Environmental Stewardship Education in Tuvalu Part 2: Insights into Curriculum Integration and Classroom Realities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This second article, focused only to the examination of environmental stewardship education in the Tuvaluan school system, appears clear, coherent, and well documented, even if affected by some repetitions (see commented file) and overburdened by long tables, that could be better fitted in appendices.

A number of remarks can be found in the commented manuscript file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear all

Unfortunately, this manuscript is not scientific. Please re-think the whole approach. I see that Sustainability has only research articles or review articles. This article cannot be published to either categories.

I recommend that you take the part 1 out from the last paper's title because this is definitely not a part 2 for that research.

Perhaps you could re-write this manuscript to a perspective or entry article and publish it in the Education Sciences or Encyclopedia journals.

I do not recommend trying to push this in to a scientific article category in the future. The methods, RQ and reporting are not aligned at all. The theoretical framework is not based on scientific literature. And many other challenges that are not my job (reviewer) to point out. Please discuss with editors for the future orientation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is an important contribution to environmental education. There is a huge gap between policy and what happens in real-contexts like schools. I think this article helps to shine a light on this gap, making the need for education reform more important. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please negotiate with editor.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have changed a paper type from review/article to commentary.

Therefore, I am fine with the publication in the present format.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Exhaustive review of international, regional and national documents addressing environmental stewardship-related policy and their relationship with formal school education in Tuvalu.

Tuvalu, a UN member state, is a very small developing island state of the Pacific region.

Tuvalian government appears to have incorporated into its legislation the documents on environmental and biodiversity protection, on disaster risk management, however, education policy and teaching practices in this country do not appear to be aligned with the declared principles.

The authors present a discussion on environmental stewardship education and on similar subjects (environmental education, sustainability education, …) followed by an in-depth examination of the relevant documents addressing the study topic and by a description of the status of environmental stewardship education in Tuvalu education system.

The research questions are explored in great detail, and the results are clearly described and discussed, as well as the recommendations for improving the teaching of the addressed subjects starting from early school age.

The writing appears clear and appropriate, although a bit too long, sometimes repetitive and overburdened by acronyms not always explained when first appearing in the text and offers an interesting insight into environmental problems and environmental education from a different point of view than most Western-centric studies dealing with this issue.

 A couple of remarks can be found in the annotated manuscript file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The title provides an adequate summary of the paper.

The abstract gives a clear overview of each section of the article.

The introduction presents a compelling argument on why the study is necessary, given the vulnerability of Tuvalu's environment against climate change.

In the theoretical and policy insights section relevant documents and studies connected to stewardship education are mentioned.

The material and methods sections it is clearly described how the key documents were collected; including national policies, national curriculum, regional policy as well international policies. Then, the document content and discourse analysis are presented.

The results are categorised into; environmental stewardship promotion in government education documents, in primary and secondary schools curricula, student attrition and government policies.

In the discussion section the three research questions are addressed, resulting in the following sections: a mismatch between national policies and educational integration goals, challenges and opportunities in Tuvalu's education system, policy inconsistencies and the call for political will in education reforms, the call for early introduction of ESE at elementary schools, insufficient environmental education integration and methodological gaps.

The conclusions propose seven recommendations to instil a sense of environmental care at the policy level.

The references are in the correct format.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
1. Summary
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.
2. Questions for General Evaluation	Reviewer’s Evaluation	Response and Revisions
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?	Yes	Thank you for your very positive review for our manuscript.
Are all the cited references relevant to the research?	Yes
Is the research design appropriate?	Yes
Are the methods adequately described?	Yes
Are the results clearly presented?	Yes
Are the conclusions supported by the results?	Yes
Review 2 General Evaluation The title provides an adequate summary of the paper.   The abstract gives a clear overview of each section of the article.   The introduction presents a compelling argument on why thestudy is necessary, given the vulnerability of Tuvalu'senvironment against climate change.   In the theoretical and policy insights section relevant documentsand studies connected to stewardship education are mentioned.   The material and methods sections it is clearly described howthe key documents were collected; including national policies,national curriculum, regional policy as well international policies.Then, the document content and discourse analysis arepresented.   The results are categorised into; environmental stewardshippromotion in government education documents, in primary andsecondary schools curricula, student attrition and governmentpolicies.   In the discussion section the three research questions areaddressed, resulting in the following sections: a mismatchbetween national policies and educational integration goals,challenges and opportunities in Tuvalu's education system,policy inconsistencies and the call for political will in educationreforms, the call for early introduction of ESE at elementaryschools, insufficient environmental education integration andmethodological gaps.   The conclusions propose seven recommendations to instil asense of environmental care at the policy level.   The references are in the correct format. 3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Comments 1: [There are no specific reviewer comments requiring a response.]
Response 1: We thank reviewer 2 for the very positive review of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript: Environmental Stewardship in Tuvalu Formal School Education – A policy analysis perspective across scales

 

Recommendation: Decline, rewrite and resubmit

 

Justifications:

1. Resubmit: The article is worth publishing. It is important because it sheds light on the challenges and possibilities of “Environmental Stewardship” in Tuvalu. Tuvalu has local interest in improving sustainability competences and World needs this.

2. Decline: The insights are generated via an extensive content analysis of curricula, which is an excellent approach for this research. The data sample diverse which enable producing a comprehensive view of educational policies in Tuvalu. However, the analysis methods have not been described. I can’t reproduce the process with this description. Therefore, the work doesn’t fulfil scientific standards. In addition to just describe the process, you should apply inter-rater reliability procedure which is mandatory for qualitative content analysis. Here is one reference for improving the reliability of the analysis [1].

Last and most importantly, even though the article has a solid theoretical framework. Especially the section introducing key concepts is excellent. The literature used in the paper is relevant and high-quality. However, there is major challenge because I do not find research questions. Without research questions aligned with earlier research, this work is not scientific and cannot be published in a science journal. It should be published as an educational policy report.

Note that I see that you have written three RQs in the abstract. They should be introduced in also in the paper and justify with the used literature. In addition, the result section has four subsections. This not aligned with the number of RQs. Without clear structure and RQs, readers don’t understand what will be reported and why.  

3. Rewrite: When you have revised RQs inside the article, you should rewrite results and discussion. The aim is to produce a coherent wholeness binding rationale, aim, RQs, theoretical framework, results and discussion together. Last, this coherent presentation is used in making few conclusions that are the take home message for readers. This current version of the manuscript is a 35 pages massive report including all sorts of perspectives that are not well aligned with the bigger picture. If you feel that this coherence recommendation is impossible to implement, you should consider publishing this as a broader report or divide in smaller sections and write 2-3 articles. Either way, there is a need of major revisions.

 

Literature tip:

1. McHugh, M.L. Interrater Reliability: The Kappa Statistic. Biochem. Medica 2012, 22, 276–282.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
1. Summary
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.
2. Questions for General Evaluation	Reviewer’s Evaluation	Response and Revisions
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?	Not applicable	The reviewer does not answer this question
Are all the cited references relevant to the research?	Yes
Is the research design appropriate?	Must be improved	We don’t think the reviewer understands that this is a quantitative policy analysis. We have amended the methodology section to more fully explain our approach.
Are the methods adequately described?	Must be improved	We don’t think the reviewer understands that this is a quantitative policy analysis. We have amended the methodology section to more fully explain our approach.
Are the results clearly presented?	Not applicable	There are no direct comments from the reviewer regarding the results.
Are the conclusions supported by the results?	Not applicable	There are no direct comments from the reviewer regarding the results.
3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Comments 1: The article is worth publishing. It is important because it sheds light on the challenges and possibilities of “Environmental Stewardship” in Tuvalu. Tuvalu has local interesting improving sustainability competences and World needs this.
Response 1: Thank you for your positive response. We agree!
Comments 2: The insights are generated via an extensive content analysis of curricula, which is an excellent approach for this research. The data sample diverse which enable producing a comprehensive view of educational policies in Tuvalu. However, the analysis methods have not been described. I can’t reproduce the process with this description. Therefore, the work doesn’t fulfil scientific standards. In addition to just describe the process, you should apply inter-rater reliability procedure which is mandatory for qualitative content analysis. Here is one reference for improving the reliability of the analysis.
Response 2: We acknowledged your thoughtful comments and provision of a useful reference. However, this is not a qualitative analysis. In order to aid replicability of our work, and the clarity of our analysis, we have amended the methodology section as follows:   We conducted a document content and discourse analysis of government, regional, and international documentation. We read the documents to examine the language used and whether ES is emphasised in government documents. The intent of the government documents and the expression of environmental stewardship in school curricula were analysed for relationship linkages. We were particularly interested in how the educational policies and national curriculum mirrored the language of environmental policies that call for the inclusion of environmental stewardship and related themes. The inquiry was broadened to see if national policies were consistent with regional and international ones. This research utilised keywords and phrases employed by Thorne [20] (p. 100) and Aikens et al. [82] (p. 338) to identify the actual word ‘environmental stewardship’, ‘phrases related to environmental stewardship’, and ‘phrases that depict an inference to environmental stewardship’ in policy documents. These search terms (listed in Table 1) and phrases were compared to the environmental and education documents, and repeated words were highlighted and tallied. To determine the rhetoric and meaning of words and phrases in policy documents, tone and mood were analysed according to the procedures explained by Thorne [20] and Alkens et al. [82]. The analysis of the content and discourse of policy documents was carried out. All documents examined in this research were educational policies formulated by the Tuvaluan Government to provide direction for academic endeavours in the country, and reports authored for diverse objectives to engender different educational results. The statistical association approach was employed to evaluate words’ frequency and contextual function to gain insight into the context density surrounding the principles and objectives of environmental stewardship and its associated concepts. All documents were quantitatively analyzed using quantitative content analysis. A summary of all documents collected for analysis is presented in Figure 4.
Comments 3: Last and most importantly, even though the article has a solid theoretical framework. Especially the section introducing key concepts is excellent. The literature used in the paper is relevant and high-quality. However, there is major challenge because I do not find research questions. Without research questions aligned with earlier research, this work is not scientific and cannot be published in a science journal. It should be published as an educational policy report. Note that I see that you have written three RQs in the abstract. They should be introduced in also in the paper and justify with the used literature. In addition, the result section has four subsections. This not aligned with the number of RQs. Without clear structure and RQs, readers don’t understand what will be reported and why.
Response 3: Thank you for your comments regarding the RQs. Your comments are in direct conflict with those made by reviewer 1, so this is a little confusing for us. As you have noted, we referred to the RQs in the Abstract and in the following lines of the revised manuscript:   RQ 1: What are the formal policies shaping environmental stewardship education in Tuvalu? Table 1 and Section 2.4 address this research question. Conscious of the length of the document, we think that repeating the RQs over and over is unnecessary and spoils the flow of the text.    RQ2: Are national educational and environmental policies mutually consistent? Sections 4.1 and 4.2 highlight environmental stewardship promotion in government documents and educational curricula. Tables 7 and 9 highlight policy goals related to environmental stewardship Section “C Policy Inconsistencies and the Call for Political Will in Educational Reforms” (lines 763 to 766) has been clarified as per reviewer 3 comments on RQs and now reads as follows: “National environmental policies and educational policies are not mutually consistent. Sections 4.1 and 4.2 and Tables 7 and 9 demonstrate the inconsistency of policy goals and educational provisions outlined by school curricula.”   RQ3: Are these national policies consistent with regional and global policies? Section 4.4 and Tables 9, 10, and 11 address this research question. In addition, Section 5 demonstrates detailed discussions to fully address the consistency of national, regional, and global policies (lines 675 to 716).
Comment 4: This current version of the manuscript is a 35 pages massive report including all sorts of perspectives that are not well aligned with the bigger picture. If you feel that this coherence recommendation is impossible to implement, you should consider publishing this as a broader report or divide in smaller sections and write 2-3 articles. Either way, there is a need of major revisions.
Response 4: Thank you for all your suggestions. It would be really good to get two or three papers out of this work. However, we feel that all the sections are needed in order to evidence the conclusions and ensure that they have impact. Additionally, we feel that this journal fits really well with the subject matter of our paper, and this journal does not have any page restrictions, so therefore we feel this journal is appropriate for in-depth multi-dimensional analysis such as the one presented in our paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

