Inclusion of Education for Sustainable Development in Environmental Engineering. A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you authors for this contribution. I think that systematic reviews such as this one are very important. However to be published I think that this article requires significant work. There are several key points:

+It is clear from your references that you have insufficiently grounded this paper in the academic literature. There are many systematic reviews similar to this out there including some on engineering. You need to be building off of those and differentiating yourselves. What are you offering in comparison?

+To that point your analysis stays on the surface and is very descriptive. It would be more useful and a stronger contribution if you could synthesize in a deeper way. I am not sure what the lists of characteristics is bringing to the table. Are there patterns that emerged about programs. Some way to judge success? 

+English could use some work as well as things like ordering the items in the tables.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your contributions and observations. We hope this version is to your liking. We took all your comments into account. We have marked the changes made on the paper with a blue highlighter.

Tank you authors for this contribution. I think that systematic reviews such as this one are very important. However to be published I think that this article requires significant work. There are several key points:

1. +It is clear from your references that you have insufficiently grounded this paper in the academic literature. There are many systematic reviews similar to this out there including some on engineering. You need to be building off of those and differentiating yourselves. What are you offering in comparison?

Thank you very much for this observation. In this systematic review we offer a very specific look at environmental engineering. In this we emphasize critical pedagogy innovation and environmental activism. We have added new and updated study sources. We have made this differentiating aspect clear within the text.

2. +To that point your analysis stays on the surface and is very descriptive. It would be more useful and a stronger contribution if you could synthesize in a deeper way. I am not sure what the lists of characteristics is bringing to the table. Are there patterns that emerged about programs. Some way to judge success? 

We did a greater analysis and in a concrete way. We focus more on pedagogical criticism and environmental activism.

3. +English could use some work as well as things like ordering the items in the tables.

Thanks for the suggestion. We have arranged the tables and reviewed the wording. We hope it conforms to the suggestion.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article seems to be of current importance for the higher education environmental engineering development.

However, some recommendations seem to be relevant.

1. The contents might be improved through the contextualization of theoretical and empirical background (additional latest publications of 2020-2021 can be of use).

2. There might be improvements in the paper structure to make it more transparent for the readership.

2.1.  Currently, there are three RQ,  and five subsections in the Results and Discussion section.

Meanwhile, subsections 4.1. and 4.4. do not fit and RQ. If these subsections highlight a kind of unexpected results, they should be introduced and placed accordingly.

Alternatively, the list of the RQ can be enhanced to five.

2.2. It is no clear why the idea of the Discussion section appears twice, namely in section four Results and Discussion, and further as separate Section five.

2.3. It is also recommended to restructure the discussion Section and change the whole narration into subsections or separate paragraph that corresponds directly to the results and research questions.

3. Further, it might be helpful to visualize the results in subsections 4.3-4.5 as it appears in subsections 4.1. and 4.2.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your contributions and observations. We hope this version is to your liking. We took all your comments into account. We have marked the changes made on the paper with a blue highlighter.

1. The contents might be improved through the contextualization of theoretical and empirical background (additional latest publications of 2020-2021 can be of use).

Thanks for the suggestion. We accept the suggestion. We expand the methodology, results and discussion. Some bibliographic references are updated.

2. There might be improvements in the paper structure to make it more transparent for the readership.

We have tried to improve the order of the paper. We expanded the methodology to provide greater clarity.

2.1.  Currently, there are three RQ, and five subsections in the Results and Discussion section.

Meanwhile, subsections 4.1. and 4.4. do not fit and RQ. If these subsections highlight a kind of unexpected results, they should be introduced and placed accordingly.

Alternatively, the list of the RQ can be enhanced to five.

Thanks for the suggestion. We adapt the results section. Section 4 and subsections were modified 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 according to the three research questions.

2.2. It is no clear why the idea of the Discussion section appears twice, namely in section four Results and Discussion, and further as separate Section five.

Thank you very much for this observation. We have fixed the bug.

2.3. It is also recommended to restructure the discussion Section and change the whole narration into subsections or separate paragraph that corresponds directly to the results and research questions.

We have modified and restructured the section.

3. Further, it might be helpful to visualize the results in subsections 4.3-4.5 as it appears in subsections 4.1. and 4.2.

We have modified and adapted this part of the paper for a better understanding.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf