My name is Dinghan Zhang — it's Ding-han, not Din-ghan. My mother also gave me the name Dave, which isn't on any official document but has followed me everywhere since.

I study Education at the University of Bristol. My research interests are rooted in quantitative methods, but the questions I keep returning to are about artificial intelligence and learning. One of them is quite specific: whether AI can learn to fade its own scaffolding — to recognise when a learner no longer needs support and step back accordingly, rather than remaining a permanent open-book resource. The other is broader: how the rapid integration of AI into education might shape policy decisions and transform the environments in which learning happens.

Outside academia, I make a Chinese-language podcast, write poetry, and play music. These things are less separate from my research than they might appear.

我叫张定涵。我妈妈给我取了个英文名 Dave，不在任何证件上，却从小跟到大。

目前在布里斯托大学攻读教育学。研究上，我近来持续关注的一个问题是：AI 能否真正实现脚手架意义上的"渐退"——不是一直以随叫随到的形式存在，而是能够感知学习者的进展，在支撑不再必要时主动撤出。这才是 Vygotsky 意义上脚手架应有的样子。另一条线索则更宏观：AI 大规模进入教育领域之后，政策制定的逻辑会如何回应，学习的环境本身又会走向何处。

课堂之外，我做播客、写诗、也玩音乐。这些事和研究之间的距离，或许比表面上看起来要近一些。