全球奖

Lingyuan Gu is the Honorary President of the Qingpu District Teacher Training College in Shanghai. He formerly served as Vice President of the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, and is a Special-Grade Teacher, Inaugural Shanghai Education Heroes (2003), and a National Model Worker. As the founder of the Qingpu Experiment, he has devoted his career to experimental reform in mathematics education, teacher education, and school development, consistently grounding his research in classroom practice and its improvement. His central methodological contribution lies in pioneering experience screening as a method of educational experimentation, which turns teaching experiences scattered across classrooms into testable, transferable public knowledge. Through educational action research, he has also opened up a new research pathway for teachers’ professional growth, making an original contribution to educational research methodology rooted in Chinese classrooms.

Addressing how teaching quality can be widely improved under ordinary conditions, Professor Gu began by investigating classroom realities and collecting firsthand teaching experiences, which he then screened, revised, and refined through continuing practice, observation, and reflection. From more than 160 items of thematic teaching experience, and through some 50 rounds of trial, observation, elimination, and optimization, he focused inquiry on the key behaviors of classroom improvement, explaining them through factorial control experiments and paired follow-up analysis, and distilled four principles of teaching: affective engagement, sequential progression, activity-based learning, and feedback. In his analytical work, he used think-aloud protocols and other means to document students’ problem-solving processes, developed measurement instruments based on a taxonomy of cognitive objectives, and carried out repeated measurements of students’ mathematical cognitive abilities in the same region across different periods. This methodological framework provides a replicable approach to conducting educational experiments under ordinary classroom conditions.

Professor Gu extended his Qingpu methodological innovations into the field of teacher learning by proposing the “action education” model of teacher professional growth, which integrates theoretical study, instructional design, and reflection on practice, with lesson cases serving as the vehicle for in-service learning. The model proceeds through three stages—an “original behavior” stage focusing on teachers’ existing experience, a “new design” stage focusing on revised instructional plans, and a “new behavior” stage focusing on what students gain—linked by two rounds of collaborative reflection between them. Together, these stages form an upward spiral of practice, reflection, and renewed practice. It was eventually distilled into the “three stages and two reflections” model of teacher action research, which has since been promoted nationwide. By integrating classroom observation, lesson-case discussion, and follow-up action into a shared analytical framework for researchers and teachers, the model enables fragmented and hard-to-articulate teaching experiences to be expressed, tested, and improved, thereby expanding the methodological repertoire of teacher education research.

The mathematics education reform experiment led by Professor Gu in Qingpu County, Shanghai, has continued for more than four decades, advancing through three successive phases—raising teaching quality on a large scale, overcoming bottlenecks in higher-order cognition, and promoting inquiry and creativity. It has identified a feasible pathway for raising teaching quality generally under ordinary educational conditions. In 1992, the former State Education Commission recognized the Qingpu Experiment as a major achievement in basic education reform and promoted its findings nationwide. Its practices have also been drawn on by schools in a number of other countries. His methodological innovations have further transformed how educational knowledge is produced: experience screening and action education have provided a methodological basis for localities to carry out school-based research and to build school-based teaching research systems, shifting educational reform from transplanting external models toward distilling knowledge from local classrooms. In 2021, he delivered a plenary address at the 14th International Congress on Mathematical Education, becoming the second Chinese scholar after Hua Luogeng to do so.

Professor Leslie Nai Kwai Lo is the Founding Dean of the Faculty of Education at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He formerly served as Wei Lun Chair Professor of Educational Administration and Policy, Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research, and Director of the Quality School Improvement Project (QSIP) in Hong Kong. His longstanding scholarship in comparative education, teacher education, and school improvement has had wide influence on teacher studies and school change in Chinese societies. His central methodological contribution lies in pursuing school-improvement research through sustained university–school partnerships and applying cultural-historical activity theory to analyze action and learning in school change. A broad comparative perspective and close inquiry in schools have shaped his rich, nuanced understanding of teacher learning and school improvement.

Methodologically, Professor Lo has developed an approach to studying teacher learning within actual improvement processes: he advocates that researchers, principals, and teachers work together on concrete problems, use classroom observation, interviews, and discussion to illuminate professional judgments, and study teacher learning through collaborative lesson planning, trial teaching, lesson review, and reflection. He applies cultural-historical activity theory as an analytical framework to examine the actions of school development officers, seconded teachers, and school members, analyzing how they use cultural tools, understand school rules, and develop professional identities. This framework clarifies how external support interacts with schools’ existing ways of working and how participants exercise choice and initiative during collaboration. By situating teacher learning within change processes and institutional contexts, this method provides an analytical tool for understanding how shared work helps schools develop their own capacity for growth.

