







































 

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Slavin and the Development of 

Evidence-Based Education in China

Jijun Yao 

 
Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China

Abstract. In the new century, the quantity and quality of empirical edu-

cation research in China have been greatly improved, and more people 
are paying attention to and engaging in evidence-based research and 

practice in education. In this context, Professor Robert Slavin, a well-

known expert in evidence-based education at Johns Hopkins University 

in the United States, contributed greatly to the guidance and assistance 

to the development of evidence-based education in China. He clarified 

some vague understandings of Chinese scholars on the research and 
reform of evidence-based education, trained and instructed Chinese 

scholars and students, and built a platform for exchanges between Chi-
nese and foreign scholars, which has played an inestimable role in pro-

moting the development of evidence-based education in China. 

Best Evidence in Chinese Education 2021; 8(1):1021-1028. 

Doi: 10.15354/bece.21.or30. 

How to Cite: Yao, J. (2021). Professor Slavin and the development of evidence-

based education in China. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 8(1):1021-1028. 

Keywords: Robert Edward Slavin, China, Evidence-Based Education, Develop-

ment

 

 

 
 

Correspondence to: Jijun Yao, Professor, School of Education Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 

210023, China. Email: yaojijun_njnu@163.com 

Conflict of Interests: None. 
 

© 2021 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. 

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Crea-

tive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-

nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided 

the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. 



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1022 

The Status Quo of the Development of Evidence-Based 

Education in China 

OR a long time, education research in China has focused on qualitative research, 

especially speculative research. This situation leads to a single academic re-

search paradigm, insufficient scientific characteristics, and disconnection be-

tween theory and practice. Meanwhile, China’s educational practice and reform are 

mainly based on experience rather than scientific evidence, which make decision-

making and practice often biased. It is difficult for principals and teachers to get the 

guidance of policies and research based on scientific evidence to effectively improve 

the efficiency of management and teaching. 

Since the beginning of the new century, this situation has been greatly im-

proved. On the one hand, educational decision-making departments have paid more and 

more attention to the role of scientific research in the process of educational reform and 

development, and vigorously promoted educational scientific research from the system 

and management level. In October 2019, the Ministry of Education of China promul-

gated the “Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Strengthening Educational Scien-

tific Research in the New Era” (The Policy and Regulations Department, the Ministry 

of Education, China, [2019] No. 16). It is required to further innovate the scientific re-

search paradigms and methods, with particular emphasis on the requirement of 

“strengthening empirical research, insisting on facts and evidence as the basis, and con-

tinuously tracking major issues, focusing on long-term and systematic research”. This 

reflects a strong sense of evidence at the national level. On the other hand, in terms of 

the transformation of China’s education research, it has become a consensus in China’s 

education field to vigorously strengthen empirical research in recent years. In 2015, 

East China Normal University held the first National Education Empirical Research 

Forum, which has been held for six consecutive sessions so far. The forum has grown 

from the initial participation of more than 600 people to the participation of dozens of 

journals and universities today; it is a grand event for China’s education empirical re-

search with thousands of offline participants and more than 100,000 online participants. 

It has greatly promoted the development of empirical research on education in China. 

As a landmark event, on January 14, 2017, deans of education faculty (department) of 

14 universities in China including East China Normal University, the chief editors of 32 

educational research journals, the leaders of the National Educational Science Planning 

Office, and the Education Research Center of the People’s Daily issued the “East China 

Normal University Action Declaration to Strengthen Empirical Research in Education 

and Promote the Transformation of Research Paradigm” in Shanghai. The release of 

this “Declaration of Action” indicated that vigorously promoting empirical research in 

education has become a consensus and unified action in the entire Chinese education 

field. 

In this context, the empirical research in Chinese education research in recent 

years has shown a greater degree of improvement in both quantity and quality. The con-

F 



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1023 

tinuous emergence of high-quality educational scientific research results has played a 

more significant role in promoting educational reform and development. But it goes 

without saying that the foundation of China’s education research is relatively weak, and 

there is still room for improvement. Studies have found that on the basis of comparing 

the top domestic and abroad educational journals, although the proportion of empirical 

research results on education in China was on the rise, the proportion was still relatively 

low. The methods used by them still focused on statistical description, the application of 

cutting-edge analysis methods was less, and the overall research level was not high 

(Zhu & Ma, 2020).  

In the past two decades, the development of evidence-based education research 

and reform has been the most exciting thing in the education field in European and 

American countries. Such progress has also attracted the attention of Chinese research-

ers and policy makers. In recent years, Chinese researchers have noticed the develop-

ment of evidence-based education in the West, but most of them were concentrated in 

the field of comparative education. They mainly focused on the tracking and introduc-

tion of western research trends, and research and practical exploration based on local 

evidence-based education were still lacking (Deng et al., 2019; Li & Cheng, 2019). In 

this process, no matter in terms of theoretical research, method application or practical 

exploration, the development of domestic evidence-based education in China has many 

areas that need to be clarified and improved. This situation has changed slightly in re-

cent years, but as a whole, the development of evidence-based education in China still 

has a long way to go. 

The Impact of Professor Slavin’s Team on the Devel-

opment of Evidence-Based Education in China 

As a leading researcher in the research and reform of evidence-based education, Profes-

sor Slavin has made outstanding contributions to its development. In 2018, Professor 

Slavin and his wife, Professor Madden Nancy, were invited by the School of Educa-

tional Science of Nanjing Normal University, accompanied by Professor Alan Cheung 

of the School of Education of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to visit mainland 

China for the first time. Since then, Professor Slavin has paid great attention to the de-

velopment of evidence-based education in China. He has repeatedly participated in re-

lated academic activities organized by universities in mainland China and did his best to 

help Chinese universities and scholars carry out related research. He has made indelible 

contributions to accelerating the development of evidence-based education in China. 

He Clarified Some Vague Understandings of Chinese 

Scholars about Evidence-Based Education 

Although there have been some preliminary explorations, the research and practice of 

evidence-based education is still a new thing for researchers in mainland China, and 

their understanding of it is still vague or even inaccurate. In response to this, professor 



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1024 

Slavin accepted the invitation of Science Insight Education Frontiers to specially write 

an article in response to the questions and criticisms on the reform of evidence-based 

education from the Chinese scholars. In this paper, Professor Slavin responded to the 

following questions at length: Does evidence-based research rely too much on experi-

mental research to narrow education research? Why can’t high-quality qualitative re-

search, case studies, and experience become “evidence” in evidence-based research? 

How should evidence-based research be promoted in developing countries? etc. He be-

lieved that in developing countries like China, exploring rigorous and valuable evidence 

is an effective way to efficiently promote educational research, practice, and reform. In 

this process, it is equally critical to vigorously promote local evidence-based research 

and learn from foreign experience (Slavin & Cheung, 2019). In 2020, invited by the 

journal East China Normal University Education Review, Professor Slavin published a 

paper entitled “How could evidence-based reform advance education?” in the journal, 

in which he once again discussed the importance of evidence-based reforms to the de-

velopment of pedagogy (Slavin et al., 2021). These discussions clarified the vague un-

derstanding of some key issues of evidence-based research in education in mainland 

China, and further pointed out the direction of related research while deepening the rel-

evant understanding. 

