“Building Digital Communities” is one of the ten major actions of the New Education Initiative. This paper aims to systematically review over two decades of theoretical exploration and practical experience in the “Building Digital Communities” action of the New Education Initiative, elucidating its essence, value, principles, and methodologies. With the core concept of living a happy and complete educational life, this paper deeply integrates technologies including Internet, big data, and generative AI, to plan new pathways for action upgrades in the digital-intelligent era and explore more possibilities for technology-empowered education. This paper calls for the joint construction of digital-intelligent communities and the co-creation of a new educational ecosystem, contributing the wisdom and strength of New Education to the construction of a socialist modernization strong country in education.

In the current field of Chinese humanities and social sciences, there is a paradigm shift from viewing indigenous analytical units as “objects” or “ends” to using them as “methods”. This shift aims to identify analytical units sensitive to capturing Chinese experiences, thereby constructing an autonomous knowledge system that fosters subjectivity and global dialogue. The “Chinese class headteacher” is such a unit, deeply embedded in Chinese basic education in China amid the successive transformations of Chinese path to education modernization. Its development reflects issues like the paradox of division of labor, individual-collective tensions, management myths, and discourse gaps.As a self-revolution in class headteacher research, it requires researchers to reconstruct an overall perspective on “the Chinese class headteacher”, inherit and develop the traditional Chinese academic research qualities and ethical responsibilities of seeking knowledge from facts. The specific practical approach lies in the two-way unfolding of “historicizing present experiences” and “localizing global perspectives”.

Amid intensifying global competition for academic discourse power, Chinese education scholars face a strategic imperative: communicating China’s educational narratives and innovating indigenous knowledge production paradigms to transcend “dependent knowledge creation.” Jing Zhou from Fujian Normal University and Jun Li, President of the Chinese Education Association, engaged in a dialogue focusing on educational narrative dissemination, the nexus between narrative and knowledge production, and pathways for emerging interdisciplinary development, reaching profound consensus. Jun Li emphasized that authentically communicating China’s educational stories requires respecting narrative diversity among stakeholders and adhering to the principle of “listening before speaking” alongside the JTB (truth, belief, justification) framework. His practice in constructing an autonomous knowledge system follows the pathway of “educational narrative→knowledge production→disciplinary development.” He proposed institutionalizing disciplines, cultivating international academic influence, and fostering cross-cultural scholarly communities to transform China’s educational experience into a discipline with both local distinctiveness and global relevance, thereby contributing to an independent pedagogical knowledge system.

As generative artificial intelligence (GAI) becomes increasingly embedded in educational practice, the inherent limitations of traditional self-regulated learning theory are becoming more pronounced: ontologically, it neglects the mediating role of the body; epistemologically, it adheres to a linear regulation paradigm; and in practice, it faces the challenge of fragmented technological support—making it difficult to effectively address learners’ complex developmental needs in learning to learn. With its generativity, human-computer interactivity, higher-order capabilities, and autonomy, GAI transcends the dualistic cognitive structure of subject and object. It co-constructs a triadic system of “subject-mediator (technology)-object” with the learner, thereby reshaping the meaning of “learning to learn” toward a model characterized by human-machine collaboration and directly addressing “Jobs question”. In this context, generative self-regulated learning (GSRL) emerges. Guided by dialectical constructivism and Vygotsky’s cognitive development theory at the macro level, and supported by micro-theoretical frameworks of human-technology relationship theory, embodied cognition theory, and dialogic theory, GSRL constructs a triple-loop pathway—“pure thinking-embodied experience-deep cognition”. This pathway not only redefines the logical framework of SRL but also enriches the contemporary connotation of “learning to learn”, signifying a genuine revolution of learning. At the same time, GSRL may pose risks such as loss of reflexivity, alienation of practice, deconstruction of subjectivity, and disruption of intersubjective communication. Therefore, a dialectical balance must be maintained between the instrumental rationality of technology and the value rationality of education, ensuring that education remains centered on human development and contributes to the construction of a Chinese educational knowledge system with both contemporary relevance and indigenous significance.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence is triggering a paradigmatic crisis in educational research. Through a critical inheritance of the “narrative turn” in the 1980s educational research, this study proposes the theory of the “second turn” in narrative inquiry for the AI era, constructing a new paradigm of “resisting data alienation” and “reconstructing humanistic narratives.” Centered on technological critique, the “second turn” achieves methodological breakthroughs via threefold paradigmatic innovation. Ontologically, it reveals how AI deconstructs and reconstructs educational experience, shifting narrative ontology from “human-centered experience” to a hybrid intentional existence of “human-technology-experience.” Epistemologically, guided by Feenberg’s secondary instrumentalization, it integrates techno-hermeneutics with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), redefining narrative production as a dynamic negotiation network between humans and technologies. Axiologically, it establishes a dynamic ethical review mechanism by embedding algorithm transparency audits and participatory negotiation procedures into research workflows, safeguarding the emancipatory potential of educational narratives. The practical pathways include transparent human-AI collaborative narrative collection, critically symbiotic human-machine decoding, technology-mediated narrative recreation, and dynamically negotiated ethical evaluation. Ultimately, the “second turn” fulfills dual missions: reconstructing narrative existential depth by resisting data alienation and building narrative resilience, while revolutionizing educational research’s humanistic character through constructing a techno-critical narrative community.

