Climate Change Projects and Youth Engagement: Empowerment and Contested Knowledge

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This was a refreshing read which taps into an important and - unfortunately - timely topic, namely youth empowerment (or lack thereof?) in relation to climate education. It has the potential to make a significant contribution in the literature by identifying barriers of  empowerment among young people in Greece. 

Going through the manuscript, I have tried to comment on possible areas for improvement, including some (very minor) stylistic inaccuracies in terms of word repetition or formatting. If these are against the journal's guidelines (or simply annoying) please feel free to ignore. 

What I would like to see incorporated in the manuscript however, is the following:

a) Firstly, the article taps into a very fecund sociopolitical context. Arguably, young people socialised in post-crisis ridden Greece are being called to navigate a very precarious sociopolitical terrain. Maybe the authors would consider incorporating a section where they would be briefly discussing this context? This is especially so, since - as they argue - their chosen methodologies are to a large extent context-specific. I feel that this would also be of interest to the international audience of the journal. 

b) The article seems to be concluding rather abruptly. Also, concluding with a section on the research's limitations does not do the research itself any justice. Maybe the author's would consider concluding with a 'Conclusion' section, where they would be highlighting the contributions of the research, how exactly these contributions address the knowledge gap identified earlier, and in relation to the aims of the research. The limitations section could be moved towards the end of the methodology section instead? I would have also liked to see some stronger integration of the (impressive) corpus of literature covered in the lit. review during the discussion of its findings. 

I hope that the above comments are taken in good will, as I feel they might help improve the overall quality of the manuscript. Importantly, I was very glad to see the researchers bringing European youth work into academic research. This can be a minefield of structural and institutional rigidities and for this alone they deserve all the praise they can get. 

With my warmest wishes.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

REPLY TO REVIEWER 1 

This was a refreshing read which taps into an important and - unfortunately - timely topic, namely youth empowerment (or lack thereof?) in relation to climate education. It has the potential to make a significant contribution in the literature by identifying barriers of  empowerment among young people in Greece.  

Going through the manuscript, I have tried to comment on possible areas for improvement, including some (very minor) stylistic inaccuracies in terms of word repetition or formatting. If these are against the journal's guidelines (or simply annoying) please feel free to ignore.  

What I would like to see incorporated in the manuscript however, is the following: 

1. a) Firstly, the article taps into a very fecund sociopolitical context. Arguably, young people socialised in post-crisis ridden Greece are being called to navigate a very precarious sociopolitical terrain. Maybe the authors would consider incorporating a section where they would be briefly discussing this context? This is especially so, since - as they argue - their chosen methodologies are to a large extent context-specific. I feel that this would also be of interest to the international audience of the journal.
2. b) The article seems to be concluding rather abruptly. Also, concluding with a section on the research's limitations does not do the research itself any justice. Maybe the author's would consider concluding with a 'Conclusion' section, where they would be highlighting the contributions of the research, how exactly these contributions address the knowledge gap identified earlier, and in relation to the aims of the research. The limitations section could be moved towards the end of the methodology section instead? 359-371.I would have also liked to see some stronger integration of the (impressive) corpus of literature covered in the lit. review during the discussion of its findings. 

I hope that the above comments are taken in good will, as I feel they might help improve the overall quality of the manuscript. Importantly, I was very glad to see the researchers bringing European youth work into academic research. This can be a minefield of structural and institutional rigidities and for this alone they deserve all the praise they can get. 

We would like to thank the reviewer for their positive feedback in our manuscript and their valuable recommendations to strengthen our work. Please see below our response to the reviewer’s comments. 

1. As suggested by the reviewer, we have further contextualized the study by incorporating the impacts of the financial crisis and the role of youth in the energy transition. The changes can be seen in Lines 229-236. 

1. As suggested by the reviewer, the limitations section has now been moved to the methods section and can be seen in lines 359-371.  Conclusion has been moved to lines 624-647 and made more relevant to the lit review. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Regardless of the title and original aim of the study, the fact is that the research provides little to no input on young people's views on carbon capture. This is because they understandibliy have no idea of what it is, and it means little to their daily life. Because of this, the paper refers mostly to views of young people regarding climate change, and hence, the overall focus and title of the paper should be changed. When confronted with the lack of awareness or interest of young people in CC, the researchers should try to capacitate them regarding this matter, but instead they delegated this task to museum educators, who also do not have interest or activities in the topic. Overall, the whole capacitation aproach failed, and the article merely observes that EU projects should entail a needs analysis before being approved (which they do...) and that educators should refrain from endoctrinating students regarding climate change matters (ie, nuclear power)- education is normative, if you only provide information with no argument you are not being a teacher. One could and should recur to Socratic methods of questioning and incite arguments in favor or against given premises, but the thought of an education that is not normative is a disservice. On top of that, researchers could not complete the intervention with the last visit, do not speak Greek so lack cultural awareness and the representativeness or composition of the students sample was not questioned for representativeness or diversity. Overall, the paper makes extensive litterature review that does not enage with in the data analysis and discussion, and some references are not found (Ie. Teixeira, for instance). In my view, the article does not add to research in this topic, mainly because data have no quality. 

Author Response

REPLY TO REVIEWER 2

REVIEWER 2:

We would like to thank the reviewer for their comments on our manuscript. Please see below our responses to their comments and suggestions. You can see in bold the reviewer's comments and below our response.

