FROM : Creating Social Work Civic Citizens: A Professional and Educational Responsibility?

Reviewers, thank you so much for taking the time to review our manuscript. We appreciate the time you volunteer to peer review and to give feedback to improve our paper. We hope we were able to adequately address your feedback.

Reviewer Comment: Discussion offered by the author has only concentrated on the perspective of how social work is taught in U.S.A. The author needs to also provide perspectives of how the learning area is handled in other countries.

Response: Although exploring civics pedagogy in non-US settings would be intriguing, a deep discussion of it falls outside the scope of this paper. We have clarified the paper's context for readers and incorporated some commentary on current global civics education.

Reviewer Comment: Author should also review literature on how civic education is integrated in other learning areas such as social studies and how pedagogical issues that arise from such integration are resolved or minimised

Response: Civics education is rarely taught in higher education, which is the focus of this paper, resulting in limited discourse on the topic. To begin to address this gap, we have included pertinent literature that specifically addresses civics in higher education.

Reviewer Comment: The paper mainly focuses on social work as currently practiced, however majority of the references used are of previous times. Focusing the discussions on views shared by recent or modern scholars will be a great ingredient to the paper. Kindly include more recent references. 

Response: We added more recent references throughout the paper.

Reviewer Comment: What does the initials BSW education, MSW education stand for? 

Response: BSW and MSW are defined in the text.

Reviewer Comment: Lack of Research Contribution: The article falls short of contributing new insights or advancing current knowledge in the field. It primarily reiterates established historical facts without empirical evidence. Methodological Rigor: I advise the authors to adhere to scientific research standards, including clear methodologies, data collection and analysis methods. 

Response: This article is a conceptual/critique paper centered on civics pedagogy in social work, thus it does not employ empirical research methods such as data collection and analysis. Consequently, the standard empirical research methods are not addressed within the paper. 

As a conceptual/critique paper, it is necessary to incorporate historical and current facts and experiences to strengthen the critique and discussion. Empirical evidence is derived from synthesizing findings of other authors with current and historical evidence and commentary to support suggestions for improvement. Given that this is not an empirical research endeavor, no data was collected to provide other evidence.

We provided clarification on the paper’s scope and purpose to avoid reader confusion.

Reviewer Comment: Engagement with current debates (review of similar and/or relevant studies) would significantly strengthen its scholarly impact and relevance 

Response: Citations have been updated. Additional current literature has been added.