The Second “Global Award for Innovation in Education Research Methods” presented in Shanghai

Established in 2024 on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the Forum on Empirical Education Research, this prestigious international award recognizes scholars whose pioneering work in education research methodology has significantly advanced theory, practice, and innovation in the field. It aims to highlight transformative approaches that inspire new ways of understanding teaching, learning, and educational systems worldwide.

Five distinguished scholars were honored with the award for their groundbreaking contributions:

Professor Ruth Hayhoe (University of Toronto) is a profoundly influential and highly respected comparative educator and expert in Chinese education studies. Her career integrates multiple identities as a scholar, diplomat, and university administrator, endowing her research with deep cultural insight, a broad global perspective, and strong practical concern. She is one of the few Western scholars capable of deeply understanding and bridging Chinese and Western educational philosophy and history, promoting deep dialogue and mutual learning among civilizations.

Her groundbreaking contribution lies in her development and practice of a “dialogue among civilizations” research paradigm, transcending binary oppositions and requiring deep immersion into another culture’s history, philosophy, and values. In works such as China’s Universities 1895–1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict and Portraits of Chinese Educators, she draws on China’s cultural resources to interpret the internal logic of educational development. She creatively proposed the “Chinese university model,” breaking the hegemony of a singular Western paradigm and supporting educational autonomy in non-Western societies. Her historico–culturalist approach integrates historical trajectories and local philosophical traditions, revealing deep cultural dynamics underlying educational change and promoting an ethic of equality and pluralism in comparative research.

Professor Stephen Raudenbush is the Lewis-Sebring Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a principal participant and methodological contributor to the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. His notable achievement lies in developing and promoting hierarchical linear models, extensively applied in the design and analysis of longitudinal and multilevel research.

In Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods, he pioneered and systematically articulated this powerful statistical framework, capable of simultaneously processing nested data and revealing interactive effects of multi-level factors, such as students, classes, and schools. The book ranked third among the 100 most-cited works in the American Journal of Sociology between 2008 and 2012, offering ample practical guidance and achieving an excellent balance between applied examples and technical rigor.

Prof. Raudenbush has pioneered the development of digital assessment tools for preschool language and numeracy skills, rigorously validated through randomized controlled trials. His work demonstrates the feasibility of timely, personalized interventions and provides data-driven tools to help developmentally delayed children “catch up,” bridging statistical innovation with real-world educational needs.

Professor Manabu Sato (The University of Tokyo) is a renowned leader in educational reform and a pioneer in curriculum research and practice. For over forty years, he has visited thousands of classrooms worldwide, redefining the boundaries of educational research through concrete action. He developed the influential “School as Learning Community” reform model, profoundly shaping educational practices in Japan and East Asia.

The core of his methodology is “research as practice” and “practice as research,” viewing classrooms as rich laboratories for educational inquiry. He emphasizes classroom observation and “lesson study,” requiring researchers to immerse themselves as humble learners, meticulously observing students’ processes of listening, dialogue, and collaborative inquiry. He integrates ant’s-eye, dragonfly’s-eye, and bird’s-eye perspectives into a multidimensional observational framework.

Listening is central to Prof. Sato’s thought—teachers listening to students, teachers listening to each other, and students listening to peers—supported by his threefold dialogical structure: dialogue with the objective world, with others, and with oneself. His reform model, based on publicness, democracy, and excellence, reconstructs classrooms through listening and collaboration, promotes teacher growth through collegiality, and revitalizes education through community cooperation.

Professor Shanmai Wang (Beijing Normal University) is one of the key founders and pioneers of educational economics in China, exerting profound influence on both theory and policy. He systematically constructed and refined the disciplinary system of educational economics, proposing a research framework suited to China’s national context. His edited works, including Introduction to Educational Economics and Research on Educational Input and Output, have become widely influential textbooks and references.

Professor Wang established an empirically based, institutionally contextualized, and problem-oriented methodological paradigm. Grounded in China’s educational reform and development, he employed rigorous economic analysis while considering the country’s unique institutional environment. He focused on resource allocation, integrating efficiency, equity, and adequacy into a comprehensive policy evaluation framework that guided major fiscal reforms.

He built a research system integrating quantitative and qualitative methods and developed a scientific indicator system and econometric models for educational finance. His work clarified government–market responsibility boundaries and supported the establishment of the national fiscal education expenditure target of 4% of GDP. His methodology also produced influential frameworks for evaluating educational equity within socioeconomic contexts and offered a model for developing countries seeking localized educational economics research.

Professor Rupert Wegerif (University of Cambridge) is the founder and director of the Digital Education Futures Initiative and has published influential work in educational theory, psychology, and technology, focusing on technology-supported dialogic education. His research demonstrates theoretical foresight, technological innovation, and educational inclusivity.

He argues that future education must cultivate “sparks” of thinking and innovative exploration. AI threatens education not by its existence but by reinforcing “monologue-style” teaching that overemphasizes standardized answers. He vigorously advocates dialogic education, asserting that genuine thinking arises from dialogue—between individuals, between humans and technology, and with the unknown future. Through the generation of collective intelligence, learners collaboratively construct knowledge and address global issues, offering an important lens for integrating humanistic care with educational digitalization.

Prof. Wegerif translates theory into practice through actionable teaching tools and intelligent platforms, such as Argunaut, Swarm AI, and Edubots, which analyze dialogue quality and support creativity and collective intelligence. His interdisciplinary methodology synthesizes philosophy, sociology, and AI, addressing the deep philosophical foundations of human cognition. He has creatively established new paradigms and technologies for dialogue-based educational research in the digital age.

Together, these awardees represent a remarkable spectrum of innovation—from comparative-historical inquiry and quantitative modeling to practice-based classroom observation, educational economics, and AI-enhanced dialogic learning. Their work exemplifies how creativity, methodological rigor, and practical relevance can drive the future of global education.

The 2025 Global Award ceremony not only celebrated these scholarly achievements but also highlighted the importance of advancing international collaboration, methodological innovation, and research that addresses the complex challenges of 21st-century education. As stated by Professor Zhenguo Yuan, head of the Faculty of Education, “We hope to take this award as a starting point, focus on innovations in education research methods, actively participate in promoting new developments in global education research, and guide China’s empirical education research to better engage with the world.”