In academic research, Zhang Yi pays attention to integrating theory with practice, applies what she has learned and is innovative. As early as 1930s, he wrote a series of papers and expounded his views. For example, in the article "State and Education", he disagreed with Dewey's statement that "school is society", but advocated facing the reality and not letting the evil influence of society invade the school. On the contrary, school education should play a role in transforming society. In the article General Education and Vocational Education, he first mentioned the idea of combining education with production. In his article "The Mission of Secondary Education in China", he proposed that secondary education should not only train students for further study, but also train all kinds of construction talents for the local area. Others, such as the influence of vertical and horizontal arrangement and old and new punctuation on reading efficiency, and the study of reading psychology, have put forward some positive suggestions for innovative education.

In terms of research methods, Zhang Yi keeps in mind the famous saying that "learning without thinking is useless, thinking without learning is dangerous", insists on combining with Zhang Xuesi and refuses to eat people and spit. 15 When I was studying at Washington State University, behavioral psychology was very popular in America. Behaviorism emphasizes that human learning is a mechanical connection between stimulus and response. He doubted this and made a fine experiment with mice. The conclusion shows that even the learning of rats is not a mechanical stimulus-response connection, but contains cognitive components. The cognitive theory of tolman, an economist of new behavioral psychology, was not made public until six years later. Zhang Yi's action shows one of his academic methods.

Zhang Yi was mainly engaged in the teaching and research of general psychology and psychohistory in his later period. His monographs and papers include Lecture on Psychology, Retrospect and Prospect of Psychology, and Brief Discussion on Psychological Research Methods since Feng Te established Psychological Laboratory.

Zhang Yi also has high attainments in literature. He translated Shakespeare's Henry VI, Scott's The Heart of Middle Lottingshire and other world literary masterpieces.