On September 29, the 2022 winners of the “Yidan Prize”—the world’s largest education award—were announced. Professor Zhu Yongxin, a 1994 doctoral graduate in Management Engineering from our college, initiator of the New Education Experiment, and professor at Soochow University’s School of Education, was awarded the 2022 “Yidan Prize for Education Development”.

This year, two individuals globally received the “Yidan Prize”. The other award, the “Yidan Prize for Education Research”, went to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor Emerita of Education at Stanford University and President & CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. The awards recognize the two laureates’ contributions to promoting teachers’ professional competence and helping students fully realize their learning potential.

New Education Research: “Enabling Teachers and Students to Lead a Happy and Fulfilling Educational Life”

Zhu Yongxin studied Management Engineering at the School of Economics and Management of Tongji University from September 1994 to November 1996, earning his doctoral degree. He is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor at SuZhou University’s School of Education, with deep research in psychology, education, management, and other fields.

Launched by Professor Zhu Yongxin in 2000, the New Education Experiment is an educational reform initiative aimed at “enabling teachers and students to lead a happy and fulfilling educational life”. Through ten key actions—including “Creating a Scholarly Campus”, “Teachers and Students Co-Writing Essays”, “Listening to External Voices”, “Cultivating Excellent Eloquence”, “Building Ideal Classrooms”, “Developing Digital Communities”, “Promoting Monthly Initiatives”, “Creating Perfect Classrooms”, “Developing Excellent Curricula”, and “Home-School Collaboration”—the experiment has evolved from a “grassroots educational experiment” into a highly influential education reform project in China over the past two decades. It has engaged more than 8,300 schools nationwide, involving over 500,000 teachers and 8 million students, with more than half from remote areas. In 2018, the New Education Experiment won the first prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award.

Taking teachers’ professional development as its logical starting point, the New Education Experiment continuously optimizes teaching research and methods, significantly enhancing teachers’ and students’ reading, writing, and communication skills. The educational measures based on the “ten actions” have gradually transformed teachers’ professional development models and students’ learning methods inside and outside the classroom, boosting the enthusiasm of both groups and significantly improving students’ academic outcomes.

The “teacher growth model” of the New Education Experiment effectively addresses teacher burnout by providing reading lists, online resource platforms, and other tools to encourage teachers to reflect, engage in professional reading and writing, organize their thoughts, and share insights. It brings cutting-edge academic research to frontline educators, establishes teacher professional development communities, promotes collaboration among teachers, and helps teachers realize their self-worth. Educators worldwide can draw inspiration from the teacher motivation model of the New Education Experiment.

Through active interaction with students’ communities, the New Education Experiment creates a more positive home learning environment, cultivates students’ growth mindsets, and nurtures them into tolerant and cooperative citizens. The “scholarly campus” initiative provides school and community learning resources through libraries, encouraging innovative teaching methods such as joint essay writing by teachers and students and parent-child shared reading. The “Learning Happiness Toolkit” mobilizes students, teachers, and parents based on reading and collaboration.