On February 28, 2024, the results of the 2023 Shanghai Silver Pigeon Award selection and the Promotion of Chinese Culture Globally special support fund project evaluation were announced. The event was guided and supported by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Shanghai Municipal Committee and organized by the Municipal Foreign Publicity Office. TEC’s submitted project Shanghai Mathematics International Communication, which focuses on building the global narrative capacity of Chinese educational stories and truly spreads Chinese educational experiences through practical efforts, was successfully selected into the list of special support fund projects. Meanwhile, due to the outstanding achievements of the project team’s series of communication activities in Africa, it also won the Excellence Award of the Shanghai Silver Pigeon Award. It is the only development education communication project among Shanghai’s universities to achieve a double success of winning an award and receiving special support funds.
The project is guided by Professor Zhang Minxuan, Director of TEC, and Professor Hu Guoyong, Deputy Director of TEC. The core research team includes Professor Huang Xingfeng, Dr. Ding Ruoxi, and Dr. Jiang Zheng, with graduate students from Shanghai Normal University such as Zhang Yunji, Zhu Jiawen, Cheng Jialei, Shen Junyi, Wei Xiaoyu, and Shen Ruixia as members of the project implementation team.
A group photo of some project team members at work
The journey of Shanghai Mathematics going global began when Shanghai students topped the PISA tests consecutively in 2009 and 2012. The Chinese and British governments reached an in-depth cooperation agreement on mathematics education, with the UK Department for Education fully funding the China-UK Mathematics Teacher Exchange Program with 41 million pounds. This program was incorporated into the China-UK High-Level People-to-People Exchange Mechanism. Over eight years, more than 1,000 primary and secondary school mathematics teachers exchanged visits. The teaching theories, thinking, methods, and resources of Shanghai Mathematics benefited 40 mathematics centers, 30,000 mathematics teachers, and nearly one million students in the UK. Commissioned by Collins Publishing, TEC organized the translation of 24 volumes of Shanghai mathematics textbooks for use in 8,000 British schools. Thanks to learning from Shanghai’s mathematics experience, British students have significantly improved their mathematics scores in major international tests (such as TIMSS and PISA) in recent years, entering the world’s top tier.
To better promote the international dissemination of Shanghai Mathematics, TEC, while inheriting and carrying forward Shanghai’s mathematics education traditions, integrated digital technology to develop a diverse and three-dimensional international digital teaching resource library for Shanghai mathematics – Share Maths. It aims to serve the professional development of mathematics teachers worldwide and the mathematics learning of primary and secondary school students, spreading Shanghai’s mathematics education experience globally. Relying on this rich resource library, TEC has established cooperation with professional associations and universities in many countries. In 2020, TEC collaborated with the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers on cross-cultural online research projects; in 2021, it carried out cross-cultural online lesson studies with American universities; in 2023, it held discussions with Susan Sclafani, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education, Professor Yan Zheng, former Assistant to the President of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Irina Lyublinskaya from Teachers College, Columbia University, on plans to carry out mathematics teacher exchange programs with private primary and secondary schools in New York, Boston and other regions.
Guided by General Secretary Xi Jinping’s concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind, TEC’s project team has made great efforts in recent years to develop Chinese solutions for promoting global educational development and global educational governance, and has carried out development education communication activities involving multiple countries, audiences, and forms in Africa. Since 2021, TEC has collaborated with the World Bank to train mathematics educators in Tanzania. From 2021 to 2023, through cloud-based teaching research, TEC held 4 training courses for mathematics teachers from 14 teacher training colleges (accounting for 1/3 of the country’s total) and 5 primary and secondary schools in Tanzania. In 2023, the project team led Shanghai primary and secondary school teachers to work in Tanzanian universities, primary and secondary schools, conducting three-week mathematics teaching research activities for 150 local teachers. At the same time, TEC received two groups of mathematics education visiting delegations, with over 150 Tanzanian national education officials, mathematics teachers, and experts from international organizations participating in immersive learning of Shanghai’s mathematics experience in Shanghai. TEC has also trained over 3,000 educators from ASEAN countries such as Indonesia, Laos, and Thailand, as well as 40 countries along the Belt and Road, vividly showcasing Shanghai’s mathematics education experience.
With the strong support of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government, the circle of friends of Shanghai Mathematics has continued to expand. The project has been widely reported by the Chinese government, major international organizations, and mainstream media at home and abroad, with a total circulation and readership of over one million.
In the next five years, the project team will continue to reach out to six continents, spreading Shanghai Mathematics in at least 3 countries or regions each year, publicly publishing Share Maths resources to benefit grassroots schools, training 5,000 educational officials and teachers, and serving 250,000 primary and secondary school students.
