The power of China's educational innovation is clear to see

The sixth China Education Innovation Expo is set to be held in Zhuhai city in Guangdong province

The sixth China Education Innovation Expo, sponsored by Beijing Normal University, will be held from Nov 18 to 21 at the Zhuhai International Convention and Exhibition Center in Zhuhai city, Guangdong province.

The event strives to share innovative achievements, thoughts and practices in basic education and teacher education, promote the spirit of educators and boost China's high-quality education development in the new era.

Themed "Together, Sharing, Innovation — High-quality Development of Education", this year's expo focuses on six major areas: balanced and high-quality education, new curriculum reform, teacher team construction, digital education, quality evaluation of education and modernization of education governance.

Covering an area of about 30,000 square meters, the expo will set up 1,100 workshops, hold more than 100 brand activities, themed forums and special events, and showcase about 2,200 outstanding domestic and international innovation achievements across five exhibition halls.

Special themed exhibitions will highlight science education, family education, project-based learning, future design, future media and digital literacy. The expo will also host its first batch of sub-brand forums including the China school principal forum, the project-based learning forum toward core literacy, the BNU science education conference, the forum on collaborative education among home, school and society, the forum on high-quality innovative development of basic education in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the forum on evaluation reform and high-quality development in basic education.

At the same time, it will pay attention to the innovative application of artificial intelligence and big data, invite leading educational information technology companies to participate, set up AR/VR and educational informatization special exhibition areas and hold high-level forums on the digital transformation of education.

As a leader in Chinese teacher education, BNU has adhered to the principle of building and sharing educational innovation achievements, gathering Chinese educational innovation wisdom, serving Chinese educational innovation practice, voicing Chinese educational innovation, providing Chinese educational innovation solutions and influencing global educational innovation trends in the process of organizing the expo.

Cheng Jianping, Party Secretary of BNU, said that the expo is a support to enhance the most advanced educational innovations at home and abroad, expand China's open cooperation with countries around the world and to respond to the nation's innovation-driven development strategy, laying a foundation for building a community with a shared future for mankind.

He said BNU is willing to work with sister universities and all sectors of society to create an open, synergistic and interconnected educational innovation platform, accelerate the modernization of education and fulfill its responsibilities in building a strong country of education.

The expo has been held for five sessions since 2015, showcasing the national experiences of educational innovation and development. It has exhibited more than 4,000 innovation achievements, organized more than 1,700 activities and attracted more than 300,000 participants.

Currently it is the education event hosted by universities in China, which aims at the development of educational connotation, provides comprehensive services for national strategies and promotes education innovation and reform.

In 2019, the expo was featured on the official website of UNESCO, becoming an international example for bolstering educational innovation and curriculum and learning for a new era.

Mmantsetsa Marope, then director of the International Bureau of Education at UNESCO, said at the closing ceremony of the fifth expo in 2019 that the event integrates cultural heritage with educational innovation, brings together the best educational innovation practices from many places and provides an excellent platform for communication among different countries.

She believes that innovation is at the core of the education system and educational innovation involves all aspects.

"We must integrate resources from all parties and put them into an ecosystem, so that people from all walks of life can become educational innovators," she added.

The expo is a gathering place and incubator for educational innovation achievements and the most distinctive part is the SERVE Award selection. Insiders said the initials of the five core elements are: solution, example, rule, value and education.

The SERVE model was proposed in 2015 and has become an important criterion for selecting exhibition achievements. It awards outstanding educational innovation achievements that boast the correct values, systematic solutions, successful examples, clear rules and reality-oriented education.

They hope to form common standards and criteria and improve the quality in the process of discovering, cultivating and selecting educational innovation achievements.

They expect that the innovative achievements can be duplicated and promoted, better serving education, every school, teacher and student.

They said that China has a total of more than 18.8 million teachers, which not only support the world's largest education system, but form the core for innovative development of the education cause.

The expo allows teachers to share stories, exchange experiences and generate a resonance of innovative practices.

The event is hoped to be built into a harbor for teachers' professional growth, a home for teachers' co-construction and sharing and a highland to stimulate teachers' innovation vitality.

Ma Jun, president of BNU, said that the university is constructing an integrated educational framework with the Beijing Campus and Zhuhai Campus as its two wings.

It is committed to developing its Zhuhai Campus into a highland for cultivating outstanding teachers and top-notch innovative talents, which will serve the national strategic needs and contribute to scientific research and innovation in the Bay Area.

He said the expo should establish its roots in the Bay Area, radiate throughout China and face the world, and support the construction of an innovative base that integrates government, industry, academia, research and application.

In recent years, BNU and Zhuhai have established normalized cooperation in the fields of basic education, teacher education, family education and science education, working together to create an educational innovation ecosystem.

Li Chong, deputy mayor of Zhuhai, said: "We are committed to incubating the expo as a vital calling card for Zhuhai in the world. We hope to make full use of Zhuhai's innovation resources, favorable policies and solid educational foundation to build Zhuhai into an important source of educational innovation."

wangjinhui@chinadaily.com.cn