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes increasingly integrated into college students’ academic activities, some scholars and education administrators have expressed concerns about students’ blind reliance on GenAI and the potential weakening of higher-order thinking skills. Based on a survey of 12,678 undergraduates from 20 universities across China and empirical analysis, this study finds that most students exhibit a critical attitude when engaging in higher-order thinking tasks such as critical and creative activities with GenAI, and believe that GenAI-assisted learning positively contributes to their higher-order cognitive development. Furthermore, a latent profile analysis reveals four distinct types of GenAI-assisted learning users, reflecting the interaction between students' level of technology acceptance and their self-regulated learning abilities: (1) Cautious Experiencers (42%): low acceptance, high critical use; (2) Labor Substituters (24%): low acceptance, low critical use; (3) Balanced Explorers (21.2%): high acceptance, low critical use; (4) Deep Users (12.8%): high acceptance, high critical use. Based on these findings, the paper underscores the necessity for universities to guide undergraduates in the appropriate use of GenAI tools and proposes effective strategies such as targeted educational interventions and the cultivation of AI literacy. These measures aim to help students transition toward the ideal profile of "high acceptance – high critical use."

The implementation of curriculum standards is the process of transforming educational blueprints into reality, and the quality of its implementation largely determines the effectiveness of curriculum education. In response to the lack of research on the perspective of a nationwide implementation of the “Compulsory Education Information Technology Curriculum Standards (2022 Edition)”, this study conducted extensive research on information technology teachers nationwide using a scale survey method. The survey results reflect that most teachers have confidence in the reform of information technology curriculum standards, actively participate in curriculum standard learning, curriculum resource development and construction, and innovative teaching methods, and generally possess the basic competence of information technology curriculum teaching; At the same time, there are problems such as teachers' professional mismatch, insufficient understanding of curriculum standards, difficulty in supporting high-quality implementation of curriculum standards with existing curriculum resources, and inadequate appropriateness of teaching methods. Based on the actual situation of information technology curriculum construction, corresponding measures can be taken systematically from the aspects of optimizing teacher allocation, improving educational and teaching capabilities, innovating teaching methods, constructing digital and intelligent resource supply, and strengthening basic research to comprehensively promote the high-quality implementation of information technology curriculum standards.

The cultivation of digital literacy is an urgent priority. As a higher-order manifestation and a key means of fostering digital literacy, digital creation has become a crucial topic in the realm of digital education. Currently, digital creation education in China remains at an initial stage, highlighting the need for systematic theoretical guidance and practical frameworks. In this context, the present study deeply discusses the interweaving relationship between digital creation and digital literacy, reviews the evolution of digital creation from text and programming to multimedia and the metaverse, constructing a conceptual understanding of digital creation based on a digital literacy framework. The study identifies five key characteristics of digital creation: multimodal, intelligentization, inclusiveness, personalization and expansibility. In terms of theoretical foundations, the research focuses on the importance of constructionism and human-computer interaction theory for understanding digital creation. Additionally, this study sorted out three paradigms of digital creation in teaching: progressive training of tool mastery, transformational learning of discipline integration and project-driven comprehensive creation, so as to provide reference for the practical implementation of digital creation. Finally, the research proposes strategic recommendations for the development of digital creation across three dimensions: policy support, technological infrastructure, and pedagogical approaches.

