It has been well-recognised that the changing climate system is one of the twenty-first century's most pressing threats (IPCC Working Group 1 et al., 2013). Currently, Students, who often hold numerous misconceptions, are instead provided with limited opportunities to get connected with this issue (Schreiner et al., 2005). Traditionally, the popular route to conduct climate change education (CCE) has been through science education (Schreiner et al., 2005). Recently, scholars have argued that CCE should be holistic as an interdisciplinary education, broad enough to integrate environmental, social, and even art education since it is scarcely a purely scientific problem but involves attitude, justice, and action (Siegner & Stapert, 2020). Disappointingly, CCE is currently often viewed as a hot potato thrown around from one discipline to another, indicating its marginalised status (Eilam et al., 2020).  

The CCE at the elementary level appears to be extremely critical due to its better accessibility and more significant educational effect. On the one hand, CCE is more easily implemented with better effects at the elementary level since the curriculum at this level is often integrated (Lin & Jackson, 2020). On the other hand, research confirmed that younger children tend to pay more attention to environmental issues and act more environmentally friendly than older ones (Collado et al., 2015).

However, much fewer studies have paid close attention to CCE at this level, according to a systematic review of climate change education (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). Thus, it would be of great value to make efforts at the elementary level, which is the focus of the current study.

Curriculum content

Curriculum content is widely regarded as a critical element in CCE and beyond. Among existing literature, most are case studies (Akaygun & Adadan, 2021). Although limited systematic analysis of the curriculum content exists (Bynoe & Simmons, 2014), most are targeted at the official curriculum documents, which are at the Policy (the first) or Programmatic (the second) level according to the tripartite curriculum framework of Walter Doyle (Oser & Others, 1992). This hereby indicates a research gap at the Classroom (the third) level, the level that is most related to what has been truly implemented in practice, which is to be addressed in this study.

Teaching strategy and extra-curricular activity   

Teaching strategy is commonly acknowledged as the other crucial element of the school curriculum (Fan et al., 2021). Wealthy teaching strategies have been reported under different discipline focus (Akaygun & Adadan, 2021). However, there is still a lack of systematic review on teaching strategies and of further investigating and examining whether and to what extent they have been applied in the actual classes, in the hope of providing suggestions on releasing and exerting the general combined effect of these teaching strategies.

It is noteworthy that the curriculum content and teaching strategy above are both within formal education, especially the school curriculum. Rather, as Stephens and Graham (2008) argued, ideal climate change education should also involve informal educational settings since individuals will face and deal with this issue outside of school, and extensive learning resources were provided by non-school entities (Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). Thus, it would be meaningful to include extra-curricular activities as a necessary supplement to the school curriculum, which has been often overlooked in existing studies, especially at the elementary level, and is notably addressed in this study.

More specifically, the research questions within climate change education follow:

• What is the inclusion of curriculum content and teaching strategy in the school curriculum at the elementary level?
• What extra-curricular activities are involved at the elementary level?

Survey development The survey for the curriculum content will be based on existing literature. The Hong Kong Curriculum Guide of General Studies and the series of Hong Kong General Studies textbooks for primary school (Grades 1-6) will be selected as the starting literature for two reasons. Firstly, the curriculum documents, including curriculum guide and textbooks, are more authoritative and comprehensive than published research articles; secondly, the discipline of General Studies in Hong Kong is expected to be comprehensive enough, which could be seen as a counterpart of the combination of science, social sciences, and citizenship education subjects in other regions, thus providing a well-structured organisation of related curriculum contents. Moreover, more literature, including related reviews and case studies, will also be scanned comprehensively, and elaborate elements will be added and well-organised. Unlike the curriculum content, the teaching strategy is seldom explicitly mentioned in the curriculum documents. Thus, there will be no specific starting literature to construct this part of the survey. Instead, comprehensive literature will be scanned, from which the key elements will be extracted and ordered. Most research articles focus on formal education, especially in the school curriculum. Thus, a great emphasis of the literature review in the third part will be put on the news from various websites of schools, government departments, and non-government organisations. Similarly, the key elements related to the extra-curricular activity will be identified and then ordered. Data collection To obtain better ecological validity and examine the status of CCE worldwide, every forty primary school teacher from each diverse region will be invited to respond to the survey, including the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea in Asia, Italy, German, and the UK in Europe, USA in America, and Australia. Teachers are required to select the most appropriate option from the four-scale Likert on their agreement that the content, teaching strategy, or extra-curricular activity involved in each item has been included in their school. If applicable, they are further requested to indicate the activity organiser (s) from school, government, and non-government organisations. Data analysis The mean of the response of the three parts, respectively, will be calculated by each region and then worldwide. Besides, descriptive information such as the gender of the teacher, teaching discipline, and teaching experience will be analysed to explore the potentially influential factors.

Firstly, a comprehensive review and synthesis of the three basic aspects of climate change education at the elementary level, namely, curriculum content, teaching strategy, and extra-curricular activity, will be obtained in the form of a produced survey which is expected to be composed by both typical and recent original elements. Secondly, whether and to what extent these elements have been implemented will be examined for climate change education worldwide. Further advice for polishing better climate change education will then be provided.

Akaygun, S., & Adadan, E. (2021). Fostering senior primary school students' understanding of climate change in an inquiry-based learning environment. Education 3-13, 49(3), 330–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2020.1854961 Bynoe, P., & Simmons, D. (2014). An appraisal of climate change education at the primary level in Guyana. Caribbean Geography, 19(September), 89–103. Collado, S., Evans, G. W., Corraliza, J. A., & Sorrel, M. A. (2015). The role played by age on children's pro-ecological behaviors: An exploratory analysis. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.09.006 Eilam, E. (2022). Climate change education: the problem with walking away from disciplines. In Studies in Science Education (Vol. 58, Issue 2). https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2021.2011589 Eilam, E., Prasad, V., & Quinton, H. W. (2020). Climate Change Education: Mapping the nature of climate change, the content knowledge and examination of enactment in upper secondary victorian curriculum. Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/su12020591 Fan, S. C., Yu, K. C., & Lin, K. Y. (2021). A Framework for Implementing an Engineering-Focused STEM Curriculum. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 19(8). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-020-10129-y IPCC Working Group 1, I., Stocker, T. F., Qin, D., Plattner, G.-K., Tignor, M., Allen, S. K., Boschung, J., Nauels, A., Xia, Y., Bex, V., & Midgley, P. M. (2013). IPCC, 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, AR5. Lin, C., & Jackson, L. (2020). Decolonisation, Nationalism, and local identity: rethinking cosmopolitanism in educational practice in Hong Kong. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 40(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1725431 Oser, F. K. . E., & Others, A. (1992). Effective and Responsible Teaching: The New Synthesis. Effective and Responsible Teaching: The New Synthesis, 139–153. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED367630 Rousell, D., & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A. (2020). A systematic review of climate change education: giving children and young people a 'voice' and a 'hand' in redressing climate change. Children's Geographies, 18(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1614532 Schreiner, C., Henriksen, E. K., & Kirkeby Hansen, P. J. (2005). Climate education: Empowering today's youth to meet tomorrow's challenges. In Studies in Science Education (Vol. 41, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1080/03057260508560213 Siegner, A., & Stapert, N. (2020). Climate change education in the humanities classroom: a case study of the Lowell school curriculum pilot. Environmental Education Research, 26(4), 511–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1607258 Stephens, J. C., & Graham, A. C. (2008). Climate science to citizen action: Energising nonformal climate science education. Eos, 89(22). https://doi.org/10.1029/2008EO220010