China's first AI training platform for teachers' psychological nurturing capabilities released at Shanghai Normal University, AI psychological resilience agent simulates student conversations

"As I listened, I couldn't keep up, and then I had no idea where my mind had 'drifted' off to." "After writing for a while, my mind just 'drifts' away." "Maybe I wasn't really taking it in to begin with, and then it got harder and harder to understand." … On the large screen, a digital human simulating a first-year middle school boy was conversing with a psychology teacher, seeking counseling about "his" new situation of frequently zoning out and declining grades. Behind it was the nation's first "Psy-Care Competency AI Training Platform," focused on cultivating teachers' capacity for nurturing students' mental well-being, released on the 22nd at Shanghai Normal University. After more than a dozen rounds of dialogue, Teacher Zhou, who has over 20 years of teaching experience, found herself struggling: the AI boy before her had particularly high psychological defenses, and it was not at all easy to read his mind and understand his heart. It turns out that the newly launched AI psychological resilience agent is precisely a specialized AI platform that, by using technologies such as AI digital human simulation, provides pre-service and in-service teachers with training in typical scenarios, improving the experience and feel of teachers, students, and parents alike in cracking the psychological code and "pushing the door open." Teachers and students join an immersive exercise together. Photo by Xu Ruizhe. At present, mental health work in basic education implements prevention and early intervention in students' daily learning and life, requiring teachers to identify signals from changes in students' emotions, behavior, and interpersonal interactions, judge their needs, choose appropriate support, and connect them to professional services when necessary. However, in daily practice, the challenges facing teachers of various subjects may be multiple, for example: upon noticing a student is feeling low, how to start a conversation; when faced with a student's silence, whether to probe further, comfort, prompt, or give up; what kind of response counts as "catching" the student, and what situations require vigilance… Each fleeting window of discovery, with no fixed template, is like a door fitted with a combination lock. At the event that day, the agent conducted an immersive exercise of this "one-on-one office conversation." In the scenario, Xiaoning is usually not noisy or disruptive and sits fairly quietly in his seat, but his grades have been falling all the way down to the bottom of the class. The teacher receiving psychological education training stated: "In my own math class, I noticed several times that his gaze was blankly fixed on the blackboard or out the window, and he didn't respond when I called his name, while classmates were whispering about it; as for homework, he often hands it in half done, with many mistakes, and his schoolbag is a mess—he has lost quite a few things like his school card, water bottle, and textbooks. His mother also called to say that this child has been dawdling and forgetful since he was little. I called him in today because I want to hear what he himself has to say, to see what is really going on in class and whether I can help in some way." Facing psychology majors who likewise attempted this scenario challenge, the agent, after the immersive dialogue came to a pause, gave a very detailed "overall evaluation." The AI believed that the biggest highlight in the psychological counseling was the driving force of listening and follow-up questioning. "From the decline in grades, it probed all the way into homework, attention, sleep, and falling behind in math class, and the clues were gathered relatively completely"; "In the 7th round of dialogue, 'I feel you are a bit helpless,' it also touched on emotion and may have produced an empathic response…" "In the 10th round, the student said 'I can focus for several hours when playing games'—this was a ready-made resource, but you didn't catch it…" A psychology teacher receives counseling from a digital human. Photo by Xu Ruizhe. The Jiefang Daily·Shangguang News reporter learned that this platform, which allows for practical combat exercises, relies on the practical accumulation of Shanghai Normal University's School of Psychology, which has hosted the Shanghai primary and secondary school mental health education backbone teacher advanced training class for ten consecutive years, as well as the interdisciplinary resource integration of the newly established Shanghai Normal University Moral Education Psychology Research Center. Centering on the two high-frequency scenarios of student heart-to-heart talks and home-school communication, it combines professional micro-lessons, targeted exercises, and AI digital human simulation training to help teachers develop communication skills in simulated situations. In version 1.0, the platform sets up modules such as "Student Psychological Counseling Simulation Exercise" and "Problem Type Identification Simulation Exercise." In the former, teachers can practice skills such as empathic expression, nonviolent communication, responding to resistance, questioning and guidance, emotion naming, and cognitive reappraisal; the latter covers 18 typical problem categories, including academic pressure, test anxiety, school weariness, parent-child conflict, adolescent rebellion, internet addiction, school bullying, and early identification of adolescent self-harm. Teachers can choose as needed, understand the core characteristics of the relevant problems and communication strategies, watch analysis videos, download professional lesson plans, and hold conversations with simulated students or parents. During the earlier trial operation, more than 100 frontline teachers from over ten primary and secondary schools participated in using it. Based on feedback, the development team carried out multiple rounds of iteration on the simulated dialogues, training functions, and user experience. In real educational settings, every response from a teacher may affect a student's willingness to express themselves and the direction of communication, especially when high-risk issues are involved. Using this to safely make mistakes in high-risk situations is intended to help teachers improve signal identification and initial response awareness, and does not replace professional assessment, crisis intervention, or necessary referral handling. The "Heart Power" teacher-student volunteer service team forms up (file photo). Liu Mingbo, deputy director of the Moral Education Development Research Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences, said that in the era of artificial intelligence, it is necessary both to promote the deep integration of moral education and mental health education, seizing the "jointing and booting stage" of adolescent growth to shape sound personalities, and to make good use of digital technology to empower educational practice, effectively enhancing teachers' practical skills in psychological support and communication training. "We look forward to the results being implemented and effective, strengthening 'home-school-society' collaboration, gathering the synergy of multiple parties in education, and jointly building a strong protective net for adolescent mental health."