China Education Improvement Association,

After the failure of the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895,China national crisis was unprecedented. Foreign aggression happened one after another and China was severely wounded and deeply pained. To rescue China, the educational sphere of China began to try constructing the modern education of China by modeling that of the western bourgeois countries. The construction of the modern education of China began with modeling itself on Japanese education ; and then studied the education of German and France in the early of the Republic of China (1912-1949); In 1920's, the modeling on American education facilitated the full construction of the modern education of China.Founded in Dec 1921, China Educational Promotion Society(CEPS for short), as a comprehensive academic society in China, gave great impetus to the construction of modern education aiming at modeling that of America. During the period of 1920's, because of the political corruption and degeneration and the rising of localism in China, there was a power vacuum in educational sphere and the implement of the educational modernization had to mainly depend on the group force of educational societies. But the problem was that educational societies were in a state of disunity, and so it was difficult to play their group force. In the view of this, civil educationalists from north to south established CEPS, the aim of which was " investigating the reality of education, researching into educational studies and promoting educational progress", by the combination and reorganization of New Education Federation, New Education Journal and Fact-finding Investigation of Education. Most of the members of CEPS were returned students studying in the United States and had got the degree of Master or Doctor of Education or Psychology from American universities. They were well-educated in educational sciences and fairly familiar with the educational theory and system of America. Such academic background determined that they would use the experience of American educational system for reference to reform original educational system. To do so, CEPS hold a large number of social activities which produced a great impact on Chinese education at that times. The more important ones of the activities were: inviting famous American educationalists to come to China on a lecture tour, advocating science education of America, spreading American educational testing and starting publication of New Education Journal. CEPS gradually became an important promoter of modern education of China modeled on that of America relying on the activities referred to the above. In addition, the personal activities of the members of CEPS, such as establishment of educational societies, translation and writing of books on American education, making of educational testing and experiment, etc, played an important role in promoting the modern education of China modeled on American education.As one important step of the educational modernization of China, the modern education of China modeled on American education pushed forward not only the reformation of the modern education of China from utensil and system to concept, but the standardization of education research methodology and the construction of sub-disciplines of educational sciences as well.According to the above, my thesis contains four chapters. In Chapter One, the general history consisted of the establishment and organizational structure of CEPS was introduced. In Chapter Two, the background of the chief members of CEPS studying in the U.S. who were leaders of 32 Academic Councils and editorial committees of New Education Journal was analyzed in detail. In Chapter Three, the social activities of CEPS which had affected deeply the Chinese education at that times were inquired into. In the last Chapter, the personal activities of the chief members of CEPS were briefly surveyed...