He Made More Mainland Researchers Pay Attention to 

the Development of Evidence-Based Education 

In recent years, Professor Slavin has come to China to participate in academic confer-

ences and lectures. In 2018, Professor Slavin and his wife were invited by the School of 

Educational Science of Nanjing Normal University to visit Chinese university for the 

first time. During the period, they gave a number of lectures to teachers and students of 

Nanjing Normal University, and systematically introduced the latest development of 

evidence-based education reform in European and the USA. In 2019, Professor Slavin 

and his wife visited China again. Together with experts from all over the world, they 

participated in the “International Forum on Ideas and Actions in Pursuing Educational 

Excellence” hosted by Nanjing Normal University and gave keynote speeches. They 

discussed with Chinese evidence-based researchers on ways and paths to promote evi-

dence-based reforms in education. Following this, Professor Slavin went to Shanghai to 

participate in the “Fifth National Educational Empirical Research Forum” hosted by 

East China Normal University. The keynote speeches made by Professor Slavin and his 

entourage at these conferences further expanded the influence of evidence-based re-

search among Chinese researchers. It has effectively promoted more researchers and 

practitioners to pay attention to and participate in the research and practice of evidence-

based education.  

He Guided and Helped Chinese Researchers Grow 

Professor Slavin was very concerned about the talent training and professional construc-

tion of evidence-based education. In addition to providing up-to-date information for 



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1025 

researchers, he also led his team to contributed to the development of evidence-based 

education in China. During his two visits to China, Professor Slavin gladly accepted the 

invitation of Nanjing Normal University and was successively appointed as a foreign 

consultant expert of the School of Educational Science of Nanjing Normal University 

and the “Hongguo Chair Professor” of Nanjing Normal University. In addition, the 

Center for Research and Reform in Education of Johns Hopkins University led by Pro-

fessor Slavin has also received visiting students from China many times. Under the 

guidance of Professor Slavin’s team, these students have been greatly improved in their 

research vision and abilities. It has laid a solid foundation for the sustainable develop-

ment of China’s Evidence-based Education at a higher level in the future. 

He Actively Promoted the Research Results of Evi-

dence-Based Education in China 

During his first visit to the mainland China, Professor Slavin signed a cooperation 

agreement with the School of Educational Science of Nanjing Normal University to co-

found the “Best Evidence in Brief (BEiB)” project in the mainland. The BEiB project is 

a global evidence-based research and reform public welfare project led by Professor 

Slavin and participated by several universities and research institutions. It compiles the 

most cutting-edge, most effective, and most interesting evidence-based research results, 

so that researchers and first-line practitioners can obtain timely first-hand information, 

thereby promoting the development of evidence-based education. After intense prepara-

tions, the BEiB project in mainland China was launched in November 2018. Professor 

Slavin also introduced and shared the website link on his blog. This project has not only 

received extensive attention from domestic education colleagues in China, but has also 

become an important window for international evidence-based education researchers to 

understand the research dynamics in China. So far, BEiE in mainland China has nearly 

10,000 subscriptions and is read hundreds of times every day, and its influence is grad-

ually expanding. 

On this basis, in order to further expand the influence of Evidence-based edu-

cation research in China, after discussion with Professor Slavin, the Chinese BEiE pro-

ject team decided to launch an academic journal dedicated to the achievements of evi-

dence-based education in China. In 2019, Best Evidence in Chinese Education (BECE) 

was officially launched, and Professor Slavin personally served as the chairman of the 

editorial board. During the development of the journal, Professor Slavin has given 

strong professional support. In 2020, with the global spread of Covid-19 pandemic, how 

to maintain the operation of the education system under the premise of pandemic pre-

vention and control has become a key issue for global educators. In this context, Profes-

sor Slavin was invited by the journal BECE to publish a COVID-19 themed paper. To-

gether with scholars from many other countries, they discussed the international anti-

pandemic experience in education. Once this group of papers was published, it attracted 

widespread attention and the journal’s influence increased rapidly. So far, BECE has 



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1026 

been abstracted or indexed in more than ten important databases including EBSCO, 

ERIC, SSRN, etc., showing a good momentum of development. 

Professor Slavin’s Prospects for the Development of 

Evidence-Based Education in China 

Professor Slavin has expressed his expectations for the future development of evidence-

based education in China on many occasions. During his first visit to China, Professor 

Slavin expressed his view in the lecture exchange session that China, as a big country 

different from the West, has different national conditions and educational conditions 

from the West. However, in terms of evidence-based reform, both East and West should 

be consistent in promoting education reform through the acquisition of scientific evi-

dence. In this regard, China, as the most populous country, has its own advantages, and 

its development prospects for Evidence-based Education are promising. 

