Integrating Ukrainian Students in Romanian Higher Education: Qualitative Insights from the EIUS Erasmus+ Project

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a timely and substantively rich qualitative study. The paper offers a well-developed conceptual framing around inclusion, resilience, and “institutionalised solidarity,” and it provides detailed empirical insight into the lived experience in a context that is under-represented in the literature. The literature review is comprehensive and impressively up to date. The use of reflexive thematic analysis combined with a SWOT lens is methodologically thoughtful and produces a nuanced picture in the integration process.

I consider this a strong and relevant contribution to Education Sciences. The revisions below are primarily aimed at enhancing clarity, sharpening the conceptual contribution, and making some methodological and ethical aspects more transparent.

Conceptual framing and originality

Clarify and develop the concept of “institutionalised solidarity.”
You introduce “institutionalised solidarity” in the abstract as a multi-level inclusion model that couples “emotional infrastructures” with “organizational infrastructures.” This is a compelling idea, but in the main text it remains somewhat implicit and dispersed. To strengthen the conceptual contribution:

• Consider adding a short subsection in the Discussion (or early in the Conclusions) that explicitly defines “institutionalised solidarity,” distinguishes it from existing concepts (e.g., procedural vs relational inclusion; access vs participation), and summarizes its key dimensions.
• You might also indicate how this concept extends or refines the work of authors such as Morrice, Viczko & Matsumoto, or others you already cite.

Even a simple conceptual figure or schema (e.g., emotional infrastructures ↔ organizational infrastructures ↔ student experiences) would further highlight your original contribution.

Methodology and transparency

Clarify the nature of the data collection and instruments.
There is a slight ambiguity in how the workshop and data collection are described. You refer to a “participatory focus group” workshop combining semi-structured interviews, open discussion, participant observation, and an online questionnaire conducted in a guided discussion format. To enhance clarity and replicability, please specify more precisely:

• Whether the “online questionnaire” refers to a set of prompts that participants responded to in writing during the workshop, or to a pre/post survey that complemented the focus-group discussion.
• How the different elements (semi-structured questions, open discussion, observation notes, written responses) were integrated into a single dataset (e.g., were only transcribed oral discussions analysed, or also written responses?).

A brief clarification of these points will avoid confusion and strengthen methodological transparency.

Participant recruitment and sampling.
You provide useful information about participant numbers and composition (15 Ukrainian students, 31 Romanian students, 26 staff, across several disciplines and levels of study). It would be helpful to add:

• How participants were recruited (e.g., open invitation, via specific courses, through the international office, purposive sampling from known Ukrainian cohorts).
• Whether the 15 Ukrainian students represent a significant proportion of all Ukrainian students enrolled at the university, or a smaller self-selected subgroup.
• Whether any incentives were offered and whether participation occurred during scheduled classes or outside class time.

This information will help readers assess potential selection biases and the breadth of perspectives represented.

Findings and discussion

Highlighting limitations more explicitly.
The discussion and synthesis sections acknowledge the “fragile equilibrium” of inclusion and note that your case is situated in a specific institutional and national context. However, the methodological limitations could be made more explicit, for example by adding a brief “Limitations” paragraph in the Discussion or Conclusions that notes:

• Single-institution, single-workshop design, which constrains generalizability.
• The cross-sectional nature of the data (no follow-up to see how experiences evolve over time).
• Potential social desirability bias, particularly in a workshop where participants know the university is hosting and supporting them.

This will reinforce the credibility of your claims and help readers interpret the scope of transferability.

SWOT framework justification and possible constraints.
The SWOT-based presentation of themes is clear and effective, and Table 1 is particularly helpful. You might briefly acknowledge any trade-offs of using SWOT (e.g., the risk of forcing complex experiences into four categories; how you handled codes that could fit multiple quadrants) and explain why this framework was nevertheless appropriate for linking micro-level experiences with institutional strategy.

Further sharpening the link between empirical themes and “institutionalised solidarity.”
The Discussion draws on existing literature to argue for emotional and organizational infrastructures and the need to move from “goodwill to governance.” This is very strong, but you could make your own empirical contribution even more visible by:

• Explicitly tying each element of “institutionalised solidarity” back to specific findings in the SWOT themes (e.g., emotional infrastructures = mentoring and peer empathy evidenced in Strengths and Opportunities; organizational infrastructures = integration offices, central coordination, counselling services suggested under Weaknesses and Threats).
• Stating more clearly what your case adds to broader debates on European higher education responses to Ukraine (e.g., insights from an Eastern European border region, the emotional labour of faculty, student-to-student solidarity).

Ethics and procedural aspects

You note that no formal ethics committee review was required because this was an educational participatory activity, and that you adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki and the European Code of Conduct, ensured voluntary participation, anonymity, and the right to withdraw.

To satisfy international readers who may be used to different institutional norms, I recommend:

• Confirming that participation or non-participation in the workshop did not affect students’ grades or course standing and that facilitators did not have direct grading authority over participating students, if applicable.

These small additions will reinforce the robustness of your ethical procedures.

Writing, style, and minor points

The manuscript is generally well written and engaging, with a strong narrative flow. A focused language and style edit would further increase clarity:

• Consider breaking up some of the longer paragraphs in the literature review and Discussion to improve readability, especially for non-specialist readers.
• Correct minor grammatical and stylistic issues, such as:
• “First step of inclusion of displaced is to host them but most important is to allow their experiences to reshape teaching and learning” → “The first step in including displaced students is to host them, but the most important step is to allow their experiences to reshape teaching and learning.”
• “while apparently discrimination was absent” → “while overt discrimination was absent” or similar.
• Ensure consistent use of terminology (“inclusion” vs “integration,” “displaced students” vs “refugee students”) and consistent introduction of acronyms (EHEA, EIUS, etc.) upon first use.

These are all relatively minor refinements and do not affect the substantive quality of the work.

Author Response

Comment:
This is a timely and substantively rich qualitative study. The paper offers a well-developed conceptual framing around inclusion, resilience, and “institutionalised solidarity,” and it provides detailed empirical insight into an under-represented context.

Response:
We sincerely thank the reviewer for this positive and encouraging assessment. We appreciate the recognition of the study’s conceptual framing, empirical depth, and relevance to under-represented Eastern European contexts.

Comment:
Clarify and develop the concept of “institutionalised solidarity.”

Response:
We thank the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. In response, we have explicitly defined and analytically developed the concept of institutionalised solidarity in the Discussion section. The concept is now clearly distinguished from related approaches (e.g., procedural vs. relational inclusion; access vs. participation) and is used as an interpretive lens linking emotional infrastructures with organisational infrastructures.

Data collection and instruments

Comment:
Clarify whether the online questionnaire refers to written responses or a survey, and how different data sources were integrated.

Response:
We appreciate this observation and have clarified this point in Section 3.3. We now specify that the online questionnaire functioned as a structured set of discussion prompts used during facilitated group sessions, rather than as a separate pre- or post-survey. The primary analytic dataset consisted of transcribed oral discussions, with written inputs used only for contextual support.

Comment:
Provide more detail on recruitment, representativeness, incentives, and timing of participation.

Response:
We have expanded Section 3.2 to clarify recruitment procedures, noting that participants were invited through institutional channels and open calls. We now explicitly state that Ukrainian students constituted a self-selected subgroup, that no incentives were offered, and that participation took place outside graded coursework with no impact on academic standing.

Limitations

Comment:
Limitations should be more explicitly addressed.

Response:
In response, we added a dedicated Limitations section outlining the single-institution and single-workshop design, the cross-sectional nature of the data, and the potential for social desirability bias.

Comment:
Acknowledge trade-offs of using SWOT and justify its appropriateness.

Response:
We have addressed this in Section 3.4 by acknowledging the potential risk of oversimplification and explaining that SWOT was applied ex post as a second-order interpretive framework following inductive reflexive thematic analysis.

Comment:
Strengthen the link between empirical themes and institutionalised solidarity, and clarify the broader contribution.

Response:
The Discussion section has been revised to explicitly connect each dimension of institutionalised solidarity to specific SWOT findings and to highlight the study’s contribution to debates on European higher education responses, particularly from an Eastern European border-region perspective.

Comment:
Clarify that participation did not affect grades and that facilitators had no grading authority.

Response:
We have explicitly stated in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 that participation or non-participation had no impact on academic standing and that facilitators did not hold grading authority over participating students.

Comment:
Minor stylistic and terminological refinements are suggested.

Response:
We revised the manuscript to improve readability, corrected minor grammatical issues, and ensured consistent use of terminology and acronyms throughout the text.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Integrating Ukrainian Students in Romanian Higher Education: Qualitative Insights from the EIUS Erasmus+ Project”, submitted for publication in Education Sciences, manuscript ID education-4024424.
• The topic is timely and socially relevant, and the authors clearly invested substantial effort in data collection and in presenting a comprehensive qualitative narrative. The manuscript is written in a polished and coherent style, with an accessible flow and a generally well-structured argument. However, while the article is “nice” to read and clearly well-intentioned, its scientific solidity is uneven. Below I outline the main considerations that, in my view, the authors need to address before this manuscript can be considered for publication.

Aim of the study / contribution to the field

• The introduction sets a strong contextual frame – the war, displacement, Romania’s response – but the specific research contribution remains somewhat diffuse. The manuscript promises to explore “integration as a multidimensional process,” which is broad, and the study’s objectives partially overlap with existing literature cited by the authors themselves.
• The article would benefit from a tighter articulation of: what gap in the literature the study fills, what is genuinely new in this case study, why Ovidius University is theoretically or empirically distinctive.
• At present, the manuscript reads more like an institutional self-study or a reflective project report than a fully developed research article.

Theoretical framework

• The theoretical section is rich but somewhat overloaded and under-focused.
• The literature review is extensive – perhaps too extensive – and at times risks overshadowing the empirical material. It synthesizes post-2022 research very effectively, but it remains largely descriptive. Theoretical positioning is broad, drawing on inclusion, trauma-informed pedagogy, refugee education, Erasmus+ networks, etc., but the framework lacks a true conceptual anchor.
• The use of SWOT is interesting, but not clearly theorized. The manuscript treats SWOT as an analytical structure rather than a methodological or conceptual decision. A justification of why SWOT is appropriate for a qualitative, phenomenological dataset is needed.

Methodology

• The authors provide a clear step-by-step presentation of their approach, coding logic, and analytic decisions. Using reflexive thematic analysis is appropriate, and this is one of the strongest parts of the manuscript.
• The methodological transparency is high, but the methodological rigour needs better contextual justification. A few concerns remain:

1. the dataset is derived from one workshop with 72 participants, which is large for a focus-group setting. The manuscript does not fully clarify how meaningful interaction was ensured across such a large group.
2. the integration of a structured questionnaire inside a focus group is innovative but unconventional; this hybrid format needs a clearer justification.
3. the article states that no ethics approval was required. While technically true in Romanian academic contexts, Education Sciences readers typically expect stronger institutional oversight for studies involving displaced and potentially vulnerable populations.

Quality of findings

• The findings are clearly presented and well organized, the SWOT structure makes the text readable, and the numerous quotations give voice to participants.
• The rich data are there, but the interpretative depth could be strengthened, as there is a tendency toward over-affirming positive outcomes and framing challenges in softer terms. For instance: language barriers, emotional fatigue, and social isolation appear more serious than the manuscript suggests, especially when a Ukrainian participant reports “no contact with Romanian students since arriving”. This is an important red flag and deserves deeper analysis. The theme of “institutional fragmentation” is mentioned repeatedly but not explored in sufficient detail to understand its structural implications.

Interpretation and discussion

• The discussion aligns well with the literature, but again, the tone leans toward the celebratory – “solidarity”, “resilience”, “institutional transformation”. While these elements may indeed be present, the article risks sounding like an advocacy piece rather than a critical academic examination. For example, the idea of “institutionalized solidarity”, although appealing, is not fully operationalized; it is not entirely clear to what extent findings derive from participants and to what extent they reflect the authors’ own framing of the institutional ethos.
• The discussion would benefit from a more balanced treatment: acknowledging achievements but also carefully evaluating structural limitations.

Conclusions

• The conclusions are consistent with the findings, but again somewhat optimistic. The policy recommendations are reasonable, but they remain high-level and not fully grounded in the data.

Overall assessment

• The manuscript is well-written, accessible, and meaningful, and it successfully documents a valuable institutional effort during a period of crisis. However, its scientific contribution is not yet fully consolidated. The article often reads like a very polished project deliverable, with strong narrative flow but less theoretical sharpness.
• To reach the publication standards of Education Sciences, the authors should consider:
  • clarifying the article’s theoretical positioning and narrowing its conceptual scope;
  • strengthening the critical, not only descriptive, dimension of the findings;
  • engaging more deeply with structural limitations and less with institutional self-validation;
  • refining the argument around the distinctiveness of the case study.
• I hope my comments could help the authors improve their studies.
• Therefore, as stated at the beginning of this review, the manuscript does not comply with the standards of the journal and my recommendation is not to be published in the submitted version.

Author Response

Comment:
Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript. The topic is timely and socially relevant, and the manuscript is well written and accessible. However, the scientific contribution is uneven and requires substantial clarification before publication.

Response:
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the careful evaluation of the manuscript and for recognising its relevance, narrative clarity, and empirical effort. We appreciate the critical feedback, which helped us substantially strengthen the theoretical focus, methodological transparency, and analytical balance of the revised manuscript.

Comment:
The research contribution remains diffuse; the objectives overlap with existing literature, and the manuscript risks reading as an institutional self-study.

Response:
We have revised the Introduction and added a dedicated positioning subsection (Section 2.5) to explicitly articulate the study’s contribution. The manuscript is now framed as an analysis of partial and solidarity-driven inclusion in an Eastern European border-region university operating under prolonged crisis conditions. Rather than presenting an institutional success story, the study examines the tension between interpersonal solidarity and limited institutional capacity, a dimension that remains underexplored in the literature.

Comment:
The literature review is extensive but descriptive and lacks a clear conceptual anchor; SWOT is insufficiently theorised.

Response:
In response, we refined the theoretical framework by explicitly adopting a relational and process-oriented conception of inclusion and by positioning institutionalised solidarity as the central analytical construct. The role of SWOT has been clarified in Sections 3.1 and 3.4 as an ex post interpretive framework applied after reflexive thematic analysis, rather than as a standalone method. Relevant literature is now cited to justify this choice.

Comment:
Concerns remain regarding the large focus-group size, the hybrid questionnaire–focus group format, and the lack of clear ethics oversight.

Response:
We addressed these concerns by clarifying that the workshop was organised into smaller facilitated discussion groups to ensure meaningful interaction (Section 3.2). The hybrid format is now explicitly justified in Section 3.3, where the structured questionnaire is described as a discussion guide rather than a survey. Additionally, the manuscript now states that the study received formal ethical approval from the Bioethics Committee of Ovidius University of Constanța, with detailed information on consent, anonymity, and safeguards for vulnerable participants.

Comment:
The analysis tends to over-affirm positive outcomes, while issues such as language barriers, emotional fatigue, social isolation, and institutional fragmentation deserve deeper critical engagement.

Response:
We thank the reviewer for this important observation. The Findings (Sections 4.2 and 4.4) and Discussion (Section 5) have been revised to deepen the critical analysis of linguistic anxiety, social isolation, emotional overload, and institutional fragmentation. Participant accounts indicating lack of contact with Romanian peers are now explicitly interpreted as structural risks rather than marginal issues.

Comment:
The discussion risks sounding celebratory and advocacy-oriented; “institutionalised solidarity” is not fully operationalised.

Response:
We revised the Discussion to adopt a more balanced and critical tone. Institutionalised solidarity is now explicitly operationalised as an analytical construct rather than a normative claim, and its limits are clearly discussed. The revised text emphasises that solidarity-driven practices remain fragile when not embedded in organisational structures.

Comment:
The conclusions are optimistic and policy recommendations remain high-level.

Response:
The Conclusions section has been revised to more directly link policy recommendations to empirical findings and to emphasise the contingent and potentially reversible nature of inclusion when institutional investment and coordination are lacking.

We are grateful to the reviewer for the thorough and challenging critique. The revisions undertaken in response to these comments significantly strengthened the manuscript’s theoretical sharpness, methodological clarity, and critical depth, bringing it in line with the standards of Education Sciences.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper investigates how Ukrainian students are integrated into Romanian higher education through a qualitative study. It would be to have a theoretical foundation for your study. We know you use SWOT but is not new to us. Authors need to devise an innovative method. What are the theoretical contributions of this study? What are the limitations of this study? Authors need to explain the whole process of the analysis. Now we cannot see how the themes are coming. Provide detailed examples from your focus group. You need to provide the details of the ethical clearance of this study.

Additional suggestions:

1. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology? :More details on the coding.
2. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented?                         :Yes, were all the main questions posed addressed? By which specific experiments? Yes, but descriptive  
3. Any additional comments on the tables and figures and the quality of the data:
   No table and figures

 

 

Author Response

Comment:
This paper investigates how Ukrainian students are integrated into Romanian higher education through a qualitative study. It would be useful to have a clearer theoretical foundation. SWOT is not new, and the theoretical contributions and limitations of the study are unclear. The analytical process is insufficiently explained, and it is not clear how themes emerged. More detailed examples from the focus group are needed. Details of ethical clearance should also be provided.

Response:
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the careful reading of the manuscript and for these constructive comments. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify the theoretical grounding, analytical process, and ethical procedures of the study.

Comment:
The study lacks a clear theoretical foundation and theoretical contribution; SWOT is not innovative.

Response:
We have strengthened the theoretical foundation by explicitly adopting a relational and process-oriented conception of inclusion and by introducing institutionalised solidarity as the study’s central analytical contribution (Sections 2 and 5). While SWOT itself is not novel, the contribution of this study lies in its integration with reflexive thematic analysis to bridge phenomenological data and institutional interpretation, rather than in proposing a new method.

Comment:
The analytical process is insufficiently explained; it is unclear how themes emerged.

Response:
In response, we substantially expanded Section 3.4 to provide a step-by-step account of the analytical process, including familiarisation, open coding, axial coding, theme development, and the subsequent ex post application of the SWOT framework. We now include concrete coding examples to illustrate how raw excerpts were clustered into categories and higher-order themes.

Comment:
More details on coding are needed.

Response:
We added explicit descriptions of line-by-line coding, code clustering, analyst triangulation, and the maintenance of an audit trail. The revised text clarifies how codes were iteratively refined and validated across researchers.

Comment:
Provide more detailed examples from the focus group.

Response:
The Findings section has been revised to include additional illustrative quotations and clearer links between quotations and analytically constructed themes, ensuring that interpretations are transparently grounded in participant accounts.

Comment:
The limitations of the study are not sufficiently addressed.

Response:
A dedicated Limitations section (Section 6) has been added, explicitly discussing the single-institution, single-workshop design, the cross-sectional nature of the data, and the descriptive scope of the findings.

Details of ethical clearance should be provided.

Response:
We have addressed this by explicitly stating in Section 3.3 that the study received formal ethical approval from the Bioethics Committee of Ovidius University of Constanța (Approval No. UOC 14304/20.11.2025), and by detailing informed consent, anonymity, and safeguards for potentially vulnerable participants.

Comment:
The conclusions are descriptive and their linkage to evidence should be clarified.

Response:
The Conclusions section has been revised to more explicitly connect empirical findings to the study’s analytical claims and to clarify that the conclusions address the research question through qualitative interpretation rather than experimental testing.

We thank the reviewer for these helpful comments, which prompted us to substantially improve the theoretical clarity, analytical transparency, and ethical reporting of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review

 

Introduction. Well-written and provides a concise and clear background of the issue in question.

 

Literature Review: Topical and relevant. A well-written section.

 

Theoretical Framework: This study seems to be informed by a program evaluation or institutional model, rather than a theoretical or conceptual framework. Consider revising.

 

Methodology

This needs revisions for consistency. The author begins by stating they will use a case study, but switches to a SWOT Analysis. The phrasing of the research question conflates descriptive and interpretive phenomenology and is not framed as a SWOT analysis. There is no literature cited on how SWOT its with a case study or a qualitative design

 

Research Questions: This needs revisions for consistency. The author begins by stating they will use a case study, but switches to a SWOT Analysis. The phrasing of the research question conflates descriptive and interpretive phenomenology and is not framed as a SWOT analysis. The data comes from a Building Bridges project and might lend itself to a program evaluation and make a case for a SWOT analysis

 

Findings: These follow a SWOT analysis presentation; hence, the recommendation is to revise the methodology section and reassess the evaluation model or theoretical framework.

Author Response

Comment:
The Introduction and Literature Review are well written and relevant. However, the theoretical framework appears closer to a program evaluation or institutional model than to a conceptual framework and should be revised.

Response:
We thank the reviewer for this valuable observation and for the positive assessment of the Introduction and Literature Review. In response, we clarified the study’s conceptual positioning by explicitly framing it at the intersection of relational inclusion theory and formative programme evaluation (Section 2.5 and Discussion). We now clearly state that the study does not advance a grand theory, but introduces institutionalised solidarity as an analytical construct grounded in qualitative evidence.

Comment:
The methodology lacks consistency: the manuscript begins with a case study but then switches to a SWOT analysis. The research question conflates phenomenological and SWOT approaches, and no literature is cited on combining SWOT with qualitative case studies.

Response:
We appreciate this important clarification request. The Methodology section (Section 3.1 and 3.4) has been revised to explicitly state that the study adopts a qualitative case study design, while SWOT is used ex post as an interpretive and evaluative analytical framework rather than as a standalone method. We have reformulated the research question to align explicitly with this evaluative use of SWOT and added methodological references supporting SWOT as a post hoc qualitative evaluation tool (Helms & Nixon, 2010; Pickton & Wright, 1998).

Comment:
The research question is not clearly framed as a SWOT analysis and appears inconsistent with the stated design.

Response:
The central research question has been reformulated to explicitly address how stakeholders interpret strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with inclusion, ensuring consistency between the case study design, the evaluative logic, and the presentation of findings (Section 3.1).

Comment:
The findings follow a SWOT structure; therefore, the methodology and theoretical framework should be reassessed.

Response:
Following this suggestion, we explicitly clarified that the SWOT framework structures the findings after inductive thematic analysis, not before data collection or coding. This sequential logic is now clearly described in Section 3.4, reinforcing the coherence between design, analysis, and presentation.

We sincerely thank the reviewer for these constructive comments, which helped us improve the conceptual clarity, methodological consistency, and transparency of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the authors for carefully and thoroughly addressing the comments raised during the review process. The revisions and reformulations have significantly improved the clarity and overall quality of the manuscript. In its revised form, I consider the paper suitable for publication and I recommend its acceptance.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

All my concerns have been addressed.