Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda—Survey on Awareness, Knowledge and Attitudes of Italian Teachers of Public Mandatory Schools, 2021

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript entitled "Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda - Survey on 2 awareness, knowledge and attitudes of Italian teachers of pub-3 lic mandatory schools, 2021".

Your topic is very relevant for Sustainability. However, in current version the theoretical bacground is not described transparent enough. I hope that the authors will find my comments helpful in revising and further developing their paper.

Theoretical background

The article is missing theoretical part. I propose to add an overview section on the sustainable development (SD) and their goals. Besides, it is necessary to focus on SD in the context of education. This will justify the focus on public mandatory schools (this is likely to be based on the characteristics of the sample). There are different strands of literature that have started to look at the contribution of schools to sustainable development including in education and regional development.

Materials and Methods

On what basis was the questionnaire built. Was it based on other questionnaires or on own experiences? What was the development of the research tool like?

Research sample

Can you describe the research sample in more detail? for example: age, gender, experience in teaching

Results

The results are presented only in the form of tables. Graphs or pictures would make the entire manuscript much more attractive

Discussion

There should be more references to the latest research in sustainable development in education in the discussion. References should be significantly enriched.

Conclusions

The work also lacks emphasis on the contribution to literature and practice, which would significantly increase the scientific level of this article. This can be added to the Conclusions section.

Author Response

• The introduction has been divided into two subsections (1.1 Background and 1.2 National policy on sustainability and education) in order to provide a more focused overview on sustainable education and education for a sustainable development in the Italian educational context.
• The questionnaire was built starting from a previous experience of the authors in another study conducted in 2019 on first-year students in nine Italian Universities, shifting the focus on teachers for this study. The items were chosen considering some of the main environmental, social and economic topics in sustainability and previous institutional tools used for similar assessments, such as Sulitest. A more detailed explanation is provided in the Materials and Methods section.
• A more detailed description is now mentioned in the subsection 3.1 Sociodemographic characteristics. Some characteristics, like the number of years of experience in teaching, were not surveyed during this study, under the advice given by the academic Data Protection Officer of the University of Udine for the previous 2019 study in order to avoid potential identification of participants.
• A boxplot (Figure 1.) has been added, to present teachers’ perception of their own knowledge about SDGs and school’s commitment on SDGs thematic.
• The references list has been expanded; the new references are added in both the introduction and discussion section.
• The conclusions have been revised to better summarise the findings of the study.

Reviewer 2 Report

Some suggestions to improve the quality of the article:

• Is the sample representative (85% women, average age 49)? Same question for the teaching field. Please explain.
• There is a mismatch between what teacher could teach, and what they are really teaching, even if they have support from schools. How can the authors explain that aspect? Can they provide solutions? Otherwise it`s another statistic.
• In my opinion, only teaching theory is not enough. A question is missing: How do teachers link theory to practice? Is there such an item in the questionnaire? Because all studies show that there is poor practice in schools, at any level of education.
• What did the authors want to find after analyzing the results? That sustainability isn`t an issue in teaching? A lot of articles argue on it. Nothing new about that.
• The list of references is rather poor.

Author Response

• The sample is consistent with the European Commission’s 2019 Monitor, whose findings showed that in Italy female teachers were the majority (from 99% in pre-primary school to 63% in upper secondary school) and that 58% were older than 50 years old. This explanation has been added and referenced in the results section, subsection 3.1 Sociodemographic characteristics.
• Mismatch between what teacher could teach and what they are actually teaching: this point has been explored in the discussion section, adding a segment concerning the importance, beside the commitment offered by schools, of the attitude and behaviour showed by teachers with their own experience and vision of teaching. This actually separates the “formalised” integration of sustainability into didactic programmes from the effective promotion of sustainability by the teacher who can be seen as mentor, role model or even influencer.
• The questionnaire surveyed the general commitment of schools on some key aspects of sustainability, but did not investigate how teachers link theory into practice. This could be considered for a future dedicated survey, as the present study aimed to give a general assessment of teachers’ awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards sustainability. Along with poor practice in schools, the present study found poor knowledge as well, which may be due to a link between these two situations, and would encourage policymakers and other stakeholders to find solutions to bridge the gap in teachers’ knowledge on sustainability.
• The study aimed to assess awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards sustainability themes among teachers in the Italian scenario. Although the authors are aware that similar studies have already been conducted in other countries and in other educational contexts, such as higher education or lifelong education, this is, to our knowledge, the first Italian study giving an assessment on awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards sustainability among the teaching body in Italian mandatory school. The aim of the study was limited to present the current situation on a national level while possibly giving some inputs for future improvements.
• The list of references has been expanded to enrich both the introduction and the discussion sections.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript entitled "Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda - Survey on awareness, knowledge and attitudes of Italian teachers of public mandatory schools, 2021". Your topic is very relevant for Sustainability. I I have a few comments.

In theoretical background I suggested to add an overview section on the sustainable development (SD) and their goals which are included in the 2030 Agenda.

 I also have a question: how do you think the inclusion of teaching innovations, eg Project Based Learning, can support teachers in achieving the goals of sustainable development. Please expand this thread in your literature review.

Results - Where did you describe figure 1 (page 11) because I can't see it in the text

In the conclusions, you did not sufficiently show the contribution of your research to the literature.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your suggestions to improve the manuscript.

The revisions have been structured as follows:

• A paragraph concerning sustainable development, its definition and its background towards the introduction of the SDGs and 2030 Agenda in 2015 has been added at the beginning of the manuscript.
• A paragraph concerning the inclusion of innovative teaching methods, including Project-Based Learning, has been added in the literature review.
• In the results section, to present Figure 1 the line “The distributions of scores for teacher knowledge and school commitment are shown in Figure 1” has been added.
• The conclusions have been a little expanded to describe the contribution of this research to the existing literature.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I believe that the article is publishable in its current version.