Based on self-determination theory and career construction theory, this study systematically examines the impact of principals' authentic leadership on teachers' participation in school decision-making and its underlying mechanism. The results indicate that principals' authentic leadership significantly and positively predicts teachers' participation in school decision-making; basic psychological need satisfaction and job crafting each play a partial mediating role between principals' authentic leadership and teachers' participation in school decision-making, while the chain mediating effect of "basic psychological need satisfaction-job crafting" is also verified in this relationship. Additionally, teachers' career adaptability positively moderates the association between principals' authentic leadership and teachers' participation in school decision-making—specifically, the higher teachers' career adaptability, the stronger the positive impact of principals' authentic leadership on teachers' participation in school decision-making. Therefore, to promote teachers' participation in school decision-making and enhance school governance effectiveness, it is necessary to: improve principals' authentic leadership through the spirit of educators and foster a culture of respect and democracy; innovate teacher incentive mechanisms to stimulate their intrinsic motivation for participation; and emphasize the cultivation of teachers' career adaptability to enhance their capacity for effective participation.

Improving the status of teachers is an important foundation for building a highly qualified and professionalized teaching force for the new era. Starting from theoretical logic, teacher status refers to the position of the individual or group of teachers in the social hierarchy, and is comprehensively influenced by such elements as political status, economic status, professional status and social prestige. As the number of related policy supplies continues to increase, in order to realize the holistic goal of status enhancement, all policies must form a system and be synergistically promoted. From the perspective of vertical synergy, the policy system for improving teachers' status has been initially formed, but the relevant specific policies have not been incorporated into a coherent policy framework. From the perspective of horizontal synergy, the number of joint documents issued by multiple departments has increased, but there is insufficient complementarity between different policy initiatives. From the perspective of micro-articulation, the continuity and stability of policies in various fields are good, but there is insufficient correlation. Further analysis of the reasons for the lack of policy synergy reveals that there is a lack of a strong grip on policy synergy at the meta-policy level, an inadequate inter-ministerial and intra-ministerial synergy mechanism, and a lack of implementation of policies at the grass-roots level of government. Based on this, synergistic strategies are proposed in terms of establishing core basic policies, promoting specific policy synergies, establishing a cross-functional departmental joint meeting system, and clarifying the division of responsibilities at the upper and lower levels.

Against the backdrop of profound transformations in the global knowledge landscape and the growing urgency to construct China’s independent knowledge system, educational jurisprudence—an interdisciplinary field dedicated to studying the phenomena and laws of educational law—bears significant practical importance in building its own independent knowledge system. This endeavor is crucial for accurately grasping education’s political, people-centered, and strategic attributes, as well as advancing the modernization of educational governance capacity and governance systems.The construction of an independent knowledge system for Chinese educational jurisprudence aims to break free from the constraints of Western theories and address local educational issues in a way that better aligns with China’s national conditions, and its foundation lies in clearly defining its underlying logics: the educational logic, legal logic, and value logic. The educational logic, rooted in the fundamental attributes of Chinese education, clarifies that educational jurisprudence must serve the core mission of “nurturing talents for the Party and the nation,”safeguard the priority of educational development, and adhere to the people-centered value orientation. The legal logic focuses on the internal structure and operational mechanism of the knowledge system. It conducts in-depth analysis of the connotation of educational subjects’ rights under the guidance of the Constitution, demonstrates the systemic integration paradigm shifting from “branch law”to “domain law” to meet the complex governance needs of the lifelong education era, and emphasizes the realization of localized transformation in educational governance through a “dual-drive” model. The value logic is committed to addressing the inherent tensions among diverse values in educational practice and exploring dynamic adjustment methods and balancing paths for resolving value conflicts. These three interrelated and progressive logics together form a comprehensive framework characterized by theoretical consistency, practical guidance, and value leadership, laying a solid foundation for the deepening and innovation of the independent knowledge system of Chinese educational jurisprudence.