Research Status and Prospects of Education Modernization in China

Considering the goals of building a strong country with education and human resources, education modernization is a priority development strategy in China. To inform future research on the theoretical and practical issues of education modernization, literature from CSSCI and the Peking University Core Databases on China’s education modernization from 2015 to 2025 was reviewed. The developing tendency of the studies was analyzed: perspectives from macro to micro, focuses from theory to practice and from general to special, aims from reflection to foresight, development from slow to rapid, and exploration from preliminary to in-depth, showing Chinese characteristics, local and time characteristics, mainly using speculative methods. Research gaps were found to be: the specific content and practical approaches of the educational strategies remain unclear; policy system at different levels emphasizing cross-sectional and democratic participation is waiting to be established; pathways to primary educational modernization in different regions and integration of industry and vocational education should be explored; and the mechanism of educational modernization in countryside calls for clarification. Future studies should focus on topics such as talent cultivation and multi-agent collaboration, from the prospectives of governance capabilities modernization and technology application; design micro-level research questions based on local education and teaching contexts and explore forward-looking and practical strategies; further conduct empirical research to support the plan and design of education modernization paths; review the application of existing research results in practical work and timely identify new problems while evaluating the external validity of existing studies.