“Regardless of the title and original aim of the study, the fact is that the research provides little to no input on young people's views on carbon capture. This is because they understandably have no idea of what it is, and it means little to their daily life”. As suggested by another reviewer as well, we have further contextualized the paper in how the Greek government alongside the EU’s agenda is promoting decarbonization projects to address climate change and financial deficits, thus if the communities and in our case the youth, are not aware of such technologies, that can form a barrier in the decision making process. Those changes can be seen in lines 229-236.

“When confronted with the lack of awareness or interest of young people in CC, the researchers should try to capacitate them regarding this matter, but instead they delegated this task to museum educators, who also do not have interest or activities in the topic”. We are confident that our role as researchers in the project is very clearly stated in the manuscript. Due to the participatory approach of the project and as detailed in the methods, the decision of the museum educators was taken by the school and the students, rather than being a suggestion by the researchers. It is a big assumption to make that museum educators are not interested in the topic, and that is not factual.

“Overall, the whole capacitation aproach failed, and the article merely observes that EU projects should entail a needs analysis before being approved (which they do...) and that educators should refrain from endoctrinating students regarding climate change matters (ie, nuclear power)- education is normative, if you only provide information with no argument you are not being a teacher. One could and should recur to Socratic methods of questioning and incite arguments in favor or against given premises, but the thought of an education that is not normative is a disservice”. We agree with the reviewer’s position and we believe that our position in the paper concerning the role of education and the educator is clearly stated in the paper and that is why we take inspiration from Freire and Dewey and support their “model” of knowledge. Please see lines 548-599, where we argue against indoctrination. The educators at the museum are highly experienced educators, and we have added some more information in lines 323-328.

“On top of that, researchers could not complete the intervention with the last visit, do not speak Greek so lack cultural awareness and the representativeness or composition of the students sample was not questioned for representativeness or diversity”. One of the researchers is a Greek native who speaks the language, and cultural awareness was considered. We have added information concerning the use of the Greek language in lines 226 and 322. We did not ask about students' demographics, so we can’t report on diversity, other than their age and where they reside. That information is already available in the manuscript.

“Overall, the paper makes extensive literature review that does not enage with in the data analysis and discussion, and some references are not found (Ie. Teixeira, for instance). In my view, the article does not add to research in this topic, mainly because data have no quality”. We are confident in the quality of our data and this topic is rarely explored from youth’s perspectives, so we believe that our study complements existing studies in this topic. We have added a citation for the missing one about Teixeira in line 143. We have also added a conclusion section lines 638-664, borrowing some text from the discussion section and expanding with new text as can now be found in the conclusion section.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper is interesting, with a participatory approach that is an added value. However, it has some limitations, such as always working with the same group of students, which can limit contributions and the expansion of the project and data collection. The use of a language other than the mother tongue in data collection may also be a limitation to the study, which may be important to clarify in the methodological options. 
It would be pertinent to extend this study to a larger number of students, crossing different geographical contexts. Therefore, I think it is important for the authors to reflect on the limitations of the study and to frame the discussion of results and conclusions well, taking into account the students participating in data collection.  

 

Another limitation to the study and, consequently, to this publication is that the authors present the data and their discussion, demonstrating a ‘more passive role’ in relation to the session facilitator at the time of discussion, and this framework is not clear from an earlier stage of the article. It would perhaps be pertinent to clearly explain the authors' involvement in the data collection itself and their relationship with the facilitators, and from there to take a position on the limitations that occurred.

Author Response

REPLY TO REVIEWER 3 

We would like to thank the reviewer for their useful feedback and comments in our manuscript. Please see below our response to the reviewer’s comments: 

“The paper is interesting, with a participatory approach that is an added value. However, it has some limitations, such as always working with the same group of students, which can limit contributions and the expansion of the project and data collection. The use of a language other than the mother tongue in data collection may also be a limitation to the study, which may be important to clarify in the methodological options”. As noted in the manuscript, students were selected by the school based on the students’ yearlong commitment, and we have added some more information in lines 272-273. The number of students was decided by the researchers, and we have added a short explanation to that on lines 276-277. 
The use of the English language is part of our limitations section and a reasoning has been provided in lines 309-311. We have also added a clarification in lines 327 that the role-playing game was conducted in the Greek language. 

“It would be pertinent to extend this study to a larger number of students, crossing different geographical contexts. Therefore, I think it is important for the authors to reflect on the limitations of the study and to frame the discussion of results and conclusions well, taking into account the students participating in data collection”. We agree with the reviewer, and this will be the next step for this research. We have already conducted the PlayDecide game with different communities in different countries, but this is part of a separate manuscript for the future.  

“Another limitation to the study and, consequently, to this publication is that the authors present the data and their discussion, demonstrating a ‘more passive role’ in relation to the session facilitator at the time of discussion, and this framework is not clear from an earlier stage of the article. It would perhaps be pertinent to clearly explain the authors' involvement in the data collection itself and their relationship with the facilitators, and from there to take a position on the limitations that occurred”. We have added some more clarification on our role in lines 311-312. Also added some more clarification on lines 323-324 and 325-326. After the reviewer’s comments on the relationship with the facilitators and potential bias, we have added some more information on lines 376-378. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf