Determinants of Refugee Children’s Self-Perceived Educational Performance: A Comparative Study of Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I really like this paper and the research is important, given the ongoing and contracted nature of displacement and refugee children's lived experiences.  That said, I have a few observations and/or suggestions that I would like you to consider.  

• Make it clear in the title and throughout that the focus is on self perception of educational performance and not performance.  This is important when discussing results, particularly in terms of the accuracy of suggesting that explanatory variables explain high or low performance.  They explain perception, which is subjective.  For example, perceptions of education performance may impact student perception of how friendly or supportive a teacher is and not the other way around. 
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• Neighbourhood is mentioned but not reflected in the description of micro, miso and macro.  In the model, variables reflecting the impact of neighbourhood are included under individual and household heading.  Is there scope to include neighbhourhood level variables - population density, median income for example?
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• Is 'household' defined similarly across geographical contexts? Are some refugee children living in multi-generational households? Multi-family households? 
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• Are segregated schools (i.e. multiple student stream separated temporally) a function of school capacity and size or an explicit function of maintaining social distance between refugee and non-refugee children?  I guess I am struggling a bit with the word segregated, since most school systems are segregated by class and race in ways that are fundamentally detrimental to educational outcomes.  This may be a word choice issue, but implying in Table 1 that social space in education versus EiE is not segregated is problematic. 
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• What does interaction mean in the context of teachers encouraging it?  Interaction with the teacher? With peers in school? With native born students?  It is unclear. 
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• Is it more accurate to rename school factors as teacher factors?  To my mind school factors would include the size of the school, the size of the class, the hours of instruction, and socio-demographic/socio-economic composition of student population. 
• I would like to see greater discussion of how perceptions of educational performance may be influenced by the student environment.  For example in schools where academic norms reflect high achievement or where the majority of students are very high achievers, moderately high achieving students may be more likely to perceive themselves as underperforming.  How does this inflect nuance in your discussion of your findings in relation to the type of schools that refugee children are enrolled in? 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript would benefit for a careful copyedit, particularly in the first half.  There are many errors such as duplicate words (Line 33 - two lines geographical lines), incorrect words (Line 39 - on instead of only; Line 62 temporary instead of temporarily).  In some instances, the errors impact the coherence of the text.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for taking the time to provide us with such a thorough review. Please consider checking the attached table, where we have compiled all your comments and suggestions and addressed them individually.

Best regards,

Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper grapples with an important and timely topic, providing perspectives from the Global South that are much needed in the field. I appreciate the effort made by the authors and hope that they will continue to work with their data and on revision of the article to ensure it is clear, compelling, coherent, and publication ready. Unfortunately, as it stands, the article reads as an early draft in the academic writing process and is in need of substantial work not only in terms of structure and clarity, but also in terms of presentation of data, analysis, and discussion.

To start, while the title articulates that this will be a comparative study of refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia, there is no data provided that actually allows for direct comparison and the comparisons made in the text are largely inferential (on the part of the authors), unsubstantiated by data shared with the reader and from extant literature, and are, thus, incomplete. Australia is largely absent in the data and in the discussion, in fact. Table 4, for example, does not present data at the country level so no comparisons can be made between the three nation-states, despite the explicit statement that this paper will do so in the title and in the introduction. Sections 7-9 (discussions) of the paper are full of unsubstantiated claims because the data is not visible. For example, on lines 376-378, it is stated that "Learning with students and being taught by teachers who all belong to the same country of origin or speak the same language improved teaching and learning outcomes" but there is no visible or evident data in the article to support this claim, especially across the three comparative contexts. Likewise, lines 380-382 make a leap in logic from a single and not very robust set of data to claim that "receiving adjusted educational provisions with curricular adaptations leads to higher educational performance." It is likely that there is more data in the researchers' data sets than is visible in this article that could more fully support this claim but, as currently presented and written, the article is full of claims that are weak at best and, in some cases, unsubstantiated by the data shared. I encourage the authors to share more of their data (allowing for cross country comparisons across the key factors being analyzed) and to present more rigorous analysis and findings. There are paragraphs throughout the article that read more as "common sense" presentation of (supposedly widely or obviously) known "facts" or as opinion rather than as research-based academic writing. Nothing is (or should be) obvious or common sense in a rigorously argued journal article; claims should be well argued and proof/data/evidence provided. For example, the paragraph found on lines 390-397 is full of ideas that may be substantiated by differences in country level data, but without that data presented in the article and without supporting citations from extant literature, the claims made in this paragraph (and other passages throughout the article) are not substantiated.

While Tables 3 and 4 need to show breakdowns by country (for comparisons to be made), Table 5 may not be essential as it shows only two of the three countries and does not speak to the factors affecting educational performance but rather to an entirely different set of data (and only for Lebanon and Australia, not for Turkey). Perhaps Table 5 could be replaced with a table that compares the impact of meso, micro, and macro level factors on educational performance in the three focal countries. As a reader, I need to see this data for each country to understand and follow the arguments made throughout the paper. For example, on lines 403-406 overall general data is provided and discussed regarding refugee students educational performance in relation to mothers' educational levels (as presented in Table 4) but what the reader needs or wants to see is how this varies across the three focal/comparative contexts this paper is discussing: Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia. Section 9, about macro level factors, states many differences but provides very little supporting data for the claims made.

Overall, there is a lack of clarity and cohesion between what is presented and what is argued throughout the paper which can be improved by sharing more of the relevant data and making arguments that are supported by that (visible) data and rigorous analysis bolstered by relevant and recent research literature.

To this point, throughout the article there are outdated citations. If these were referencing seminal our ground-breaking texts, that might work well; however, in this article, the citations from 1981, 1996, 2010, etc. are simply outdated and should be refreshed or enriched with more recent research citations. It would be great to see more citations from recent Global South research literature, as well, in line with the authors' goals of shifting the power dynamic in the refugee education paradigm (who is telling the story and how). I strongly encourage the authors to reengage with the literature review and update/diversify their supporting citations.

Finally, the theoretical framework for the paper might be enriched by consideration of the humanitarian-development nexus (much literature has been generated on this topic) and, also, about the long durée or that space of limbo and long-term displacement that rests somewhat (uncomfortably) between what the authors point to as short-term interventions and medium to long-term provisions (lines 46-47). Turkey, it can be argued, is a place of long term displacement and it might be interesting to interrogate that alongside notions of "resettlement" in Australia and crisis or emergency provisions in Lebanon (although some argue Lebanon, too, is a place of long term displacement). Also of importance to include in this discussion is the UNHCR "Refugee Education 2030" plan which calls for inclusion of refugees in national systems. This has greatly impacted education in emergency, humanitarian, development, and nation-state education systems and is important to account for in the literature review and theoretical or conceptual framing of this paper in terms of short/long term provisions. It is clear that the authors are deeply invested in and familiar with refugee education landscapes. I encourage a more complete and robust discussion of the extant literature, provision models, tensions, and frameworks in this comparative study.

While there is much work, from my perspective, to be done on this article before it is ready for publication, I hope that the authors will commit to revisions and editing because this has the potential to be an important and impactful paper.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are numerous typos and errors in conventions in the article. Close editing and proofreading is recommended. For example, in the first paragraph of the introduction alone, I found 11 errors. The errors do not lead to confusion but present as rushed writing without careful copyediting. The text definitely needs a close review and edit to be publication ready.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for taking the time to provide us with such a thorough review. Please consider checking the attached table, where we have compiled all your comments and suggestions and addressed them individually.

Best regards,

Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for taking care with the review suggestions and providing such comprehensive explanations.  

Author Response

Thank you for the review.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I appreciate the addition of new citations to bolster arguments and to update the literature review and discussions.  There are still some areas that would benefit from citations. I list some statements here that need citational support:

• Lines 55-58: each sentence needs at least one citation
• Lines 97-98: Is this referencing INEE's Minimum Standards? If so, then INEE should be cited and a date provided - for the original document or for the newest version; “its” Minimum Standards simply does not make sense to all readers  - who is this referencing in the sentence? That referent should be made explicit both in the sentence and in the citation. I do see INEE explicitly mentioned and cited at the end of the paragraph, so perhaps the paragraph just needs to be reorganized?
• Lines 105-110: at least one citation is needed here - where does the information for the first sentence come from, for example. You can't assume all readers of Social Science will know this information or trust it; there is a broad readership for this publication with many readers not involved in refugee or comparative education at all.
• Lines 118-125: Again, citations are necessary here, ideally for each of these statements. This is not an education journal. The authors are assuming base knowledge that should not be assumed for readers of Social Science, a broad and interdisciplinary social sciences journal.
• Lines 170-183: Need citations
• Lines 189-205: Is this ALL from the Collins citation at the end of the paragraph? I recommend adding some additional supporting citations for the policies and practices being described in this paragraph.

I also appreciate the efforts made to clarify ideas and proofread for typos. There are still a few areas that would benefit from some additional editing:

• "We examine how the two education provisions (EIE and long-term education 65 programmes) and implications of both education paradigms on the school performance 66 of refugee children." (lines 65-67; EIE is not introduced as an acronym until the next sentence, please fix & the first half of the sentence is incomplete - maybe remove the "how"?)
• For Table 1, I recommend column 1 have a clearer title. Simply calling it “education” does not work for the comparison being made to “education in emergency". Perhaps it could be titled “education in a long-term resettlement setting” or "national education systems” versus “education in emergency systems”
• Line 235 - participant should be participants
• Lines 325-334 appear to be an old version/duplicate of lines 335-346?? Perhaps the old paragraph just needs to be deleted?
• Lines 424-425 - the word “in” is missing between enrolled schools
• Footnote 4 is missing a complete word: c is presented where I think country should be written.
• Footnote 5 could be revised for style and clarity. It also needs a period to close.
• Line 443: should read students’ (with a plural possessive apostrophe) before the word individual, not students
• Line 444: should read childrens’ (not children) academic performance
• Line 464: extra s on oftens - should read is often associated
• Line 514: the is missing between conducted following (should read conducted the following…)
• Line 610: recommend removing etc. and just stating what you are referring to with the etc. It feels unfinished or like shorthand as it is currently written. You might say “including, for example, ….and..” and cut the etc. as one way to improve this closing statement.

The shift to explicitly stating that the study is of self-perceptions and the outlining of limitations of this study is very helpful. I would recommend that at the end of section 4, when those limitations are being outlined, the authors include a note about the ways legal status/precarity may influence self-reporting and self-perceptions as well. It seems that within very fraught contexts, there are many emotions and potential fears and hopes at play that will color self-reports and self-perceptions, particularly in relation to age and status differences between students and  researchers.

Revisions made to explanation and description of the quantitative model are excellent. It is much more fully articulated now and easier to follow. Stating clearly that country serves as proxy for type of resettlement, for example, is a necessary and helpful move in this discussion.

The new paragraph in the macro level discussion (section 9) was absolutely needed and greatly improves the comparative aspect of this paper.

I'm curious about direct comparisons between Turkey and Lebanon (as has been done between Lebanon and Australia). Is this possible? Does it reveal anything of interest to present in this piece? What are the differences between short term and mid term models of educational provision? Is there anything to learn from this, alongside the differences noted between short term and long term? It still feels a bit odd to end with the focus only on Lebanon and Australia when the article has been titled and has presented data on three nations. Perhaps a brief note could be added, at least?

Author Response

Please find the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf