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It could be seen from the above that the five masters spread Neo-Confucianism, and rebuilt the authority of Confucius, valuing both philosophy and morality and practical service. Arguably, what they did for Zhedong scholarship mainly focused on the cultivation of talents through education, laying the academic foundation.
　　The teaching and academic researching of the five masters originated from a civil foundation, and was encouraged by the local authorities, which formed a beneficial interaction between the both parties in the meantime. Their achievements in education were greatly associated with Wang Anshi's support because he, as a well-known official, had his unique perspective on respecting teachers, valuing education and building schools. Seen from the experiences of the five masters, only Du Chun and Lou Yu had the teaching experiences in official schools, and the other three were all teachers of private schools.Originally, their pursuit was not for being famous or infiuential. Among them,only Lou Yu and Wang Yue had the experience of being low-ranking officials;and only Lou Yu was enrolled as jinshi. The educational fiourishing movements during the Qingli period directly pushed them to the society, and subsequently made them become the mainstay of Mingzhou education. During the period,they stuck to their own personalities and independence on their scholarship,
　　and gained the respect from the court and local officials because of their friend-like but not hierarchical relationship with the authorities, in spite of their lower social status. It was just because of their civil foundation and independence in education and scholarship and the healthy interaction with the authority that the independence and openness ofZhedong scholarship were founded.
　　
　　The education and scholarship of the five masters had the following common features： their thoughts and theories all corresponded to the learning of Master Anding (Hu Yuan）, both belonging to the field of the study for practical service; they "discarded Buddhism and Taoism", and opposed the infiuences of the two religions on people's thoughts; their methodology in the studies of the Confucian classics and historical books was in accordance with the requirements of Neo-Confucianism. That is to say, they broke through the barriers set by the scholars from the Han and Tang dynasties who just focused on the interpretation of words and sentences, and devoted themselves to the insight into the inner meaning of Confucian classics; they emphasized the combination on the study of Confucian classics and historical works, valuing the practical use oflearning.
　　They studied both Confucian classics and history. For example, Yang Shi "was good at the research of governance and fund of investigating the root cause of the administrative disorders in different dynasties", and in his own words, "I spent 13 years in researching Confucian classics and history"; Du Chun "followed the steps ofBan Gu and Sima Qian~ in historical writing", and put the historical studies on a very important position. The trend in what they did can be regarded as the origin of the idea of the later Zhedong scholarship that "those who study human nature and destiny must resort to history", On this base, they started to write books and developed their theories consciously.For example, Lou Yu, in his later years, "wrote and talked with his disciples everyday". Wang Anshi praised Wang Zhi as the "forerunner of Siming scholars to expound their ideas by writing". Their academic thoughts were oriented to reality, featured prominently with the focus on practice.