Zhangjiajie Aviation Industry Vocational College — Rural Teacher 3D Printing Training (Guopei Plan 2025)

Summary

In October 2025, within the "国培计划（2025）" (National Training Plan 2025) program for backbone labor-education teachers at rural primary schools in Zhangjiajie, teacher Gong Hang (龚航) of the Aviation Manufacturing School at Zhangjiajie Aviation Industry Vocational College (张家界航空工业职业技术学院) led his Digital Design and Manufacturing Innovation Studio team in delivering an immersive theory-to-practice 3D printing training to 62 rural teachers. The training deliberately demystified the technology — "traditional manufacturing is subtraction, 3D printing is addition" — and recommended corn-starch-based PLA filament as odorless, safe, and colorful material suited to rural classrooms. Three studio assistants split the practical teaching: Fan Miao demonstrated reverse modeling with a 3D scanner (digitizing a real flower in minutes), Zhang Jing gave hands-on 3D printing-pen instruction (grip, temperature control, line work), and Guo Junhao dissected an FDM printer to explain its mechanism. The stated deeper aim was cultivating three core literacies — innovative thinking, spatial imagination, and hands-on practice — so that teachers carry the skills back to mountain-area classrooms. The report is published on the college's official website.

Guiding Principles

Rural Revitalization — the training targets rural teachers under the national teacher-training plan, explicitly building a bridge between advanced manufacturing technology and rural education so rural students gain access to frontier technology.
Transferable Skills — teachers leave with operable skills (FDM printing, 3D scanning, printing-pen work) they can immediately apply in their own classrooms.
STEM Integration — 3D printing is presented as a vehicle for labor education and cross-disciplinary making in primary schools.
Youth Empowerment — the multiplier design trains educators so that rural children, the ultimate beneficiaries, can "explore the fun of technology" themselves.

Learning Outcomes & Transferable Skills

Participating educators gain 3D Printing operation skills (FDM principles, slicing basics, printing-pen technique), CAD/reverse-modeling exposure via 3D scanning, and a pedagogical model for integrating making into labor education. The train-the-trainer structure makes every acquired skill transferable to dozens of rural students per teacher.

How to Replicate or Build On It

Read the college's official report (primary source below) for the session design: one lead instructor plus three specialized assistants (scanner, pen, printer teardown).
Replicate the format locally: a vocational-college manufacturing program partners with the district teacher-training bureau; a half-day to one-day workshop covers principle demo, scanning demo, pen practice, and printer anatomy.
Adopt the material guidance: PLA filament for classroom safety.
Frame within national policy support — see china-rural-revitalization-policy and seven-ministry-stem-education-guidelines-2025.

Considerations & Constraints

Cost: Free to participants (state-funded Guopei Plan training); replication requires printers (~1,000–3,000 RMB each for entry FDM units), PLA filament (~60–100 RMB/kg), pens, and optionally a 3D scanner.
Skill Level: Beginner — designed for teachers with no prior exposure.
Space/Climate: Classroom anywhere; climate-irrelevant.
Tools Required: FDM 3D printer, 3D printing pens, 3D scanner (optional), PLA filament, computers.
Ongoing Maintenance: Low — occasional printer calibration and filament purchase.
Access Barriers: Chinese-language only; the program is tied to China's national teacher-training system, so direct replication elsewhere requires a local vocational-college partner and teacher-training funding channel. No open curriculum document was published with the report.

Prerequisites

None for participants. Institutional replication benefits from the policy environment in china-rural-revitalization-policy.

Primary Source

Zhangjiajie Aviation Industry Vocational College official website news release (2025-10-21), verified live 2026-09-12: https://www.zjjhy.edu.cn/contents/857/5187.html