2 . A new study from North Carolina State University found that biology textbooks have done a poor job of including material related to climate change. For example, the study found that most biology textbooks published in the 2010s included less information about climate change than they did in the previous decade--despite significant advances in our understanding of how climate change is influencing ecosystems and the environment.

“In short, we found biology textbooks are failing to share enough information about climate change, which is a generation-defining topic in the life sciences,” says Jennifer Landin, author of the study. “These books are the baseline texts for helping students understand the science of life on Earth, yet they are providing very little information about a phenomenon that is having a great impact on habitats, ecosystems, agriculture--almost every aspect (方面) of life on Earth,”

For the study, researchers investigated coverage of climate change in 57 college biology textbooks published between 1970 and 2019. The researchers found climate coverage has varied greatly over those five decades and that the amount of climate coverage in textbooks fell off in the 2010s. In addition to length, the nature of the content has also changed greatly over time.

“One of the most troubling findings was that textbooks are devoting less space to addressing climate solutions now than they did in the 1990s--even as they focus more on the effects of climate change,” Landin says. “That suggests to students that nothing can be done,which is both wildly misleading and contributes to a sense of fatalism (宿命论) regarding cli-mate change.”

“We are hoping that this study will serve as a wake-up call for publishers and instructors. We need to do a much better job of putting climate change into our courses if we want to pre-pare students to understand the role that climate change is playing in shaping life on Earth and how we study it,” Landin says.

3 . “The arrival of ChatGPT will push educators to focus more on teaching subjects that technology is not good at.” Andreas Schleicher said, who is director of education and skills for the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. He welcomes this development and thinks it gives people the chance to concentrate less on tasks that technology can also do well.

The future is not about technology vs humans. The future is about integrating technology with humans. ChatGPT pushes us to think harder of what makes us human.

“The world no longer rewards you just for what you know. Baidu knows everything. The world rewards you for what you can do with what you know, and ChatGPT pushes us to work harder on this. If students are only as smart as a smartphone, it means educators are not doing enough. People should focus on developing human skills that actually are important, such as imagination and creativity.” Schleicher said in an interview with China Daily on the sidelines of the World Digital Education Conference.

The arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) really pushes people to think hard about what education is and the purpose it serves, as well as what knowledge, skills, attitudes and values humans have that complement (补充) artificial intelligence.

ChatGPT is not connected to the Internet, so it can’t replace search engines. Search engines such as Google or Baidu simply extract (提取) knowledge, while ChatGPT goes a step further and analyzes a search before providing a single answer.

As a device, ChatGPT is going to make learning much more interesting and powerful, but as a purpose and objective, humans need to work very hard to win that race with technology.

4 . Teaching is widely recognized to be a stressful occupation, characterized by numerous and varied challenges: administrative burdens, long hours, classroom management difficulties, to name but a few.     1     They are also paid less than other workers with similar experience and education, a gap that has grown from 4.3% in 1996 to 17% in 2015. Further, teachers face significant social and political scrutiny as to how they do their jobs . 

    2     The statistics on teacher turnover are grim: Research estimates that between 19% and 30% of new teachers leave the field within the first five years of teaching, which can reduce the team spirits of their campus community and negatively affect student learning. In the most recent PDK poll, half of teachers surveyed said they had considered leaving the profession within the last year, with low pay and high stress most frequently cited as the reasons. Of course, teacher stress is not unique to the United States. In fact, research has yielded remarkably consistent findings around the world, with roughly 20-25% of the teaching workforce reporting high levels of stress.

But if it’s clear that teacher stress is widespread, it’s not always clear how teacher stress should be defined. Traditionally, educational policy research has focused on working conditions (i.e., school administration) as the main driver of occupational health. That is, teacher stress tends to be viewed as a result of working in a stressful environment, often characterized as lacking sufficient funding or effective leadership.     3     In many schools, some teachers are stressed out while others are not; but if working conditions were all that mattered, then every teacher in the school would be equally stressed.

Chris Kyriacou and others have argued that teacher stress is better understood as resulting from a mismatch between the pressures and demands made on educators and their ability to cope with those demands. Workforce conditions alone are not sufficient to explain why some teachers are highly stressed. Rather, what matters most is how each teacher sees the demands they face in relation to the resources they have available to meet those demands.     4     And if this is true, then it should be possible to identify and intervene with teachers who are most vulnerable to stress, above and beyond efforts to improve the larger working environment.

