but does need some work to maintain consistency and guide the reader through the research.  It can be improved but may need a major rewrite.  I appreciate the article and hope that it can be rewritten.   It can contribute to knowledge in the field. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your rich and very helpful review report. The following changes have been made:

Language improvement through out the document, grammer, spelling mistakes and reformulations. Proof Reading by a colleague did also help us. We have gone through all your comments and made improvement according to your recommendations.  Thanks a lot for your time to be so explicit. We have revised the methodology chapter, identified quotes by gender, age and when they were in Norway.We have also tried to present all discussion points in the introduction or theoretical part of the article. Thanks for your observations and reminder! Generally we have spent a lot of time to rewrite most of the article (as you can see). Time has been a challenge, we were invited to write in September 2019,  but we have spent all available time to improve here and there. Minor improvement might be necessary in a last round,, and we are willing to do what it takes!  We have added a few sentences here and there to explain more explicit what CIVIC Education is. (Review 1 asked us to do that) We have also explained the applicabilty and significance of our study for others. We argue that students from social sciences and teacher education can be important change agents for sustainable Development in their communities after reframing their perspective after a year abroad. This should not be limited to only a few countries like Zambia and Norway or only within teaching programs, but at a bigger scale globally.Both authors have done language improvements and tried to follow both reviewers comments as far as we can. (Review 1 asked us to be more explicit) Both Authors have improved the language and followed the guidelines and comments from both reviewers as much as we could in the limited time given.

Norway/Zambia,

Bergersen & Muleya

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the changes made in response to the reviews. My view is that this paper is now ready for publication.

Author Response

Thanks for comments. 

The article has been revised with minor improvement, basically on English spelling and formulations.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

I have made many more comments.  It is better but still needs some work. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks a lot for detailed comments and suggested improvement. We have reformulated sentences, improved our English language/spelling and specified population in the methodology and the empirical presentation. We also removed some unnecessary Words, and have done as much as we could withing the 5 days given. Thanks a lot for very constructive comments.

Bergersen and Muleya