From Teacher Needs to Curriculum Design: A Teacher-Informed Prototype for Climate Change Argumentation in a Chinese Primary School

Purpose: Quality Standards for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “Green Schools” require classroom-based inquiry on the topic of climate change through which students develop valued skills associated with critical thinking, collaboration, and real-world problem-solving. This article examines a curriculum design problem in primary climate-change education: how the goals of argumentation (collaborative reasoning) and sustainability learning can be translated into a workable classroom prototype in a specific primary-school context. Methods: The article reports a bounded, teacher-informed curriculum design case study embedded within a larger classroom intervention. Data sources comprised a diagnostic needs-elicitation questionnaire completed by six Grade Five teachers, curriculum and design artefacts, and observation records from four climate-change lessons and two instructional phases. Questionnaire and documentary evidence were analysed to trace how teacher-identified conditions, policy aspirations, and research-informed principles informed design decisions. Observation data were used only to examine the initial enactment of selected prototype features through teacher discourse. Results: The findings were organised around three layers of the curriculum design case: a researcher-developed AT framework, with a PBL frame added for designated classes; teacher-informed implementation supports; and teacher enactment. The questionnaire identified three local patterns relevant to the support layer: teachers valued argumentation but reported uneven pedagogical knowledge; familiar discussion practices provided a partial foundation; and implementation depended on practical supports for participation, assessment, resources, and time. Within the researcher-developed framework, these patterns informed teacher guidance, teaching cases, and activity templates, which were aligned with broader principles for explicit argumentation scaffolding, inclusive participation, usable assessment and resource infrastructure, and action-oriented sustainability inquiry. Observation evidence suggested that selected prototype features became visible through questioning, classroom organisation, and resource use, but sustained peer critique, student-led synthesis, and systematic participation routines were only weakly visible. Conclusions: The contribution is not an effectiveness claim or a validated fully transferable model. Rather, the study makes visible a design rationale through which Green School and ESD aspirations, teacher knowledge, local constraints, and argumentation research were assembled into a context-responsive curriculum prototype. It offers a bounded account of curriculum translation and a basis for subsequent enactment, refinement, and testing.