6 . I’ve been giving lots of thought recently to the teaching of the science subject at schools. I’m wondering whether spending more time learning how we “do” science--the scientific method--is more valuable than simply making children memorize scientific “facts”.

After all, science isn’t a collection of facts about the world. That’s just called “knowledge”. Rather, science is a process of thinking and making sense of the world, which will then lead to new knowledge. We’ve often heard it said that we should be teaching children not what to think but how to think. However, schools now spend so much of the science subject loading up children’s brains with “knowledge”.

Surely, everyone needs a basic scientific understanding. We all need to know some science: facts about the world to help us make informed decisions about important issues that face us all in our everyday lives, from the risks of smoking to the benefits of exercising or why recycling our waste is good for the planet.

Yet what seems to be missing today is an understanding of the way we gain this scientific understanding of the world. Nowadays, social media has played a significant role in spreading information. However, many people use it as a medium for spreading disinformation or harmful opinions. But social media has only enlarged the societal problem that has been with us.

On top of this, our attention spans (时长) are naturally getting shorter, and we don’t take the time to question our views, or ask whether the information we are getting is reliable. This is where thinking scientifically can help. Adopting some of the ways that good science is practiced can help us to critically assess what we believe, question our own views before we attack views we don’t like, and so on. This is exactly why we should be teaching more of scientific methods in schools. This remarkable way of seeing, thinking and knowing, is one of humankind’s great riches and the birthright of everyone. And, most wonderfully, it only grows in quality and value the more widely it is shared.

7 . Every parent wants their children to develop well.     1    . However, for a child, play is the main way of interacting with the world, mastering new knowledge and skills. The game performs several functions.

    2    . Through the game, the child learns new skills and develops speech, thinking and logic, memory, attention and other mental functions. This applies not only to special educational games, but outdoor games which promote physical development and strengthen the health of the child. Also, any games develop creativity and imagination.

Way of communication. A game for a child is also a way to convey to an adult their experiences: joys, anxieties, fears, hopes, expectations. Often, through the game, the child tells parents something important about himself and learns something important about his parents. The game is a way to be closer, to feel the support, care and love of parents.     3    .

Development of social skill and familiarity with social roles.     4    . Through the game, children learn about the concepts of “good” and “bad”. In games, children learn different social roles: they learn to be parents, friends, teachers, doctors, kings and presidents. Many games develop independence and responsibility, teach the child to overcome difficulties, take care of others, give gifts and share.

Pleasure and joy. The game brings pleasure, joy and a lot of other positive emotions to the child and the significance of this cannot be underestimated (after all, even for adults, positive emotions are very important: they support us, help us develop and look at life positively).     5    . It is the key to the full development of the individual.

9 . In the live-streaming (直播) channel of Yang Weiyun, no singing or dancing is performed nor are products sold. Yang teaches pinyin, reading and writing, something that has been most familiar to her for the past 50 years. The difference is her students are mostly adults.

The 73-year-old comes from Huainan city of Anhui province and is an experienced educator. She had been a Chinese teacher in an elementary school for 50 years. In retirement, Yang also wanted to do something meaningful. The rise of short video platforms gave her the idea of continuing her education attempt through live-streaming online. The retiree opened her live-streaming account in May 2021 and offered free pinyin courses designed for kindergarten pupils about to attend primary schools. However, she gradually learned among her viewers there are a lot of illiterate (文盲) adults.

Yang said she found many illiterate adults develop a sense of lack of confidence. They are afraid to go to new places, worried that they couldn’t teach their children or read their boss’s instructions. So, she added targeted content to meet their needs. “Many illiterate adults didn’t have the chance to go to school when they were young. They are the ones in urgent need of becoming literate. I wanted to give them a new starting point,” Yang said.

According to the seventh national census (人口普查) carried out last year, there are 38 million illiterate adults in China. Yang’s live-streaming channel offers an easy and private way for those who want to overcome adult illiteracy.

Yang said students learning through her live-streaming channel each have their own demands. So she always prepares her classes carefully after concluding a live-streaming session. She has tried her best to figure out what ways the students can learn and remember better, and her biggest wish now is to see these students graduate from her classes.