China's Social Transformation On The Analysis Of The Impact Of Educational Research Theme Changes

American socialist R_K.Merton put forward a series of questions, such as "the interaction model of society, culture and science", etc, which we usually call "Merton questions". We can get a special methodology from these questions to reflect our education science development. Draw reference from the question- answer style of "Merton questions", the central topic of this thesis is how China's social transformation affects the topics of China's education researches.This thesis applies the way of "hypothesis-testing", that is "putting forward a hypothesis - collecting material- testing hypothesis - further studying of the result". This research bases on three hypothesis: 1) Social system reform and economic development probably cause the educational periphery questions to become highlight of education studies; 2) Social transformation will renew the education researchers' idea; 3) The rapid development of higher education will get more attention of the researchers. The sample of this study if the journals of Education Research (1979-2001), the author select two directions :"subject-questions" and "education category".By statistics and analysis, the author found the features of the past 23 years education research changes lie in three aspect: 1) In 1980s, " the core educational questions" are the research focus, but in 1990s, the educational periphery questions attract more researchers; 2) With the development of market economy, the studies on education get some changes, one is on the nature of education, the other is the value of education; 3) The researches on primary and middle school education are decreasing while the attention paid to higher education is increasing. The three features perfectly meet the author's three hypothesis.The last part of this thesis tries to explain some details about China's educational studies' topics changes. And another three questions are put forward: 1) The educational researches focus are swinging between the core questions and the periphery questions, economic system changes are the main factors of the swing; 2) The idea about the nature of education changed three times and these changes experienced a fixed style, that is the function of the current education changed, a new idea appears and causes some discussion, the function of the current education gradually becomes clear, and the new idea gets a general recognition; 3) In 1990s, higher education became the highlight of education studies, the surface cause is the policy changes and the more and more attention the public paid to it, the deep factor is the changes of social structure.