Through field observation and interviews, Lo’s school-improvement research also examines the sustainability of reform, analyzing communities, rules, divisions of responsibility, and exchanges of experience within partnerships and studying how insights developed through shared work are accumulated, shared, and used in subsequent practice. In comparative studies of Hong Kong, Macao, and Chinese mainland, he examines tensions between teacher empowerment and discipline and the organizational and institutional conditions of professional growth; in collaborative research on theories of teacher development, he further analyzes policy and practice in relation to epistemology, rationality, and power. By connecting professional development with school change and testing it across regions, this method provides a scholarly basis for understanding why reform can endure and the conditions under which international experience is relevant.

Since the 1990s, Professor Lo has led or participated in educational development initiatives in Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and continued to mentor scholars in educational research and teacher education. His university–school partnership and activity-theory methods have opened a path for school-improvement research to generate knowledge through genuine collaboration, exerting a profound influence on teacher studies and school-change research in Chinese societies and beyond. Chinese school experience thus offers an important reference for international understanding of educational change across institutional and cultural settings.

Ellen B. Goldring is Distinguished Research Dean and Patricia and Rodes Hart Chair at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, a member of the National Academy of Education, and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Her longstanding scholarship in educational leadership and school improvement is distinguished by a central methodological contribution: translating educational leadership theory into observable, measurable behavioral indicators and developing a testable, improvable system for assessing school leadership, thereby establishing a rigorous methodological foundation for educational leadership research.

To investigate how school leadership supports student learning, Professor Goldring and her collaborators developed the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education (VAL-ED), a learning-centered leadership assessment framework defining leadership responsibilities in curriculum, instruction, learning culture, and community relationships and parsing principals’ work into observable behaviors such as planning, implementation, support, advocacy, communication, and monitoring. Methodologically, the framework integrates principals’ self-assessments, teacher ratings, and supervisor ratings, requiring raters to identify the behavioral evidence behind their judgments so that different observational perspectives can cross-check one another. Cognitive interviews, fairness reviews, field testing, and psychometric analyses were conducted throughout instrument development to systematically establish evidence of reliability and validity, while performance standards link scores to professionally meaningful levels of leadership. By connecting theory, behavioral indicators, and assessment standards, this work provides a testable, discussable, and improvable basis for assessing complex leadership practices—an important advance in the measurement of school leadership.

Professor Goldring has advanced leadership measurement beyond questions of what to measure and how accurately it can be measured to the deeper question of how results are interpreted and used. She has examined discrepancies between principals’ self-assessments and teacher ratings, investigating how principals interpret and respond to feedback and showing how it can either stimulate reflection or provoke defensiveness. In professional development research, her team has also integrated estimates of intervention effects with participation records, implementation evidence, and interviews to understand why programs fall short of expectations. By examining program effects, implementation conditions, and educators’ responses together, this approach extends the boundaries of assessment research and ensures that measurement genuinely serves school improvement.

Professor Goldring also emphasizes that assessment must be understood in relation to the organizational, policy, and cultural conditions in which schools operate. This stance offers methodological insights for researchers across different educational systems seeking to learn from international experience while developing assessment approaches responsive to local needs. Her assessment framework and multi-source measurement approach have informed educational leadership research and principal evaluation and professional development practices in different countries, advancing the field from experience-based judgment toward evidence-informed professional practice. In doing so, her work has contributed significantly to knowledge production in educational leadership and to school-improvement research internationally. Having served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), the flagship journal of the American Educational Research Association, and through academic exchange, doctoral mentoring, and journal editorial work, she promotes scholarly rigor and supports the development and growth of emerging scholars, always keeping in view the growth of educators and the development of schools.

Simon Schwartzman is a Full Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Grand Cross of the Brazilian National Order of Scientific Merit and of the National Order of Educational Merit, an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Economic Policy Studies (Casa das Garças), a former President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and a former President of the Brazilian Sociological Society. Throughout his career, he has combined a deep concern for Brazilian society with an international outlook on higher education and science policy. His scholarship connects the history of education with the challenges of the present. It brings institutional insight to the interpretation of evidence and a strong sense of public responsibility to the methodological reflection. In doing so, he has made outstanding contributions to our understanding of universities, knowledge, and society, exemplifying a scholarly commitment to rigorous inquiry and engagement with the challenges of our time.

With a profound sense of history and a keen understanding of institutions, Professor Schwartzman has broadened the horizons of comparative education research. His study of the formation of Brazil’s scientific community, first published in Portuguese and later revised in English as A Space for Science, combines historical sources with interviews with scientists to illuminate the profound connections between the development of scientific communities, universities, the state, and society. Through this work, the Brazilian experience has acquired scholarly significance far beyond its national setting. His historical and institutional approach invites scholars to understand educational change within specific social contexts and to make comparisons across different paths of development. It gives educational inquiry both historical depth and a clear connection to the concerns of the present.

