Abstract
Keywords
Action Dimensions of STEM Education in Chinese Schools
In China, research on STEM education has steadily gained momentum since 2014. In 2017, the Chinese Academy of Sciences released the White Paper on STEM Education in China, marking the start of a more systematic stage of exploration. Unlike countries that directly adopted “STEM” as an official label, Chinese education policy has refrained from such nominal imitation. Instead, it has opted to synchronize STEM education with the broader process of advancing educational modernization, extracting and reinterpreting its essence in localized ways.
The cultivation of innovation and practical competence, central to STEM education, has been incorporated into the framework of core competencies for Chinese students, as highlighted in major policy documents such as China's Education Modernization 2035. A series of national policies has promoted the gradual implementation of STEM's scientific inquiry and interdisciplinary thematic teaching into school education. For instance, the National Action Plan for Scientific Literacy (2021–2035) and Guidelines on Strengthening Science Education in Primary and Secondary Schools in the New Era emphasized horizontal coordination among science subjects, strengthening vertical articulation across grade levels and integrating scientific and engineering education through systematic planning. These documents also called for optimizing teaching approaches to enhance students’ problem-solving capacities and promoting the integration of IST into education (Ministry of Education & 17 Other Departments of the People's Republic of China, 2023; The State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2021).
In 2020, the Ministry of Education, together with seven other ministries, issued Opinions on Further Stimulating the Vitality of Primary and Secondary Schools. This document encouraged schools to independently design interdisciplinary and integrative thematic teaching programs for content with strong cross-subject connections (Ministry of Education & 7 Other Departments of the People's Republic of China, 2020). Similarly, the General Senior High School Curriculum Plan (Revised 2020) promoted research-based learning in comprehensive practice activities, with a focus on interdisciplinary inquiry (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, 2020). This strategy was further institutionalized by the Compulsory Education Curriculum Plan (2022), which mandated that at least 10 percent of instructional time must be dedicated to interdisciplinary thematic learning, leveraging engineering and technology practices to catalyze shifts in pedagogy (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, 2022).
As these evolving trajectories of education policy suggest, STEM education should no longer be treated as a peripheral or supplementary component of classroom teaching, but be systematically embedded into mainstream schooling. In this respect, compulsory education has been identified as the central arena of this transformation.
Nevertheless, a number of challenges persist. Notably, Chinese STEM education has been critiqued for “insufficient systematic construction” at the school level, with interdisciplinary STEM curricula in primary and secondary schools often being temporary or supplementary in nature (Chinese Society of Educational Development Strategy, 2024). Consequently, China has yet to build a coherent, interdisciplinary, developmentally sequenced, and grade-spanning STEM curriculum that matches both the needs of talent cultivation and the physical and mental development characteristics of students (China National Academy of Educational Sciences, 2017).
Under the contexts of the “Double Reduction” policy, aimed at easin
Therefore, primary and secondary schools urgently need exemplary, replicable, and locally validated models of educational reform. Such successful cases would help lower the risks and costs of innovation while offering concrete pathways for systematically advancing STEM education in China.
The Design and Practical Genesis of Deep Integration Teaching
Shanghai Jing’an Education College Affiliated School (hereinafter, JECAS) is a 9-year public school in Shanghai of China. For over two decades, JECAS has followed a research-driven approach to curriculum reform, transforming itself from a weak school into a renowned model of quality education. It has won five national and municipal awards for outstanding teaching achievements.
Reform Rooted in Addressing Fundamental Challenges in Chinese Education
JECAS developed a nationally recognized Post "Teahouse" Teaching Methodology, which won the first prize of National Teaching Achievement Award. Through practice, however, the school discovered that although this model significantly improved traditional classroom efficiency, it failed to address core challenges in cultivating students’ key competencies, namely, cognitive and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, collaboration and communication, and professional practical skills. The problems were clear: The curriculum remained excessively fragmented by subject divisions, leaving students overwhelmed by isolated knowledge and unable to systematically develop innovative practice abilities. Although the Post "Teahouse" Teaching supported independent, cooperative, inquiry-based and experiential learning within subject-specific boundaries, it did not adequately engage with interdisciplinary, real-world thematic learning. Moreover, the absence of formative and performance-based assessments in teaching limited the school's ability to respond to students’ learning processes and their needs to improve practical competencies.
In 2013, JECAS launched a new round of reforms to tackle these pervasive problems in Chinese compulsory education. This reform initiatively aimed to develop a novel model that involves all students, comprehensively covers and integrates multiple course contents, teaching methods, and assessment systems, under the guidance of various themes. This approach was formally termed “Deep Integration Teaching” and informally referred to by teachers and students as “TRIP”—an acronym for Theme, Research, Interdisciplinary, and Practice. The acronym also evokes the notion of “journey,” underscoring the importance of process and experience in this mode of teaching and learning (Zhang, 2023).
A School-Based Research Journey Informed by STEM
Over the past decade, the entire school community—including both teachers and students—has engaged in an evidence-based, research-driven reform journey. JECAS has consistently advanced its Deep Integration Teaching Model by following a spiral development trajectory of “problem diagnosis → intervention experimentation → iterative optimization → paradigm diffusion → dynamic adjustment.” The reform development process can be summated as follows.
Looking Outward: Bold Hypotheses
At the outset of reform, JECAS engaged in broad-based learning, sending ten key teachers for professional training in STEM education. Building on this foundation, JECAS hypothesized that dismantling disciplinary silos and reorganizing the national curriculum through integration, while simultaneously optimizing teaching methods, would be an effective pathway to cultivating students’ key competencies.
Starting Small: Careful Validation (2013–2017)
A research community was formed by the principal, administrators, and frontline teachers, with interdisciplinary research groups incorporated into the school's regular teaching management. The reform was piloted in Grade 6, with an emphasis on the subjects of labor technology and IST, supported by flexible hours from school-based curriculum. Based on the high engagement and strong sense of achievement observed among students, JECAS expanded the pilot to Grade 4 to further test the model's generalizability.
Expanding Gradually: From Point to Plane (2017–2019)
After multiple rounds of pilot programs, the reform was extended vertically across Grades 1–9 and horizontally across subjects, including junior high school science (nature at the primary level), junior high school sociology, and other subjects. Notably, what had once been “pulse-like” IST classes offered mostly in Grades 3 and 6 according to Information and Science Technology Curriculum Standards for Primary and Secondary Schools in Shanghai (Revised Draft) (2013) were transformed into a continuum of instruction from Grades 1–9. This systematic integration markedly enhanced students’ IST literacy.
Sustained Efforts: Empowering Teachers and Students (2019–2023)
JECAS pioneered a “one lesson, one research” model of teacher collaborative professional development, cultivating a faculty skilled in employing diverse teaching methods and competent in interdisciplinary research. Drawing on evidence-based practice, the interdisciplinary groups developed more than 200 thematic modules across five subjects of the national curriculum, spanning Grades 1–9. JECAS also developed a digital platform to integrate teaching, learning, and assessment, and built ten state-of-the-art experimental centers to facilitate curriculum integration.
Aligning with the “Double New” Policy: Embarking on New Journeys (2023–Present)
In response to the new curriculum standards and textbooks, the interdisciplinary groups reorganized subject content and redeveloped thematic modules, forming two broad categories of thematic domains: social problem-solving and scientific problem-solving. To address emerging needs, JECAS pioneered practice-based thematic modules taught in English at the junior high school level, strengthened “AI+” IST education, and continuously upgraded digital evaluation systems to support the data-driven optimization of teaching.
Key Breakthroughs in the Reform of Deep Integration Teaching
Although initially inspired by STEM education, the Deep Integration Teaching Model has been localized and restructured through critical adaptation. Under the leadership of Principal Renli Zhang, JECAS clarified early on that learning from STEM education does not mean imitating or intensifying the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as separate subjects. Rather, the goal was to draw from the essence of STEM education in order to achieve what Chinese school education had long struggled to accomplish, namely, the deep integration of the national curriculum. This section discusses key breakthroughs in the construction and implementation of this model.
Constructing an Integrated Curriculum System for Primary and Secondary Schools
Through two rounds of experimentation before and after the implementation of the “Double New” policy, JECAS developed an integrated curricular framework. As a guiding principle, this school aimed to “adhere to national curriculum standards, employ state-prescribed textbooks, and meet the requirements of subject teaching without increasing required instructional hours” (Gao, 2023) while simultaneously constructing a vertically coherent system of curriculum integration throughout compulsory education (Figure 1).
Integrated National Curriculum Subjects in the Deep Integration Teaching Model, Grades 1–9.
JECAS innovatively divided the national curriculum into two categories, namely, “coverage” and “involved” discipline:
To operationalize this integration, JECAS broke down disciplinary barriers and reorganized class hours from the coverage disciplines into two- to three-period “extended modules” per grade (Table 1). For example, in Grade 6, the nine class hours a week dedicated to Deep Integration Teaching combined hours from morality and law (two class hours), science (two class hours), labor (one class hour), IST (one class hour), comprehensive practice (one class hour), and school-based curriculum (two class hours). This accounted for as much as 25 percent of total weekly instructional time. This scheduling model—radically different from traditional approaches—posed significant challenges for school management, as teachers from different subjects had to flexibly co-teach according to thematic modules and instructional progress. However, it also provided critical temporal and spatial guarantees for students to engage in continuous and genuinely interdisciplinary inquiry.
Class Hour Allocation for Deep Integration Teaching by Grade.
Developing Thematic Sequences for Deep Integration Teaching
The construction of thematic modules depended on collaborative work within interdisciplinary research groups, where teachers engaged in cross-disciplinary discussion and professional co-creation. Theme development was guided by the following three principles:
Themes should be grounded in real-world problems or practical contexts. The design should aim to cultivate competency while balancing universal development and individual differentiation. Maximum space should be afforded to students for autonomous choice and inquiry.
During the 2017–2023 academic years, the interdisciplinary groups iteratively piloted and refined modules, ultimately developing and implementing 219 thematic units (85 at the primary school level and 134 at the secondary school level). These were clustered into five thematic domains—“Beautiful Homeland,” “Smart Living,” “Cultural Exploration,” “Dreaming of Science,” and “The Social World”—and compiled into a cross-disciplinary resource bank. Modules emphasizing science and IST primarily fostered students’ scientific problem-solving abilities, while those centered on morality and law cultivated students’ capacities for social problem-solving. Following the introduction of new textbooks in 2024, JECAS redeveloped or iteratively refined these themes in alignment with “Double New” requirements (Table 2).
Examples of Themes and Curriculum Content Covered by Deep Integration Teaching Based on the “Double New” Policy.
In practice, teachers followed a five-step chain for thematic development: (a) clarifying subjects’ objectives, (b) creating themes, (c) restructuring subject content, (d) compiling thematic plans, and (e) designing unit teaching activities.
Integrating and Optimizing Diverse Teaching Methods
Deep Integration Teaching advanced through three stages: encompassing “theme and context,” “organization and implementation,” and “evaluation and reflection.” As Figure 2 illustrates, these stages were carried out in a ten-step process. JECAS developed checkpoints for cultivating key competencies, reminding teachers to deliberately foster student growth across four critical phases: preparation for learning, autonomous choice, cooperative inquiry, and communicative development (Figure 2).
Deep Integration Teaching Framework (Three Stages and Ten Steps) and Key Student Competency Development Checklist.
An illustrative case is the Grade 6 module, “Urban Rooftop Smart Herbal Garden,” taught by IST teacher Shuang Wang. Across 15 lessons, the design integrated multiple national curriculum subjects and aligned fully with the disciplinary components of STEM education. Students undertook a series of interdisciplinary tasks:
Learning about plant diversity and growth factors, developing concepts of complex systems and subsystems (science). Using smart agricultural tools and installing intelligent devices (technology). Designing and building irrigation systems, temperature controls, lighting systems, and metal frameworks using open-source hardware (engineering). Measuring, recording, and statistically analyzing soil moisture, temperature, and light intensity (mathematics). Engaging in labor practices such as seedling cultivation, soil improvement, transplanting, constructing supports, daily maintenance, and harvesting, while also expressing individual aesthetic sensibilities.
For instance, in lessons 2–3, to strengthen students’ problem-solving capacities, teachers shifted pedagogical methods to create opportunities for inquiry, experiential practice, and dialogic sharing. Student development was advanced through meaningful receptive learning, autonomous knowledge construction, cooperative learning, and creative practice. To help students visualize how the automated irrigation subsystem functioned, the teacher worked late into the night building seven physical models. Figure 3 presents an overview of the interdisciplinary tasks and learning process implemented in “Urban Rooftop Smart Herbal Garden.”
Excerpt from the “Urban Rooftop Smart Herb Garden” Module.
Establishing Digitally Supported, Whole-Course Assessment
Partnering with a technology company, JECAS developed the “TRIP Digital Platform” to build a multifaceted, adaptive evaluation system. Building on three foundational pillars—knowledge acquisition, practical outcomes, and key competencies—the platform continuously collected student data and generated descriptive learning profiles and precise quantitative indicators. This enabled both performance evaluation and value-added assessment at the individual and class levels.
The TRIP Digital Platform achieved three forms of real-time interaction. First, it supported synchronous teacher–student and peer collaboration, such as merging individual students’ mind maps into collective brainstorming outcomes with just one click. Second, it ensured seamless task flows for thematic modules, from group division, research planning, and data collection to activity logs, report writing, and outcome evaluation. Third, the platform enabled teachers to provide ongoing online guidance, including task prompts, real-time feedback, and instant Q&A (Gao, 2023).
The platform also offered teachers diagnostic and regulatory support. Notably, it automatically compared actual instructional data against semester plans and knowledge trees to verify alignment with Shanghai's basic teaching requirements (Gao, 2023). The platform also provided a knowledge-point management system and comment bank to facilitate individualized evaluation using multisource data. Finally, it constructed a resource repository that recorded process data, enabled teacher self- and peer evaluation, and visualized evaluation results for evidence-based instructional improvement.
Contributions and Impact of the Deep Integration Teaching Model
In 2022, the Deep Integration Teaching of JECAS: A New Model for the Implementation of Curriculum Integration in Compulsory Education was awarded the Special Prize of Shanghai Municipal Basic Education Teaching Achievements and the Second Prize of National Basic Education Teaching Achievements. Originating from efforts to overcome the school's own educational challenges, this reform trajectory converged with the core aspirations of STEM education. By embedding the valuable elements of STEM within the fertile soil of Chinese schooling, JECAS has cultivated new educational “roots” with distinct cultural characteristics, forging a practical and feasible path for “Chinese-style STEM.”
Major Contributions
Exploration of New Frontiers of Curriculum Integration in Compulsory Education
Specifically, JECAS innovatively categorized subjects into “coverage disciplines” and “involved disciplines,” and systematically explored the principles and methods of curriculum integration while being careful to avoid increasing instructional hours or students' burden.
Development of a Coherent Set of Interdisciplinary Thematic Modules Across Grades 1–9
JECAS created thematic clusters aligned with national curriculum standards, enjoyed by students, and implemented as a sequential system cultivating innovation and practical competences for all public-school students. Through optimized scheduling, cross-disciplinary inquiry became a “reactor” powering the growth of every student's competencies.
Establishment of a Digitally Empowered Model of Integrated Teaching, Learning, and Assessment
Data tracking, process regulation, and value-added evaluation were realized across the full cycle of teaching design, implementation, and assessment. This ensured effective subject knowledge acquisition while significantly enhancing interdisciplinary competencies.
Cultivation of a Reform-Minded Faculty
JECAS developed a team capable of mastering interdisciplinary teaching and multiple pedagogical methods and committed to iterative experimentation and innovation. Deep Integration Teaching lacked ready-made scripts. Once the key elements were clear, each step relied on teachers’ adaptive efforts. Institutional support and research resources were provided. Significantly, teachers have begun to regard reform as an inherent requirement of their professional mission. Stepping out of comfort zones was reframed as professional growth, rather than personal depletion. Teachers successfully converted the final stretch of reform implementation into tangible productivity through their professional creativity.
Impact on Students
Within the Deep Integration Teaching framework, students learned science as the “warp” and real-world contexts as the “weft,” engaging in repeated, pulse-like thematic inquiries over nine years of compulsory education. This iterative practice cultivated students’ interdisciplinary thinking, problem-solving skills, and key competencies.
Significantly, these outcomes were achieved without increasing student burden. For example, the school consistently recorded the lowest rates of myopia in the district, nearly 20 percentage points below the city average, while guaranteeing 2 hr of daily physical activity for every student. Meanwhile, academic performance remained strong and balanced, with the school's advantage over others within the district steadily increasing.
In municipal pilot assessments of “creative thinking” and labor-technical skills, students from JECAS demonstrated outstanding creativity in both cognitive and practical domains. As the high school entrance examination (Zhongkao) increasingly emphasizes contextualized, task-based formats that test knowledge transfer, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and high-quality thinking, the school's classroom practices have become authentic preparation grounds.
The reform initiative also proved to be highly aligned with national curriculum reforms. The five subjects fully covered by Deep Integration Teaching—labor, IST, comprehensive practice, science, and morality and law—correspond to subjects emphasized in the new curriculum standards and in Shanghai's guidelines for advancing AI courses in primary and secondary schools. The reform also provided space-time extensions for implementing the new curriculum. For instance, although IST competency goals were specified for Grades 1, 2, and 9, no independent class hours were allocated in the official plan. Accordingly, JECAS embedded these class hours into Deep Integration Teaching, innovatively ensuring a consistent pathway for IST literacy. Similarly, with reductions in English instructional hours in Grades 6 and 7, JECAS introduced project-based learning in labor studies conducted in English.
Since 2018, Professor Yunhuo Cui's research team at East China Normal University has continuously tracked the development of Deep Integration Teaching at JECAS, conceptualizing it as a manifestation of “Chinese-style STEM.” This model integrates multiple national curricula; implements thematic, research-based, practical, and interdisciplinary pedagogy; and realizes integrated teaching-learning-assessment processes that simultaneously transmit knowledge and cultivate innovative practical abilities.
Takeaway Message
Shanghai Jing’an Education College Affiliated Schoollaunched an innovative reform, which integrates the national curriculum, designs cross-disciplinary thematic sequences, optimizes diverse teaching methods, and leverages a digital platform to support an integrated “teaching-learning-assessment” process as the “Chinese-style STEM” practices. JECAS establishes a “digital platform” to harvest classroom data, enabling process assessment, performance assessment, and value-added assessment that provide teachers with real-time, evidence-based decision-making support. The initiative has produced sustained, significant improvement in science literacy, innovative spirit, and practical competencies for all students in Grades 1–9, and has been recognized as an outstanding teaching achievement at the national level in China ready for replication and wider adoption.
Footnotes
Author Contributions
Renli Zhang contributed to the practical perspective of “Chinese-style STEM” presented in this paper. During his tenure as principal, he led the reform of “Deep Integrated Teaching” at Shanghai Jing'an Education College Affiliated School. Mengjie Xu is the writer of this paper, responsible for collecting literature on STEM education theory, policy and practice both in China and abroad, organizing data and materials related to the education reform at Shanghai Jing'an Education College Affiliated School and completing all sections of the paper.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article is one of the interim research outcomes of the Ministry of Education Key Project of the National Education Science “14th Five-Year Plan,” titled “Practical Research on School-based ‘New Teaching Research’ in the New Era” (Grant No. DHA230398).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.