Training in Mathematics Education from a Sustainability Perspective: A Case Study of University Teachers’ Views

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article addresses the problem of sustainability in mathematics education. Sustainability is described by socio-cultural parameters and related to mathematical knowledge. The study follows up on the previous study and uses a multi-case study design. By analyzing data from three university teachers in the field of mathematics education teachers, the authors attempt to answer the questions of how sustainability is promoted through university mathematics education and what differences exist among teachers who teach at different levels.
The study is described in great detail and is methodologically well argued.

Major changes:
Although the authors write about sustainability and cite several references, I miss their position on what they mean by sustainability, especially sustainability in mathematics education.

Some sections are too long, such as Materials and Methods and Results. Although these parts are very detailed, due to the length of the article itself, I suggest condensing these parts for the benefit of the reader. If you give too many details for the case of the three teachers, the reader will occasionally lose track of what is similar and what is different for these three teachers.

Minor changes:
The teachers' statements should be written in the same style: normal or italics.

Please provide better image for Figure 10 (600dpi or more).

Line 200 has one Didactics extra.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The work explores the views of 3 teachers on sustainability in mathematics education. Overall, the work is of significant merit and should be insightful to readers. There are, however, a few issues that should be addressed prior to publication:

• Given that the work is qualitative of nature and discuss the views of the 3 teachers who are selected for the study, the way that the article is presented may misconstrue itself as being a quantitative study. It is not apparent why a survey is conducted (typically used for large sample size) is used in this case, when even a prior work already (only) have 7 respondents.
• Furthermore, Fig 2 to Fig 10 seems to suggest that there is a huge amount of data collected, despite only 3 teachers were interviewed. The authors should further elaborate on the interpretation of the figures and how the values were derived. Could it be that there are multiple instances where a point was highlighted, e.g. Basic – Socio-environmental reality, was mentioned, and the percentage is a function of the total interview time or points coded?
• The authors stated 3 research questions, where RQ1 to RQ3 are essentially the same, but for different teachers T1 to T3. Is there any reason for the answers to the research question to be different for T1 to T3? What is it about T1 to T3 that can be generalized here?

Minor issue:

• The authors should submit high resolution version of the figures, the current version looks quite unclear.

I would also suggest the authors to read: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10649-020-10003-2, where the authors explored pre-service teachers mathematics curriculum review from a complexity sciences perspective. I believe the article will be useful theoretical lens for the authors to explore the inclusivity of sustainability in mathematics education from multiple perspectives, both the stakeholders and the Hands-Head-Heart domains.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

18-20 the Tool for Methodological Analysis through Sustainability refers to the initial exploratory questionnaire, the script of the semi-structured personal interview, or a forth instrument? It is not very clear up to this point what is the relationship of this instrument with the three instruments mentioned above.

39 workers could be replaced with employees, or teachers?

158-160 possible rephrase to avoid continuous use of the preposistion “of”

How the five dialogic axes of the HAMS tool correlate with the three scopes of analysis and with the 4 research questions? The questionnaire aims to answer the 4 research questions using the 5 HAMS axes under the 3 scopes? What about the interview? Does it also aim to answer the 4 research questions using the 5 HAMS axes under the 3 scopes? A short explanation at some point would facilitate and accelerate further understanding.

196-197 “multiple-choice questions (scope 2), and five-point Likert 196 scale questions [27] (scope 3) was designed”: since quantitative results are not presented in this paper, it would be better if this would be mentioned here. (e.g “for the current study only the open questions were analyzed”)

207-212 “On the one hand, its application allowed us to become familiar with the views of several teachers in the area of Didactics of Mathematics regarding education for sustainability and its possible integration into the initial training of teachers in mathematics education. On the other hand, the questionnaire was used as an additional criterion to choose the three cases employed in the present study: teachers T1, T2, and T3, and to hold semi-structured personal interviews with them”: so the data of the open questions are not part of the results presented here? It is not so far very clear to me if the questionnaire functioned as an initial basis for developing the interview’s script or if it is part of the actual data presented here.

221-222 “Both the questions formulated for each of the three scopes of analysis that constitute  the initial exploratory questionnaire, and those that served as a guide for the semistructured personal interview”: it is not very clear how the two tools (questionnaire and interview) connect with the three scopes of analysis and with each other. The questionnaire investigates the three scopes. What about the interview? Does the interview function complimentary to the questionnaire to triangulate data? Does it explore a different aspect? Unfortunately this is not still very clear to me

223 consider to replace the word outstanding with a less strong word

227-231: the syllabi functioned as an independent pool that gave additional data with content analysis? Or a complimentary pool in order to form the questionnaire’s items and the interview’s script?

232 Data analysis instrument: HAMS functioned as a data gathering tool, an analysis tool, or both?

235 analytical tool designed to analyse: better to skip the word analytical to avoid repetition

275 “different sources”: do these refer to the content analysis on the syllabi and the data from both the questionnaire and the interview? It was not clear to me from which source of data were the graphically depicted results of table 5 from.

314:table’s percentages refer to the quantified data from the documentary review of syllabus, from the content analysis of the open questions of the questionnaire, or from the analysis of the recorded interviews? Or the sum of the three combined?

402 it would be useful that basic and complex are not both represented with different hues of blue because it is difficult for the eye to discern

1098 teachers and student teachers: possible rephrase?

1101 education in values aimed: possible rephrase?

1107-1108 a crucial role in higher education degrees to train professionals, agents of change and social transformation: possible rephrase?

The study is original, interesting, well grounded and methodologically rich, so it deserves to be published. The main issue is that the study would benefit from some clarifications regarding the methodology. Most specifically, I would understand the study in a deeper and more satisfactory way if it would become clear, on an early stage:

1. If/How do the four research questions correlate with the three scopes, the five HAMS axes and the 5 levels of sustainability? (I found the information a bit confusing and overwhelming and I needed to reread in order to follow the text)
2. How were the research questions answered? Using data just from the interviews, or also from the questionnaire’s open questions and from the syllabi? (in other words the three pools of data gathering are independent and equally contributing to the results, or syllabi and questionnaire functioned in order to set the theoretical frame for the interview’s script?)
3. What was the qualitative analysis method of the interviews? (We read that for the syllabus documentary review was used, for the questionnaire’s open questions content analysis was used).

even if these points become eventually clear as the text progresses, I would be, as a reader, facilitated and feeling more invited, if there was an early clarification of the above.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf