An Approach to Prospective Primary School Teachers’ Concept of Environment and Biodiversity through their Design of Educational Itineraries: Validation of an Evaluation Rubric

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review Sustainability Article – Design of Educational Itineraries

Thank you for this opportunity to review this article. The paper is based on a study of Educational Itineraries designed by primary student teachers as part of their primary teaching degree. The context of Spain and the local forest area to support biodiversity learning of student teachers is an important focus with limited prior research studies in this area. The study provides an opportunity to look into experiences from a Spanish perspective as there are few research studies published from this country in international journals in this field. The study is well designed and provides a good understanding of some critical issues on the field of biodiversity learning for prospective teachers. There are a range of literature that are provided in the bibliography which the authors have referred to while working on this article.

There are a few suggestions to strengthen this article and increase its appeal for a global journal.

The first thing is to ensure the focus in on Environmental and Sustainability Education given the paper is aiming to be published in Sustainability journal. The Introduction discusses science teaching – this should move to sustainability education, the role and importance of biodiversity in supporting Education for Sustainability.

Another important change is to review/rewrite your research questions. They do not really reflect what you are trying to understand in this study. You key questions should be about student learning about biodiversity and assessment using the rubric.

The other major consideration is the language and structure of the article. Words like inquiry and educational principles need to be used carefully and situated in the right context. Also, terminology - For example, on page 1 there is ref to ‘outings in country’; ‘’cross-cutting’ and even the use of ‘itineraries’. The authors might consider some other globally used terms to suit a larger audience. The other option is to explain very clearly what these terms mean and how/why they are being used in the Spanish context. This is especially true of the term ‘itineraries’ – please explain these better along with the differences between educational and interpretive itineraries.

Another major consideration is providing a deeper theoretical perspective. There is some good discussion initiated about Frerre and initial movements but there needs to be much more depth in provide a framework that holds the study together.

The research is very well designed and well explained. I would recommend providing a deeper understanding of the workshops before students developed their EI’s. It will help the reader to know more about how these workshops were developed to support student teacher’s theoretical understandings, design processes as also holistic approached to biodiversity. I am also curious to know if/how the difference in cohorts – science and social science – had any impact of the study. It would be good to read some details here if the authors followed that track.

The data and discussion is well presented but is a bit confusing to understand in places. There is need to explain the first three formal categories and their significance. The authors have done a good job of explaining the other categories. I would recommend authors that authors provide another table that assigns all the categories for all the examples. The authors can then focus on discussion of what these classifications mean for each example in the discussion section. The other issue was that all examples were in the Spanish language and hard to understand. However, I do not see any way in which the authors could translate it – so this is fine as it is.

The study mentions an interdisciplinary approach but does not provide a clear section that explains this. Please add a small paragraph that showcases all the difference disciplines that connect to this EI study and how these connections were intentionally planned.

Finally, there is need for good proof reading and editing. The paper has many errors with numerous statements, words and sentences that do not flow or are left unexplained. The authors need to address this before final submission.

Overall, I have enjoyed reading this article. It is an important study that highlight the importance of biodiversity education for student teachers using more holistic approaches.

Best wishes

Author Response

Many thanks for your review, we attach the reply

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

A good contribute for understanding the possibilities and the  conceptual difficulties the students manifested in activities formation of  outdoor learning.

I think you must replicate this research in other contexts for comparing your results in order better understanding how we can improve  scientific and pedagogical  formation of future teachers. 

Author Response

Many thanks for your review, we attach the reply

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

An Approach to Prospective Primary School Teachers' Concept of Environment and Biodiversity through their Design of Educational Itineraries:  Validation of an Evaluation Rubric

General comments:

The study is about the design and evaluation of education itineraries and the concept of teaching environment and biodiversity. Perhaps it is far from my expertise as I did not find the enough contributions to be recommended for publication. Furthermore, the way the study is conducted and the results are presented is also not clear. The number of the students are mentioned but the number of teachers are not give while actually, the main users of the user study are teachers.

In addition, the research background is not clear. Are there some articles already published on a similar issue? what is the most relevant work published? What are the main issues in the existing work which has been solved in this study?

In summary, my final decision would be the rejection of the paper with encouragement of re-submission after a major revision.

Specific issues:

1. The abstract is started with word “As”, which to me does not look good for starting a new sentence and specifically in abstract. It will be better to rephrase the statement.
2. The abstract should be written in present tense instead of past tense {The present study was carried out-> The present study is carried out}
3. The introduction section should be written without subsections. It should be started with a short background of the topic followed by the most relevant work from state-of-the-art, and then introduction of your work describing the main contributions and a summary of the findings. It will be better to enlist the main contribution at the end of introduction section. To evaluate the scope of your work, it is better to introduce the limitation in the existing methods or to clearly mention your main contributions.
4. Section 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 should be a separate section “Related Work”. I also suggest to reference some related work from “Technology-enhanced learning in Primary education” such as [1].
5. Page 4 line 172: (henceforth, EI) -> (EI) {remove henceforth,}
6. Research Q.1. {an teaching -> a teaching}
7. The title of the paper, and the introduction section (page 2: line 48) are talking about teachers whereas section 2.2 has mentioned it about the students. How many teachers were there in this study? (Does the teacher reflects the authors only).
8. Section 2.2 shows that Primary School students means “Bachelor's Degree students”? I think the definition of primary education may change from country to country, but to me, the primary school student are the children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The recent study [1] also indicates this.  
9. Page 6 line 274: the names of four authors should be removed. It can be rephrased as: “… as adopted in relevant research [39].” OR use “Porlán al” instead.
10. Section 2.3 have referenced some related work [6,39,41]; is it possible to have some type of comparison with them?
11. Figure 1: Level 3 color is not visible, please change it. The font style is also bigger than that of other text of the paper.
12. Figure 2: Use vector graphics for the text over the image so that it can become readable easily.
13. The conclusion is again started with word “As”. {As has been seen, ….}. The same repeated throughout the paper.
14. Some of the references such as [10,42] are with missing information.  

• Khan, D.; Rehman, I.; Ullah, S.; Ahmad, W.; Cheng, Z.; Jabeen, G.; Kato, H. A Low-Cost Interactive Writing Board for Primary Education using Distinct Augmented Reality Markers. Sustainability2019, 11, 5720.

Author Response

Many thanks for your review, we attach the reply

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

General comments 

It is an interesting study, trying to highlight the needs of prospective teachers in organising productive and learning effective site visits and EIs. However, there are some issues that authors need to deal with before publishing. 

The vast majority of literature is in Spanish, so it not accessible to the international audience of the particular Journal. Please provide more literature in english.  

More information is needed about the conditions that prospective teachers developed the EI

The examples provided through figures and tables need to be further elaborated. 

Methodology 

• L. 232: Although I cannot read the reference made from authors regarding this point (35, it is in Spanish), my experience says that the third part/phase of the site visit / EI it is not the design but the elaboration of the data collected in the field (2nd phase) and their dissemination and communication outside the classroom (e.g. to peers, teachers, parents, etc).. Of course, based to the findings and the experiences of a site visit/EI, additional site visits / EI can be organised, but this is a new 3-step cycle process. 

• In l. 237-245 the science interest of the visited area is explained (Flora, fauna, biology etc). However, some more details (1-2 lines) are needed in order to make more explicit to the potential reader (who are not Spanish) the social and cultural  significance of the area (besides that it is a Biosphere Reserve). 

• In section 2.2. please indicate the duration of prospective teachers’ training EI and the approximate distance that they walked/toured , along with the stops they had and the activities they performed in each stop. These are crucial information regarding prospective teachers’ field training before their  work on the task to organise  their EI. 

• l. 278 : authors say that “The degree of concurrence was greater than 90%.” Please, clarify between who was that degree of concurrence: between the authors’ coding and the one made by the two other researchers, or between the two researchers who made the new analysis? It is not clear as it is now written. 

• L. 290:the Guerra reference it is not no 32 but 33

• The numbering of both levels of categories (I, II, III) and the categories themselves (I - VI) use the same Roman style and it is a bit confusing. I suggest in the one of the two to use either Arabic numbering (1,2,3,etc ) or Letters (preferably, eg, A, B, C, etc..

• Moreover, authors can use credits/points for the evaluation of prospective students EIs. For instance 1-2-3 points for the 3 levels, so in total the maximum score could be 3 X 6 = 18 points and the min 6 points. In that way a score for each EI can be calculated and means per category of interest are also possible to be calculated, providing in such a way more clear trends. In addition, non-parametric statistics can be made in order to identify differences between the two groups of participants (science and social).  

• In which form was the EI that groups of students delivered to the researchers? Only map/drawing with memos/notes on them (like those illustrated in Figures 2-6)?? Or in any format? Because examples 6 and 7 are in tables. Did they accompanied by a supportive text? How many time groups of students had to accomplish that task? Where the task was accomplished (classroom or homework)?  

Results 

In figure 1, the number of EI should be indicated (N=28). 

Although authors provide 2 examples in order to facilitate understanding about formal aspects (3.1 section), the corresponding figures (2 and 3) do not contribute. Text in the figure is in Spanish and the legend is very very abstract and not at all informative. More details are needed, e.g., provide categories’ names…

L.368 the majority of students groups, not just students because in the parenthesis no of stoups are provided and not of students, and the whole analysis is based on groups and not on students. 

l. 408 , you are referring to example 2 again? 

L.423-4, what kind of significance testing was performed ? 

Author Response

Many thanks for your review, we attach the reply

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed most of my comments, therefore I have no more comments. The paper might be accepted after ensuring that the all the references are correct in the proper style and the paper is organized according to the Journal format. The references should be double checked to ensure their completeness. A number of references are not in English so difficult for me to whether it is complete or having some errors. For example see [57].

thanks