Professor Schwartzman has also brought clarity and critical judgement to educational measurement and assessment, guided by a rigorous regard for evidence and a commitment to the public good. In Uses and Abuses of Education Assessment in Brazil, he examined why improvements in indicators do not necessarily signify improvements in educational quality, emphasizing that the technical quality of measurement, the practical uses of assessment, and institutional conditions must be aligned. His work brings technical judgement into close relation with educational purpose, clarifying the conditions under which data can provide a sound basis for evaluation and policy. It offers an important reference for establishing more rigorous standards of evidence and a stronger sense of public responsibility in educational assessment, demonstrating the value of empirical research in advancing educational development.

His intellectual openness has also helped advance the study of knowledge production and the changing relationship between universities and society. With Michael Gibbons and other colleagues, he co-authored The New Production of Knowledge and jointly developed the analytical framework known as “Mode 2” knowledge production. Their work drew attention to knowledge produced in contexts of application, through collaboration across disciplines and participation of diverse organizations. This framework connected the creation of knowledge more closely with societal needs, broadened our understanding of the university’s mission and the organization of research. It opened new perspectives on the relationship between scholarly quality and social responsibility. Professor Schwartzman’s contribution to this shared endeavor exemplifies a pursuit of knowledge that crosses disciplinary and national boundaries, and continues to inspire educational research adressing complex social problems.

Grounded in Brazil and Latin America, Professor Schwartzman has made local experience an important resource for international scholarly dialogue and has continually extended the map of comparative education research. The volume he co-edited, Higher Education in the BRICS Countries: Investigating the Pact between Higher Education and Society, examines the relationship between higher education and society across five countries, including China, and shows the diverse paths of educational development shaped by different institutional traditions and social demands. Work of this kind widens discussion of the university and its public responsibilities to encompass a broader range of social experience, and offers researchers in each country a valuable reference for understanding the history and present circumstances of their own educational development and for forming well-grounded interpretations in international comparison. With a scholarly spirit that respects difference and weighs evidence with care, he encourages countries to seek reform paths suited to their own conditions as they learn from international experience.

Krista R. Muis is James McGill Professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University, where she directs the eMUIS Lab. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Fellow of the Division 15 of the American Psychological Association. Her longstanding research on epistemic cognition, emotion, and self-regulated learning examines how people understand knowledge, evaluate evidence, and continue learning in the face of confusion and uncertainty. Her central contribution lies in investigating complex learning through contextualized measurement and process analysis, moving from the clarification of psychological constructs to the investigation of actual learning processes and thereby deepening our understanding of complex learning through rigorous, meticulous scholarship.

In measuring epistemic beliefs, Professor Muis makes pioneering use of cognitive interviews to examine measurement validity through response processes. She investigates how students understand questionnaire items and formulate answers, identifying possible discrepancies between students’ actual understanding and researchers’ assumptions and providing evidence for refining measurement instruments. She also examines epistemic beliefs at general, domain-specific, and topic-specific levels, arguing that learners’ views of knowledge in general, their beliefs about particular disciplines, and their judgments about specific issues require analysis at corresponding levels. By connecting measurement with knowledge content and learning tasks, this approach provides a nuanced basis for distinguishing and measuring epistemic beliefs and advances the empirical examination of relevant theoretical frameworks.

To understand how learners think and regulate their learning when facing complex tasks, Professor Muis has examined, at a theoretical level, how epistemic beliefs enter into task interpretation, the setting of learning standards, and metacognitive monitoring, and incorporates epistemic emotions into research models. Her contribution to the development and validation of emotion scales enables curiosity, confusion, anxiety, and other emotions to be distinguished and measured in epistemic activity. In studies of mathematical problem-solving and complex learning about climate change, she combines questionnaires, think-aloud evidence, and task performance to investigate epistemic judgments, emotional experiences, and strategy use, documenting different phases of learning to reveal how confusion arises, how learners respond, and how these processes relate to understanding and reasoning. This approach examines beliefs about knowledge, emotions, and self-regulation together within authentic learning activities, using process evidence to explain how learners handle conflicting information, thereby expanding the methodological repertoire of complex learning research.

Professor Muis also applies insights into learning processes to inform cognitive-emotional strategy training and digital-literacy interventions, examining how theoretical insights can help students solve complex problems and evaluate online information. Her research spans age groups from children to adults, and her research projects seek to develop methods beyond self-report, allowing learners’ actual performance and activity to be considered alongside questionnaire evidence. These methodological contributions have profoundly influenced knowledge production in educational psychology and complex learning research worldwide: amid increasingly diverse information sources and conflicting viewpoints, they provide empirical support for helping learners sustain curiosity, navigate confusion, and form well-founded judgments, enabling educational psychology to offer a more comprehensive explanation of how people come to know and learn.