On April 23, 2019, the College of Education was very honored to invite Mr. Yan Zexian, a special professor of the school, to give lectures. With the title of “Educational Research in the Perspective of Complexity Paradigm”, Prof. Yan first reviewed the classic paradigms in past educational research, then proposed the concept of complexity in educational research, and finally elaborated the complexity methodology of educational research. After nearly two and a half hours of lectures, the postgraduate and doctoral students present at the scene felt the uniqueness of this research paradigm. They thought that this lecture not only broadened the research horizon of the individual, but also found the limitations and shortcomings in the current research process.

First of all, Prof. Yan reviewed the dimensions of research and the transformation of paradigms, combed the three principles of the simpleness paradigm, clarified the cognitive process from simplicity to complexity; and then, Prof. Yan clarified the basic outlines of the complexity paradigm through openness, nonlinearity, self of organization, uncertainty and emergence.

Secondly, Prof. Yan combined the concept of complexity with educational research to explain the complexity of the education system from the ontological and epistemological aspects. At the same time, Prof. Yan distinguished the core concepts of “molding” and “molding”, “display field” and “hidden field” for everyone to understand.

Then, Prof.Yan focused on the complexity methodology of educational research, from the transcendence of cognitive field to the expansion of thinking mode to the coherence of research methods. He emphasized that education research should overcome the binary opposition model of one or the other, quantification and quality, and individuals and society, action and structure should not be completely opposed. Prof.Yan also shared that with the support of core technologies such as big data, we had the ability to carry out full-sample and relevance research, thus introducing the concept of “fourth research paradigm”, and hoped that this paradigm will be inspired by the research of students.

Finally, the students present actively raised their own questions to speaker, and Prof. Yan answered questions one by one. Through the question and answer session, Prof. Yan once again clarified his personal approval and doubts about the new research paradigm, and looked forward to working with the students to overcome the difficult problems.