Shanghai Normal University releases China's first AI training platform for nurturing the heart, using AI digital humans to train teachers to catch students' emotions

Currently, the mental health issues of primary and secondary school students have attracted widespread social attention. When a student is found to be feeling down, how should a teacher start a conversation? Faced with a student's silence, should the teacher press further, offer comfort, give a hint, or give up? What kind of response counts as "catching" the student? What situations require vigilance? ... These questions trouble many frontline teachers. How can we better understand the inner world of adolescents and help teachers forge keys to open students' hearts? On October 22, the country's first AI training platform focused on cultivating teachers' psychological nurturing capabilities—the "Psychological Nurturing Competence AI Training Platform"—was released in Shanghai. The platform was developed by the School of Psychology at Shanghai Normal University in collaboration with Shanghai Zhihui Wuyu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. It uses technologies such as AI digital human simulation to provide typical scenario training for student teachers and in-service teachers, enabling psychological knowledge to be better transformed into teachers' actual educational capabilities. Cai Dan, dean of the School of Psychology at Shanghai Normal University, told Wenhui Daily that although psychological knowledge can be learned through courses, how to judge a situation, understand the other person, and choose a response in real communication requires extensive practice to gain experience and a feel for it. Real educational situations are complex and ever-changing, and it is difficult for teachers to rehearse every possibility; timely feedback and review opportunities are crucial. Based on real needs, the platform targets the teacher community and draws on the practical accumulation of the School of Psychology at Shanghai Normal University, which has hosted the Shanghai Primary and Secondary School Mental Health Education Backbone Teacher Advanced Training Program for ten consecutive years. Centering on the two high-frequency scenarios of student heart-to-heart talks and home-school communication, it combines professional micro-courses, targeted exercises, and AI digital human simulation training to help teachers practice communication skills in simulated situations. The country's first AI training platform focused on cultivating teachers' psychological nurturing capabilities—the "Psychological Nurturing Competence AI Training Platform"—was released in Shanghai. It is reported that the platform includes modules such as "Student Psychological Counseling Simulation Exercise" and "Problem Type Identification Simulation Exercise." In the simulation exercises, teachers can practice communication skills such as empathic expression, nonviolent communication, responding to resistance, questioning and guidance, emotion naming, and cognitive reappraisal; the problem identification module covers 18 typical problem categories, including academic pressure, exam anxiety, school weariness, parent-child conflict, adolescent rebellion, internet addiction, school bullying, and early identification of adolescent suicide. Teachers can choose training content according to their needs, learn about the core characteristics of relevant problems and communication strategies, watch analysis videos, download professional lesson plans, and hold conversations with simulated students or parents. After practice, the platform can also provide feedback, record the training process, and support teachers in reviewing conversations, summarizing and reflecting, and carrying out targeted practice. Round-the-clock, anytime, anywhere practice and safe trial and error in high-risk situations are important features of the platform. 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. Simulation training provides teachers with an environment in which they can repeatedly try different responses, observe how conversations progress, and review their own performance, so that practice does not have to depend entirely on real incidents occurring. It is reported that more than 100 frontline teachers from more than ten primary and secondary schools participated in an early trial run and offered opinions on platform functions and the simulation experience. Based on the feedback, the development team carried out multiple rounds of iteration on simulated conversations, training functions, and user experience. On the same day, the Moral Education Psychology Research Center of Shanghai Normal University was unveiled. The center is led by the School of Psychology at Shanghai Normal University and integrates multidisciplinary research forces in psychology, education, ideological and political education, and brain science. It focuses on three major research directions: moral development and moral education mechanisms, emotional development and values education, and teacher emotions and moral education capabilities, exploring the psychological mechanisms of moral cognition, emotion, motivation, and personality development. Li Ye, vice president of Shanghai Normal University, said that normal universities shoulder the core mission of teacher training. Shanghai Normal University should not only cultivate high-level reserve forces for psychological nurturing for undergraduate, master's, and doctoral students, but also provide post-employment empowerment for frontline teachers, promoting theoretical research, technological innovation, and social service in the same direction, and responding to the real social needs of adolescent mental health and moral development in the new era.