In 2022, Mr. Yupeng Cao, founder of Goling, shared his in-depth exploration of AI-assisted graded reading in China, highlighting its significant importance and value.

Original Link:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JPKBzDIxi_NjZaOLVZ0IWw/
https://www.fengedu.com/newsinfo/2527879.html/

In 2022, the Goling Reading platform is 1.5 years old, and in the past 600 days and nights, a total of 2382 updates have been completed:

  • Student desktop and web versions updated 180 times
  • Student mini-program version updated 139 times
  • Education management desktop and web versions updated 35 major versions
  • Developed and published 12 graded reading paper and digital books
  • The affiliated creation platform produced over 53,000 pieces of content

Goling Reading provides whole-school reading ability assessment, reading aloud ability assessment, daily reading and reading aloud improvement, and other SaaS product services to over 100 contracted public primary schools. These services are flexibly applied by schools in personalized scenarios such as stage testing, daily teaching assistance, family reading, after-school services, adaptive learning, and personalized homework design.

Through "online adaptive AI assessment + real-time big data feedback + data interpretation reports," Goling Reading has helped several regional education bureau systems complete unified reading ability testing for primary school students and education quality monitoring and evaluation within their regions, contributing excellent practical solutions for work after "Double Reduction" policy.

Over 100,000 students have completed more than 15 million reading, reading aloud assessments, and exercises on Goling Reading.

Behind this lies 8 years of thought and practice.

1. Original Aspiration and Goals

Reading is a national strategy, and children's reading ability is a core competitiveness of a nation.

More than 100 countries and regions around the world participate in assessment of students' reading literacy and ability progress through PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment).

This assessment ranking is referred to as "Global Education Ranking" by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund). The assessment focuses on development of students' literacy in various aspects of social life and extent to which they can transfer what they have learned to other fields and apply it in new contexts, rather than just knowledge mastery. Simply put, it is "predicting future," and is therefore considered an important basis for "ranking of national development income levels and future development income levels."

PISA believes that reading literacy, mathematical literacy, and scientific literacy can determine whether students possess "problem-solving ability" and "lifelong learning ability" required to participate in future social life.

Goling's reading ability assessment has been field-tested and compared by a delegation of experts from local education commissions, verifying an over 85% consistency with students' academic performance.

Why is reading assessment so highly consistent with academic performance?

Almost all subjects require learning through reading, and reading is core of education.

PIRLS believes that primary school stage is not only stage of "learning to read" but also stage where students transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn," which has become a global consensus in education.

The "Dunning-Kruger effect (D-K effect)" explains the answer to a person's continuous growth throughout life, and reading ability and ability to acquire knowledge through reading are the "underlying abilities" that accompany our growth throughout life.

"Reading a book a hundred times, its meaning will naturally appear" - is this true?

For most people, this is not true. Although in recent years the promotion and construction of a "scholarly society" and "scholarly campus" have greatly improved the reading environment in society and on campus, and various "recommended reading lists" are passed on to parents every year, the reading volume of Chinese children has indeed increased significantly. But reading problem is still the number one problem encountered by teachers, parents, and students.

In recent Double 11 and Double 12 shopping festivals, primary school Chinese reading practice workbooks always firmly occupy more than two-thirds of the top 10 best-selling educational materials. Parents report that everyone says reading is important, and teachers also require reading, but there is no guidance on how to read.

The Analects says, "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." Zhu Yongxin said, "We often focus on what to read, but easily ignore how to read."

Reading lies in understanding, thinking, feeling and applying.

For most children, most of them cannot understand books on their own. "Reading a book a hundred times, its meaning will naturally appear" is not suitable for most of them. The prerequisite for "reading a book a hundred times, its meaning will naturally appear" is to first master appropriate reading methods.

Goling Reading's Data Findings

In tens of thousands of sets of test data in China, we found that there are huge differences in reading ability among children in the same class. Some third-graders have reached advanced level of fourth or fifth grade, while some third-graders are still at low level of second grade. Especially in schools with more complex student sources, the difference in students' abilities within the class will be more obvious.

The Root of "Involution" and Pain of "Strong Provincial Capital" Strategy

The underlying root of "involution" is the increasingly prominent contradiction of "educational balance and educational equity." For a long time, "balanced development of compulsory education" has become "competitive and elimination-based education," which has become a competition on the starting line, a competition for resources, a competition that stifles differences and individuality, and a competition for score lines, leading to the top becoming more and more "involution," and the gap with the bottom becoming wider and wider. Social contradictions are becoming more and more prominent.

The "strong provincial capital strategy" in the process of urbanization has accelerated the step-by-step advancement of population and talent from rural areas → towns → provincial capitals → first-tier cities → super-first-tier cities. The resource siphon effect and other problems have amplified the problems and anxieties at the top and bottom.

The harm of long-term "involution" is undoubtedly destructive. Education should be diversified development, excavation of individuality, cultivation of interest, release of potential, and self-comparison and growth education. If a proposition of "competitive and elimination-based" is first imposed, everything will become a matter of course, and everyone will roll to the sky in one direction.

How to Deal with Involution?

First, we must correctly understand differences in students' levels, respect differences, and need differentiated cultivation methods, rather than eliminating differences.

Achieving personalized cultivation of "teaching students according to their aptitude" is the foundation of education. "Teaching students according to their aptitude" has been an effort since the time of Confucius. However, in the school's "large class" education scenario, where the number of students is large and the learning pace is relatively fixed, it was very difficult in the past to discover and cater to the personalized problems and development of each child.

Guidance of "Double Reduction" Policy

The "Double Reduction" policy gives clear guidance for teaching innovation and "teaching students according to their aptitude," aiming to return education to within schools and redefine the assessment and evaluation standards for education and the direction for talent cultivation and selection.

Modern education has run for more than 200 years, and people's cognitive concepts are the most difficult things to change. If it can be changed in a short time, then the entire education system and selection exit must first change.

Thus the Double Reduction policy arrived.

The Double Reduction policy eliminated all subject off-campus training in the K12 stage, reduced traditional academic burdens, and even traditional academic methods, returning education to within schools. From here, everyone starts from the same starting line to conduct a brand new exploration - what to learn, what to cultivate, how to cultivate, the goals of learning and cultivation, the assessment and evaluation standards for education, and the direction for talent cultivation and selection will all be redefined. This is a completely disruptive educational reform. Perhaps education after the "Double Reduction" will be the closest time in history to achieving personalized education of "teaching students according to their aptitude." Perhaps we will welcome a "hundred flowers blooming" next generation.

At the same time, from the policy, we can see the correct way the country hopes for the combination of technology and education, such as applying artificial intelligence and information technology in differentiated teaching, layered teaching, promoting student individuality and potential development, teaching and examination diagnosis and evaluation, academic situation data collection and analysis, personalized education methods, and personalized homework design. For schools, and for every teacher, this is a brand new, arduous and unfamiliar challenge.

Goling Reading has spent 8 years to achieve "teaching students according to their aptitude" in "reading," hoping to enable every child to master the ability to "acquire knowledge through reading," achieving self-growth with a thousand faces and a thousand differences.

2. No Accumulation of Steps Cannot Lead to a Thousand Miles

Nothing happens overnight. After 8 years, our understanding is more thorough.

To achieve personalized teaching in reading, we must first build a good foundation. We need to first establish the grading, leveling, and evaluation standards for students' reading ability and reading content difficulty. This is a blank, brand new, and very high threshold matter in China.

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