Ten Great Highlights

1.  Shanghai window to international education

East China Normal University (ECNU) represents the “Shanghai-style Education.” It is not only a port for China to learn from international education, but also a window for other countries to observe Chinese education. As one of the member units of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) teacher education, we have been appointed in 2014, by the Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China, as one of the 12 units that organize national-level foreign aid project. In 2015, we established the China-ASEAN Education Training Center (ECNU) with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China. We also published the Chinese version of Global education outlook. We established the first M.Ed. degree in China with the courses fully delivered in English. In 2017, the Faculty of Education established an academic journal named “ECNU Review of Education (English)”, which is the first academic English journal among Chinese universities officially approved with issue. It publishes the latest domestic and international research achievements on education reform issues of China.

2. Global Partnership

The Faculty of Education has made great contributions to the establishment of discipline system, academic system and discourse system of educational science with Chinese characteristics, and gained important discourse power on the international education academic stage. By signing sixteen agreements with oversea universities, through the collaboration with first-class international institutes of education to carry out research collaboration, joint talent cultivation programs, students and staff exchange programs, the Faculty of Education has constantly improved the level of internationalization, working with the first-class universities of the world, and obtaining gratifying achievements.

3. Internationalized Faculty

The Faculty of Education attracts excellent scholars through a variety of flexible employments, such as short-term contract, joint employment, and so forth. More than 90% early career faculty members have studied in or visited well-known universities or research institutes abroad for more than one year. Increasing numbers of young faculty have started to work with international education institutes and international journals, and increasing numbers of international researchers join us. We are becoming an internationalized world-class faculty team.

4. Key Construction Discipline of the National “World First-class University, First-class Disciplines” Construction Plan

It is a shared mission and responsibility of Chinese universities to build up world-class universities and disciplines. It is the mission of the Faculty of Education to make educational discipline into a world-class one, and to help East China Normal University become a world-class university. As a result, the Faculty of Education has successfully joined the High Peak Discipline Project of Shanghai government, and successfully entered the ranks of National First-class Discipline Construction. We will take the mission as the responsibility, seize the opportunity, and comprehensively enhance the level of teaching, research capacity, quality of personnel training and social service quality.

5. Cultivation of Excellent Educational Researchers

With the comprehensive transformation towards a research-oriented institution, the Faculty of Education put emphasis on training educational researchers. Since the establishment of “Fo Nian Plan of Educational Innovative Talents Cultivation” in 2015, we are devoted to exploring innovative ways of education and training that are interdisciplinary, international and cohesive. During the recent years, the Faculty of Education received 5 state-level and 21 Shanghai municipal awards for teaching achievements, 4 state-level excellent courses, and 4 Shanghai-level excellent courses. From 2014, 71 doctoral students have been admitted into the government-sponsored graduate visiting student program; 33 master students and 4 doctoral students have entered the “Sino-French joint graduate program”. More than 170 students have had the experience of studying abroad every year. In the future, the number of exchange students will be increased in order to further internationalize our programs.

6. Leader of Talent Cultivation Mode Innovation

Since the establishment of the Faculty of Education, and we have always put on improving the quality of talent cultivation as the top priority, stuck to the principles of cultivating talents with noble morality and linking theory with practice, and stuck to the innovative ways of education and training. Carrying on the Five One-hundred Education Mode, we have united professional education with ideological education, undergraduate education with postgraduate education, in-class instruction with after-class activities, on-campus teaching with off-campus learning, online education with offline education, exerted ourselves to elevate students’ awareness and ability of social responsibility, professionalism, leadership, innovation as well as practice, to educate students to have Chinese Mood and International Eyesight and lead future education.

7. Cradle of National High-Level Talents

The Faculty of Education has been committing to improving the professional level of social service, building up to be the think tank for national policy-making in education, leading the development of educational quality standards and educational reformation. Taking National Training Center for Secondary School Principals of the Ministry of Education as main body, international teacher training program has been established to foster the pioneers in the field of educational policy and practice. Relying on National Institutes of Educational Policy Research, a new type of think tank with Chinese characteristics has been built to provide high quality educational decision-making consultation.

8. Think Tank for Education Development in China

The most effective way to lead education development in China is constantly providing intellectual support for national decision-making. This has always been a mission of the Faculty of Education. Being part of Chinese education reform, we participate in developing important policies, such as National Curriculum Reform of Basic Education, Curriculum Standards of Teachers Education, Professional Standards of High School Principals, and so forth. In 2015, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and the Shanghai government co-signed an agreement on a joint and cooperative establishment of the National Institute of Educational Policy Research located in the Faculty of Education, which further promotes our service for national and local education development. After having two key research bases for Humanities and Social Science of the Ministry of Education, we are proud that “Education Fairness Research to the construction of a powerful country in education” has been identified as an innovation research base for Social Science by the Shanghai Planning Office for Philosophy and Social Science. More remarkably, the Faculty of Education is designing the new curriculum reform of Shanghai. We will be more deeply involved in the process of the comprehensive education reform in Shanghai.

9. Leader of Educational Research in China

The Faculty of Education has always placed greater emphasis on improving research capacities and academic contribution, focusing on meeting demands of the nation, leading the academic frontier, displaying our characteristic, strengthen inter-disciplines and advantages field research, based on the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education launched by Shanghai government, to build up the theory system of Chinese pedagogy discipline with ECNU feature, to become the important base of Chinese style education theory and Chinese scheme for solving world’s education problems.

10. Source of Chinese Educational Practice Reform

In order to promote collaboration between the University and Schools, and to achieve a win-win situation for educational research and schooling, researchers from the Faculty of Education intensively go to China’s primary and secondary schools to guide the functioning of schools, collaborate with principals and teachers, establish “base schools,” and so forth.
Both the Institute of Curriculum & Instruction and the Institute of Schooling Reform and Development are the key research bases for Humanities and Social Science of the Ministry of Education, PRC. The Institute of Curriculum & Instruction has guided the curriculum reform in China for more than ten years and is a pioneer and key participant of China’s newest curriculum reform. The Institute of Schooling Reform and Development focuses on school reform through a comprehensive lens and is of great impact in China’s school reform and in the transformation of classroom instruction.