SHANGHAI/BEIJING – As artificial intelligence increasingly outperforms humans in routine cognitive tasks, a foundational assumption of modern schooling is being called into question: that all students should be educated toward a standardized profile of the “ideal graduate.”
In a new article published on February 17, 2026, in ECNU Review of Education , Ruojun Zhong (YEE Education) and Yong Zhao (University of Kansas) introduce the Double-Helix Logic of Curriculum, a structural theory that redefines how universality and personalization coexist in education systems.
Rather than proposing another list of competencies, the authors argue that curriculum theory itself must evolve. For decades, global reforms—from the U.S. Common Core to national competency frameworks across Asia and Europe—have expanded definitions of student success while retaining a hidden universalist premise: that excellence can be standardized. In an AI-driven world, this assumption risks suppressing the very human strengths—individual passions, innate strengths, creativity, empathy, ethical judgment, and entrepreneurial imagination—that machines cannot replicate.
Drawing on the structural logic of DNA, the Double-Helix Theory conceptualizes curriculum as two intertwined strands:
The Template Strand (Universality): A lean but deep societal foundation—shared literacies, civic knowledge, ethical reasoning, and digital competence—that sustains collective coherence.
The Coding Strand (Personalization): The expression of learners’ individual distinctive strengths, interests, and trajectories that drive innovation and complementarity.
Crucially, the theory reframes universality and personalization not as opposing forces, but as mutually constitutive dynamics. Universality makes individual difference legible and socially meaningful; personalization ensures that shared foundations do not harden into conformity. Together, they form what the authors describe as the “evolutionary engine” of curriculum.
The article situates this framework within a broader shift from meritocratic sorting toward a Human Interdependence Paradigm (HIP), in which diversity and collaboration replace uniform competition as organizing principles of education. In this view, the purpose of curriculum is no longer to rank students along a single scale, but to structure conditions under which differentiated strengths can accumulate and reinforce one another.
By proposing a structural reconceptualization of curriculum for the AI era, Zhong and Zhao invite policymakers, educators, and researchers to move beyond expanding competency lists and instead rethink curriculum as a dynamic architecture—one capable of sustaining both societal foundations and human diversity in an increasingly automated world.
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The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ECNU Review of Education
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The Double-Helix Logic of Curriculum: Reframing Universality and Personalization in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
17-Feb-2026
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article