Professor Slavin has also expressed his views on how to accelerate the devel-

opment of evidence-based education in China. In 2019, during Professor Slavin’s par-

ticipation in the conference in Nanjing, a participant ever asked him as: China’s current 

evidence-based education research foundation is still relatively weak, and many deci-

sion makers have not formed the consciousness of making decisions based on evidence. 

Therefore, in this situation, how should we overcome difficulties and advance the de-

velopment of Evidence-based Education research and practice? Professor Slavin’s re-

sponse to this issue was that even in Europe and the United States, evidence-based edu-

cation reform would be questioned and criticized, which was normal. For a country like 

China, it is in the initial stage of evidence-based education, the first task was to start it 

first. In the initial stage, it might be difficult for researchers to obtain excellent and suf-

ficient experimental research conditions. In this case, even doing some research that 

reduced the rigorous requirements was better than doing nothing. Researchers should 

work closely with front-line teachers and decision makers to make evidence serve the 

reform and practice of education. In this process, try to gradually improve the quality of 

research and people’s sense of identification with evidence-based reforms, and subse-

quently and gradually the research and reforms would be easier to carry out. Such a 

deep and pragmatic insight is not only a suggestion for the research and practice of evi-

dence-based education in China, but also a great encouragement to researchers and 

practitioners who are interested in it. 

Professor Slavin hoped that China’s evidence-based education research and re-

form can run its own way. When the author accompanied Professor Slavin and his wife 

in 2018, I once proposed an idea to use the resources of “Success for All (SFA)” and 

apply its implementation model to carry out related work in China. Professor Slavin did 

not approve of this. In addition to SFA’s resources are not suitable for China, he be-

lieved that China has its own unique national and education conditions, and therefore 

also has its own problems that need to be solved. He even advocated that Chinese re-

searchers should use evidence-based reform ideas and methods to solve China’s own 

problems based on the experience of other countries. Such a view is obviously very en-



Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1027 

lightening and should be the development direction of evidence-based education in 

China. 

Professor Slavin has always paid close attention to the development of Evi-

dence-based Education in China. In recent years, the progress of China’s evidence-

based research in education and reform has also made him very pleased. Due to the 

pandemic, many planned exchange activities have been suspended, but we have been 

planning to invite him to visit China again to answer questions and guide Chinese 

scholars again. Professor Slavin also said in his last letter to the author that he hoped to 

work with me again after the pandemic was over. But what I never expected was that 

this had become a wish that Professor Slavin could never realize. On April 25, 2021, 

Professor Slavin left us forever. When the news came, many scholars in the Chinese 

education field who were familiar with him were quite grieving. Even if Professor 

Slavin has passed away, we believe that the tree of evidence-based education in China 

will continue to take root and sprout until it flourishes. This is perhaps what Professor 

Slavin would like to see most. 

I would like to deeply in memory of Professor Slavin with this article! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yao. Professor Slavin and the Development of Evidence-Based Education in China. 

Vol.8, No. 1, 2021 1028 

Education Frontiers, 2(1):65-69. DOI: 

https://doi.org/10.15354/sief.19.ar027  

Slavin, R.E., Cheung, A.C.K., & Zhuang, T. 

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5560.2020.09.002 

 

 

Received: 17 May 2021 

Revised: 19 May 2021 

Accepted: 22 May 2021

 

https://doi.org/10.15354/sief.19.ar027
https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120976060
https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120976060
https://doi.org/10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2020.09.002
https://doi.org/10.16382/j.cnki.1000-5560.2020.09.002

	OriginalArticle-JijunYao-BECE_title_May2021
	OriginalArticle-JijunYao-BECE_MaintextMay2021