MS: Environmental Stewardship in Tuvalu Formal School Education – A policy analysis perspective across scales

Round: 2
Date: 9.8.2024

 

Recommendation: Reject, revise and submit again. There are still major issues in the coherence of the work (RQs, method, structure and results).

 

Few comments to back up my recommendation:

 

1) Research questions

Thank you for your comments regarding the RQs. Your comments are in direct conflict with those made by reviewer 1, so this is a little confusing for us. As you have noted, we referred to the RQs in the Abstract and in the following lines of the revised manuscript:

Dear authors, as you know I have no idea what other reviewers are writing. However, please understand that it is a basic principle in scientific writing that your present research questions inside the manuscript not only in abstract. This is not something that we can debate on. This is just the rules how manuscripts should be written that they are usable and match the standards set for scientific communication.

The length of the manuscript is due the screen captures of documents you have included in the results section.

 

2) Qualitative side of the research and RQ1

I understand that RQs 2 and 3 can be seen as quantitative. However, the RQ 1 is qualitative: “1. What are the formal policies shaping environmental stewardship education in Tuvalu?”

To answer this question, you need a qualitative approach via following process:

1.      Decide analysis units

2.      Read document and extract all formal policies aiming to shape environmental stewardship using the analysis units

3.      Reduce the original expressions

4.      Form sub-classes

5.      Combine to main classes

6.      Results: These are the formal policies found from the analyzed documents

Then you need the inter-rater reliability phase to verify the validity and reliability of the conducted analysis.

To me it looks like you are trying to answer a qualitative RQ via a table taken from main author’s PhD dissertation.

It answers the following question: How many times ES-related concepts have been mentioned in government education documents from 2007 to 2019.

3) Section 4.3

Where do you need section 4.3 if you do not have a research question for it?

 

4) Qualitative data

For example, tables 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 present qualitative data.

Note that you use this qualitative in trying to answer the RQ3, which you are approaching statistically according to the methods.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please have a discussion with the editor.

 

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf