Thank you for an interesting paper on Water and Us. Please refer to the attached document for the full review. Kind regards

With apologies for being late with my comments, I was (and still am) very happy to see that a paper combining education, societal issues and water is being shared with the scientific community. Indeed, I agree with the authors that education is useful. What I am a little concerned about – or put differently: what I would like the authors to elaborate on in a next version of the text – are three issues. I will discuss these below, after which I provide a few remarks on specific elements in the text.

Issue 1: methodological strength

Interesting as the paper is, I do not think that the material that is available allows for any assessment of the Water and Us design and method now. It is very difficult to see which data are actually being mobilized to support any of the claims about why Water and Us delivers on its promises. I’ll discuss the potential challenge that WaU promises quite a few things in the other two Issues. For the methodological issue, most claims are supported by observations (which are occasionally labelled as “qualitative” I have to assume (eg 266 and 268)). I could not detect any clear description on how data to evaluate the effects of WaU are (to be) collected. The breakdown into impacts might work, but it would be needed to specify for each (rather different) category how data are to be found and applied in any analysis. Discussing the EC framework does not much more than mentioning what expectations the authors have (eg note the “potential” on line 251). The methods and underpinning evidence are quite anecdotal. Some numbers are merely descriptive, but how to understand them?  As a small remark: the figures are not very informative, as they show only very small bits and pieces. As a side note on method: the claim that the didactic approach is sound is not too strange, but is also relatively thinly supported. 

Issue 2: role of education

As already mentioned above, claiming that education is useful is not that weird. It is also perfectly ok to suggest that education is something beyond learning how to do calculus or the like. I am also not surprised that current education is not using the “latest knowledge” as such. That is to be expected in systems that are slow, and that use material with a certain slowness in production adaptation. As such, using the type of workshop (laboratory) that the text presents is actually a pretty good answer, as it would allow bringing in recent ideas in a flexible way into existing programs. However, in order to discuss whether the workshop WaU is effective, we would need to know how it links to school programs and approaches (which are expected to be different). One workshop in a sea of otherness might not change too much? My other concern is the rather automatic assumption that educating people results in better actions. I refer to Issue 3 for some remarks on “better actions” as such, and would like to suggest under Issue 2 that the relation between “education” and “action” is not straightforward at all. Knowing things does not mean that actions follow, either because there is no agreement or because one cannot take action. Furthermore, I do think that we have seen quite a few well-educated people doing rather undesirable things in history. Knowledge is political, action is (perhaps even more clearly) a political choice.

Issue 3: the complexity of the issue

This observation on knowledge and actions as political brings me to my final concern. I am quite sure that the designers of WaU are not aiming for a positivistic approach to climate, water and society. Having said that, the text does suggest quite clearly that there are good and bad explanations on topics, or that knowledge leads to defining solutions or avoiding conflicts. As soon as one allows stakeholders in (which WaU does, great!), I would suggest that one has to allow for different representations of “climate, water and society”, or at least different claims on what is at stake and what needs to be done. And: whose story is told? Whereas the California drought – and the recent drought in Italy – are excellent entries into the complexity of the issue of “drought”, the two examples provided in the text to show the importance of socio-hydrological focus (Dust Bowl and Maya) are simply not as straightforward as the text suggests. It is actually quite unclear how Maya society responded to drought – assuming that a society is a useful unit of analysis to discuss responses – if only because the evidence one uses matters quite a bit. This issue refers also to the cases and type of materials that are used in WaU: new evidence is coming in regularly, which can shift interpretations, but it could also be a case of different interpretations on the same evidence. The suggested relation between climate change, water cycle and conflict is actually not that straightforward.

Summary

In summary, I think the paper claims too much on methods and evidence on the Water and Us project, on the role of education in creating change, and on the topic of water, climate and society itself. What I could imagine, and would welcome very much, is that the paper invites others to try out the Water and Us approach. As such, publishing the experience so far would be a very good thing. It would mean for me, however, that the paper should quite drastically be changed in tone – with much less claiming and much more information on the process the module does in class. Such an invitation would also benefit from a much clearer designed methodology to evaluate the impact of the approach.

Some remarks on text elements

Line 2: One would expect that high-school students miss certain knowledge, right, especially when it comes to larger, real-life issues?

Line 11: Why use the term “fictious”? That does suggest there is also a “real” cycle?

Lines 13-14: This claim on education leading to less conflicts is too simple.

Lines 35-37: In many other countries issues on rights and access would arise too. Why use the term “endemic”?

Line 50: The word “could” is very interesting here, as it could open up the whole question on what counts as knowledge, including evidence, uncertainties and representations.

Line 53: Elephants in rooms tend to be invisible or at least made invisible. Is that an appropriate metaphor for climate change? There may be disagreement, especially on how to act, but I would not think climate change is invisible as an issue.

Line 58: Why only mention one initiative?

Lines 80-84: The many different remarks made show that a diversity of issues can be related to education. Which effect one accepts as more important (or more true…) might influence how one design educational formats. If complexity is the main reason for climate change being absent in teaching, one might come up with a different course compared to when issues are mixed up.

Lines 85-92: Paragraph where many of the issues I refer to can be seen.

Lines 118-120: Does bringing in the ambiguity of policy and governance also refer back to the possible ambiguity of/in the (natural) sciences?

Line 120: Is “existing literature” one paper?

Paragraph 2.3: In Line 155, the claim is made that there is a clear vocabulary, whereas the remaining paragraph text suggest quite strongly that differences in definitions are real – which I think is actually very cool to show and to use in class. But how does this relate to the remark in Line 155? Does it mean that the authors argue that there is one set of correct definitions?

Line 175: Can one use the term “mismanagement”? Is the story that clear?

Lines 197-198: I do not agree that these three core messages can be directly associated with the three modules. These core messages at least use words/terms that were not too central in the descriptions of the modules.

Line 208: The 70% is quite often used in discussions suggesting that water is important. I find it rather a cliché, but my more serious concern is that the body-water actually shows how complex the metaphor is: water is not visible at all in one’s body, right? The body-type H20 is perhaps not the river-type H20?

Line 220: Why is this framework useful or applicable?

Line 236: Is the 100% explained because it is a self-selected group? If so, the statistics is not terribly meaningful.

Line 242: Using the term “diffusion” when it comes to knowledge goes quite against the idea of active learning, which would apply terms like “constructing knowledge”.

Line 245-246: I see the link between what WaU does and the field of socio-hydrology, but I am not ready yet to accept the suggestion that a focus on education contributes to the scientific field of socio-hydrology as such. Perhaps this needs to be explained?

Line 266: What does “qualitatively high” mean here? I think we were informed that 90% had heard about the topic, but that would be “quantitatively high”, right?

Lines 267-273: I would stay away from claims like this when one does not have more than some observations to back it up.

Line 273-275: We know that you argue such education is needed, and I would agree with that argument, but repeating this in a section on “lessons learned” or “future directions” seems a little strange to me.

Line 276: I find it quite shocking that finding out that different groups may need different approaches is presented as a result. I do appreciate mentioning it for sure, and do hope that the observation can be used as a design principle for education.

Lines 290-298: I find the issues of “local” and “global” fascinating, and have no real solution to overcome the divide – which may partially be artificial and is certainly political. I would be interested to know more about the remark that the categories need different goals. Why would that be?

Line 293: Is “action” the same as “behavioural change”?

Line 304: The idea that teaching Module 4 will “educate students to democracy and free speech” may be a little huge and optimistic? It does link to my earlier issues. I agree that education is linked to larger societal issues, but that does not mean that education can easily solve problems or bring improvements that easily. I think the idea that teaching the complexity of climate, water and society is already a challenge, and worthwhile in itself.