The combination of educational science and artificial intelligence brings new directions for improving the quality of future family education, and family education faces new challenges

How can parents under excessive pressure affect their children's growth? Will the decrease in parental attention in families with multiple children affect their physical and mental development and health? How can parents use technological means to easily and efficiently improve the quality of family education? With the rapid changes in society and the gradual diversification of family structures, family education in China is facing new challenges.

On August 26 and 27, 2023, experts and scholars from research institutions and universities such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Oxford University, Durham University, the University of Alberta, Peking University, Fudan University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong gathered at the annual laboratory meeting hosted by QUOTE Education to discuss family education problems facing contemporary society and how to effectively improve the quality of family education through scientific and technological means.

"In the modern family system, the environment is extremely important for cultivating children's personality." Chen Binbin, the director of the Psychology Department at Fudan University, said at the annual meeting that with the promotion of the two child and three child policy, "it is more necessary to create a warm family environment to promote children's mental health and comprehensive development."

"Our research on family education must keep up with the changes of the times," said Wu Zhonghan, Vice Chairman of the Family Education Professional Committee of the Chinese Education Association

Excessive parental intervention exacerbates mental health problems in adolescents

Why do children become less obedient the more they are educated, and even develop mental health problems?

Experts have engaged in intense discussions on the relationship between family education and adolescent mental health.

The attending doctors expressed that in recent years, with the increasing competition in society, children, especially adolescents, are facing unprecedented challenges in their physical and mental development and health.

Cai Dan, Deputy Director of the Youth Work Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society and Professor of Psychology at the School of Education of Shanghai Normal University, who has been paying close attention to such issues and has been deeply cultivating them for many years, shared her tracking and comparative research results on a sample of adolescents from 2013 to 2023.

He found that due to excessive stress during high school, the adolescent's depression, anxiety, and stress levels significantly increased during their freshman year, and their life satisfaction was low. It was only after their sophomore and junior years that their stress levels decreased. In Cai Dan's view, "family education plays a decisive role in the root cause of this problem."

According to his analysis, Chinese parents are mostly caring and controlling parents, with very full expectations and offers for their children. However, often due to excessive intervention, especially high attention to academic performance, it increases the burden on children and causes mental health problems.

Zhou Jiaxian, Deputy Director of the Learning Science Professional Committee of the Shanghai Education Association and Deputy Director of the Education Neuroscience Research Center of East China Normal University, also agrees with this result.

She also found in her research that negative emotions and behaviors of parents have a significant impact on children's emotional development and health. "Parents' unrealistic and high expectations of their children, or never paying close attention to their children's words, and even physically punishing them, can cause them to develop feelings of self doubt. Children will feel very insecure and live in fear for a long time."

In addition, Chen Binbin also found that with the increase of families with two or three children, the environment of multi child families is also subtly affecting the physical and mental development and health of children. "For example, the issue of 'favoring boys over girls'." Chen Binbin found in his research that this phenomenon still exists in modern families, "girls with younger brothers will have fewer opportunities than girls with younger sisters."

The decrease in parental attention and uneven distribution not only affects the relationships between children, increases conflicts, but in severe cases, directly threatens the psychological health of "sisters", causing irreversible damage.

Upgrading traditional family education concepts: "Some neglect is a good thing"

What can parents do to create a positive living environment for their children? In Cai Dan's view, the current mode of family education in China needs to shift from receiving education to discovering education.

"In the process of children's growth, our parents generally adopt a master's and receptive education, and do not allow children to have things they cannot learn." In Cai Dan's analysis, Chinese parents have very full expectations and give to their children, but lack some "neglect". "Some neglect is a good thing. When should parents participate in education and intervene?" Chen Binbin, who has always prioritized research on multi child families, also found that in multi child families, learning to let go is the top priority for parents.

He believes that it is extremely normal for conflicts to occur between children in a multi child family environment.

"When children have conflicts, parents can give advice, but the best way is to let the children solve the problems and conflicts themselves." In Chen Binbin's research, authoritarian control will lead to more conflicts instead. "Compatriot relations can provide children with learning opportunities, and interaction between siblings and sisters will have a positive impact on children's development."

In addition, he also stated that mutual support and collaborative parenting between spouses are of irreplaceable importance in reducing parenting pressure and promoting harmonious family development.

The combination of educational science and artificial intelligence can efficiently improve the quality of family education

So, in today's world where parents are also facing tremendous pressure, how should the quality of family education be improved?

In response to this pain point issue that affects both children and families and society, the doctors expressed their opinions at the annual meeting.

"Firstly, parents should learn to respect educational science." Tong Lian, associate professor at the School of Public Health at Fudan University and visiting scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health, said that how to help parents master scientific educational knowledge and reduce anxiety is currently the top priority. "Under the high level of tension and anxiety of parents, it is actually their lack of professional knowledge in child rearing."

In her opinion, mastering scientific educational knowledge and the laws of children's physical and mental development can provide parents and children with a more relaxed family environment at the same time.

Tong Lian has put in a lot of effort to achieve this, from conducting parent-child interaction guidance training to providing parenting guidance services for families aged 0-3 in the community. Tong Lian has tried many methods, "but the methods are relatively traditional, and the parents they serve are also very limited."

How to make broader "popular science knowledge" benefit parents? Cai Dan is also troubled by the same problem.

Until this year, the promotion of artificial intelligence showed him the direction of the future. "There is a great opportunity for artificial intelligence to serve family education in the future," said Cai Dan.

Integrating educational science with artificial intelligence to serve more families is also one of the most important research directions in the near future for the Wenxiang Laboratory.

According to Zhu Tingshao, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the current common scientific research path is "data is summarized by experts to generate rules", while machine learning and artificial intelligence can directly skip the experience summary of "experts" and "directly discover rules from data."

Zhu Tingshao said that if artificial intelligence, which is convenient and can ensure scientific validity to the greatest extent, can be combined with educational science, it will redefine the way Chinese family education is conducted.