Professor R.G.Havelock, an internationally renowned theoretical expert on educational reform, once defined "educational reform" as follows: "Educational reform is any meaningful change to the present educational situation". Education reform is a systematic project, which should include all kinds of education at all levels. Education at all levels has its own characteristics, even if it is "people-oriented", there are different requirements at different stages. Infants and children, basic education and vocational education, secondary education and higher education all have different laws.

In the research literature of educational reform, many terms can be used interchangeably, and we often see: change, reform, innovation, improvement, revolution, etc.

Starting from this definition, three points are worth noting:

First of all, the educational reform is based on the change of educational status. No matter how beautiful our ideas are in theory and thought, it can't be called educational reform if we don't change the actual educational situation.

Secondly, the educational reform is marked by "meaningful transformation", that is, the educational reform has obvious concrete effects or results, which means that the initial state of education is obviously different from the later state;

Thirdly, educational reform is a neutral concept, which expresses the changes and changes that have taken place in the current educational situation, but not necessarily a kind of progress or improvement. In other words, the result of educational reform can be positive (educational progress) or negative (educational retrogression).