Review Reports

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

see attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

Thank you for your recommendations for increasing the quality of the article. We tried to edit our paper in accordance with your recommendations and suggestions.

Yours Sincerely...

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall it is a good paper and well written - very thoughtful in its analysis  of the various Delphi studies - I found it very easy to follow.

I do wonder how you will now use this information and how you intend disseminating it - also, who will receive the recommendations?  It is apparent that these should be informing policy changes to education curriculum - just not clear how they will become part of the decision-making process? You say what should happen based on the research but how will you give effect to this

in the section 'Historical Development of Environmental Literacy' : I would have liked to see more key points from each programme - the timeline of developments over time is descriptive (which is fine),  but some key goals and or outcomes of each (or at least some of the key ones) would add to the information given and provide a reason for the inclusion into the "list".  

needs some minor corrections: p. 5, line 207 - full-stop in the text should be removed

p. 16, lines 395-399: you ist the items where no conclusions were reached - I would prefer if these were either in parentheses or italicised so that they are apparent form the rest of the text. At the moment you say, '...no consensus on the items of watch tv programmes...' - at the moment it is written ungrammatically - you need to clearly mark out the items. In lines 411-412 you do this clearly so perhaps use this method in the earlier lines

p. 16, line 406 - remove the 'not' and replace with 'no'

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,

Thank you for your recommendations for increasing the quality of the article. We tried to edit our paper in accordance with your recommendations and suggestions.

Yours Sincerely...

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revision has improved the manuscript, although keeping a presentation that favours perceptions of consensus among the experts. It is regrettable that no information is given how the findings depend on (a) the composition of the expert group and (b) the grouping of the Likert-scale terms into categories ‘consensus’, ‘neutral’, ‘no-consensus’.

Having added the counts in tables 3 to 11 allows to appreciate the consensus of the experts without considering percentages and statistical parameters which may be questionable in view of the sample size and composition.

The table 2 still leads to confusion. The wording ‘and’ seems to indicate a logical condition (‘AND’). However, it seems – studying tables 3 to 11 - that it is meant: (i) ‘consensus is reached’ if each of the three criteria is met (= logical ‘AND’); (ii) on the other side, ‘consensus is not reached’ if one of the criteria is not met.  Furthermore, the frequency criteria for ‘non-consensus’ is not applied.The manuscript could benefit from clarifying the meaning of table 2 and how it has been used, although a reader may skip over it and turn to tables 3 to 11.

Author Response

Dear Review,

Thank you very much for your recommendations. The manuscript is revised. Please see my response in the attached file.

Yours Sincerely...

Author Response File: Author Response.docx