Caring for Worldviews in Early Childhood Education: Theoretical and Analytical Tool for Socially Sustainable Communities of Care

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I appreciate your manuscript. It's fascinating because it attempts to address the diversity of religions and worldviews found in ECEC in Sweden.

Few revisions are required before the manuscript is ready for publication. To begin, there is a typo in the second last paragraph of page 4, which I believe should be "add" rather than "ads". Second, I believe that each word in Bell Hooks should be capital letter.

My primary concern is with the application of the developed framework (as depicted in Figure 1) in academia and research. Could the authors please provide a brief explanation of how this framework might benefit other scholars and how they might use or implement it? This is critical, as it may have an effect on your citation.

Many thanks.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for the feedback on our manuscript. We have now gone carefully through the report. We appreciate the encouraging feedback on the importance of the article, as well as the insightful comments on improving our article. We have now carried out all the suggested corrections as follows:

You made careful notes about language - the typo in the second last paragraph of page 4 is now corrected, or rather; the sentence in question has been revised.

In addition you make a note on the capitalization of bell hook's name. However, hooks herself has intentionally not capitalized her name, so to lift forth the contents of her writing instead of herself as a person. We have added a clarifying footnote on that to the text.

Finally, you point out that it would be useful to add more clarification on the connections of the model we present into both research and implementation in ECEC everyday practice. This is now done in connection to providing practical examples of how the model applies into examining ECEC.

Thank you again for the insightful feedback. We attach the revised and also language-edited version.

Sincerely,

Magdalena Raivio, also on behalf of Ellinor Skaremyr and Arniika Kuusisto

Reviewer 2 Report

This article will make a valuable contribution to the academic debate about the need for an awareness of worldviews in all areas of education.

The authors make a powerful argument for a need to include plurality of worldviews in a holistic educational perception the child in the care and education of the youngest children. It will be of interest to an international audience, and accessible as the Swedish context is clearly explained. It is well-structured, and coherent. The abstract reflects the structure and content of the article, and the conclusion draws together the arguments.    

• One minor point – Replace ‘hook’ with Hook. For some reason references in text to the work of Hook (1994, 1995) are without capitalisation.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for the feedback on our manuscript. We have now gone carefully through the report. We appreciate the encouraging feedback on the importance of the article, as well as the comment on improving our article regarding the capitalization of bell hook's name.

However, hooks herself has intentionally not capitalized her name, so to lift forth the contents of her writing instead of herself as a person. We have added a clarifying footnote on that to the text.

Thank you again for the encouraging feedback.

Sincerely,

Magdalena Raivio, also on behalf of Ellinor Skaremyr and Arniika Kuusisto

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, the paper seems very interesting, and the postmodernist methodologies applied make it challenging. Also, promoting social sustainability in pre-school education is rare that gives to the paper added value. However, there is need to make some issues more explicit and provide additional information. This refers to the issue of the children’s religion background and the claim that the great majority of children studied come from a non-Lutheran background, that is the official one in Sweden, leads to the conclusion that the Swedish society has been culturally colonized by the influx of migrants and refugees. This must be brough up and discussed in the paper. I have also noticed some missing gaps in terms of the Swedish literature in the field. As a start I recommend the following:

Borg, F.; Gericke, N. Local and Global Aspects: Teaching Social Sustainability in Swedish Preschools. Sustainability 2021, 13, 3838. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073838

Engdahl, I., Pramling Samuelsson, I., Ärlemalm-Hagsér, E. (2021). Swedish Teachers in the Process of Implementing Education for Sustainability in Early Childhood Education. New Ideas in Child and Educational Psychology, 1 (1), 3-23. DOI: 10.11621/nicep.2021.0101

Farhana Borg & Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson (2022): Preschool children’s agency in education for sustainability: the case of Sweden, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, DOI:10.1080/1350293X.2022.2026439 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2022.2026439

As pointed in the paper, in sustainability research, environmental aspects have been prioritized, whereas social aspects, such as children’s participation, their agency, social justice, etc have received little attention. It would be advised to explore the concept of sustainability justice DOI: 10.22381/KC5220177 and add in the literature review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you for the feedback on our manuscript. We have now gone carefully through your report. We appreciate the encouraging feedback on the importance of the article, as well as the insightful comments on improving our article. We have now carried out the suggested corrections as follows:

You point into very useful further literature in the field. We have now added all the suggested references and want to express our thanks for these useful insights, which indeed both connect the paper further into the already on-going discussions and also add to the reflective surfaces for examining the here presented line of thought.

Furthermore, you made a note about the background of Swedish children, which we had clearly expressed too vaguely in the introductory part of the paper where we are setting the scene for examining the topic. This was a very important point as we completely agree with you, but had simply formulated the description unclear. Now this section is revised, too, for improved clarity.

Finally, we much appreciate your suggestion regarding linking our work to the area of sustainability justice. We found the article by Makrakis (2017) to be very useful. This is clearly an important area for further reading for us, in relation to future studies.

Thank you again for the insightful feedback.

Sincerely,

Magdalena Raivio, also on behalf of Ellinor Skaremyr and Arniika Kuusisto