This paper discusses how to carry out the research of chemistry education in China and promote the reform of chemistry education. China's chemical education research needs to correctly position chemical education, grasp the development direction, adopt the method of comprehensive integration, and pay attention to the formation of chemical subject characteristics. Key words: the orientation change of chemical education research Since the 1980s, China's chemical education and chemical education research have made great progress and achieved gratifying results. However, compared with some countries and similar disciplines, the gap in some aspects is obvious. China's chemical education research needs to overcome impetuousness, conscientiously sum up, think, explore, improve and break through. First, chemical education research needs proper orientation. In order to find the correct orientation of chemistry education, we must eliminate the influence of blind arrogance and subject complex. Therefore, it is necessary to find out whether chemistry is a central subject first. 1. To find out whether chemistry is a central discipline, we often hear that "chemistry is a central discipline". Regardless of the facts, let's see who said it first. 1985, Pimentel first proposed that chemistry is a central discipline and chemistry is at the center of natural science. [1] In the same year, the National Research Council of the United States officially called chemistry "central science" in a report. [2]。 Since then, many people have quoted or put forward similar views. For example, Japanese chemist Kenichi Fukui said, "In the ancient physical-chemical-biological ranking, chemistry was destined to be the possessor of the central position." [3] r.breslow, former president of the American Chemical Society, put forward that "chemistry is a central, practical and creative discipline" in "Chemistry Today and Tomorrow" edited by 1997, and he also used "a central, practical and creative discipline" as the subtitle of the book. [4] However, almost all people who quote or put forward similar views are engaged in chemical research or teaching, and almost no influential people in other disciplines say so (I only saw a report and a medical person said so). Why do you say "chemistry is the central subject"? To sum up, there are several reasons: chemistry is related to various social needs, which can meet people's needs for food, clothing, housing and transportation, improve health and overcome diseases, and is an important pillar of the national economy in modern society. [5] Chemistry is a science connecting the preceding with the following, which can play a fundamental, leading, driving and promoting role in the development of related disciplines. [6] Academician Xu Guangxian pointed out: "Science can be divided into upstream, middle and downstream according to the degree of its research object from simple to complex. Mathematics and physics are upstream, chemistry is midstream, and sunrise sciences such as life, materials and environment are downstream. The object of upstream scientific research is relatively simple, but the depth of research is very deep. The research object of downstream science is more complicated. In addition to using this scientific method, if you borrow the theories and methods of upstream science, you can often get twice the result with half the effort. Chemistry is the central science and the only place from upstream to downstream "; "Chemistry has a very close relationship with eight sunrise sciences, such as life and materials, which has produced many important interdisciplinary subjects" [7], so that chemistry has become the center of related disciplines. Chemistry is "buried under its own success", and it is facing its own subject prestige problem: chemistry has lost its glorious image, has not received due support in the optimal allocation of social and economic resources and talents, and is in danger of being forgotten and ignored. It is necessary to attract the attention of students, media and the public. It can be seen that chemistry is a central discipline, which means that the connection between other natural sciences or between natural sciences and engineering technology needs to be mediated by chemistry. For example, modern life science and materials science cannot reach a high level without the intervention of chemistry; Mathematics and physical science also need the intermediary of chemistry, in order to better play the role of biology and materials science. [8] Saying that "chemistry is a central discipline" does not mean that chemistry is the most important of all disciplines, but only shows its multilateral relationship and position in the social and scientific system. Don't just say "chemistry is the central subject" without explanation. We must not take it out of context, misunderstand or be arrogant blindly. Academician Tang Youqi once put forward that "chemistry is a central discipline" and "a more comprehensive formulation is that chemistry and physics are the axis of contemporary natural science together". [9] This is worth thinking about and adopting. 2, to abandon the "small topic complex" blind arrogance is the table, the topic complex is real. So-called, it is confined to this discipline, ignoring other disciplines, including upper-level disciplines, content with and intoxicated with achievements, or fighting for class and status regardless of the overall situation. The complex of small themes is very harmful, because it will lead to narrow and shallow vision, leading to small fights; It leads to the opposition between chemistry education and science education, leads to the "self-marginalization" of chemistry education and its isolation from science education, and cannot absorb the research and development achievements of science education and other related disciplines in time. Chemistry education is an important part of science education. Chemistry educators are first and foremost science educators. Only by clarifying this attribution can we abandon the complex of small subjects and truly take improving the scientific literacy of students and even citizens as our primary responsibility. 3. To understand the essential characteristics of chemistry, all science education has the obligation and responsibility to carry out scientific literacy education, which leads to the problem of giving full play to their respective advantages and cooperating with each other. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the essential characteristics of various disciplines. Only by comparison can we distinguish and understand the characteristics of chemistry. Physics and biology are the closest to chemistry, and both are "basic natural disciplines". Comparing and distinguishing them can make us quickly approach the essential characteristics of chemistry. Generally speaking, physics is a science that studies basic existing forms, basic structures, interactions and the most basic and universal forms of motion (mechanical motion, thermal motion, electromagnetic motion, microscopic particle motion, etc.). ) of cosmic matter and its mutual transformation law; Biology is a science that studies the species, structure, function, behavior, development, origin and evolution of organisms at all levels and the relationship between organisms and their surrounding environment. Chemistry is a science that studies the nature, composition, structure, change and application of matter. It seems that chemistry and physics belong to material science, and the research objects are similar, but in fact they are different. The main difference between them lies in the difference between material movement in chemical research and physical research. The chemical movement of substances is mainly manifested in the transformation of substances into other substances, that is, the movement form of producing new substances. Its essence is a special form of movement in which substances produce new substances due to the change of chemical bond state, which leads to the decomposition, combination or recombination of macro substances and the change of molecular composition and structure of substances. The physical phenomena studied in physics generally do not include the chemical movement of matter. The breadth of matter studied by chemistry is different from that of physics. Chemical research substance. Physical objects are substances in a narrow sense, with static mass and occupying space. Chemical objects are simple materials, compounds or mixtures with specific physical and chemical properties. Physics studies physical objects and fields. Physical object usually refers to an object formed by matter and characterized by a certain shape, volume, size and mass. Physics does not take the study of the specific composition, structure and mutual transformation of physical objects as its task. The problems of chemical research are also different from those of philosophical research. Philosophical matter generally refers to things that have objective reality, can act on people's senses and cause feelings. It is an objective reality that people feel, and its extension is very wide. The depth (level) of chemical research matter is also different from that of physics. Physics only studies the basic and universal characteristics when studying the existing mode, structure, interaction, movement form and mutual transformation of matter. Chemistry studies matter more specifically than physics, but it is not so common. This feature makes the content of chemistry so rich that it becomes a huge discipline and cannot be merged by other disciplines. Chemistry, physics and biology have different roles in explaining the different stages of the evolution of the universe. Chemistry, physics and biology obviously play different roles in explaining the different stages of material evolution in the history of cosmic evolution. "Real-time space-time", all kinds of elementary particles and atoms have been formed in the creation period, extremely early, early and recent days of the universe. It is the task of physics to explain and explain these processes. Then the evolution of elements, the synthesis of small interstellar molecules, the synthesis of small biological molecules and the synthesis of large biological molecules occurred one after another, and the cosmic substances gradually evolved from simple molecules to small biological molecules, and then gradually evolved into the basic substances of life. It shows that these processes can only rely on chemistry. Subsequently, the process of life from simple to complex, from low to high, gradually formed life, and the explanation and explanation of these processes are not biological. In a word, the research object of chemistry is different from that of physics and biology, and chemical science is also different from that of physics and biology, but it is impossible to draw an absolutely strict and clear boundary between them. Generally speaking, chemistry has the following characteristics: chemistry studies the nature, composition, structure, change and application of matter, and its basic problems are composition, structure and reaction and their relationship with the nature of matter. The object of chemical research is the pan-molecular [10] level, and the interaction between particles in the pan-molecular lower layer is very complex, which makes its overall properties different and difficult to describe concisely by deduction, which determines the individualized characteristics of chemical research. In terms of research methods, physical methods pay attention to analysis, which is essentially mechanistic (or reductionism); Biological methods pay attention to the whole, which is essentially teleology (or organic theory and autonomy theory); On the one hand, chemical method decomposes the research object into several components, on the other hand, it studies the structure of the research object as a system composed of some particles (or parts) with complexity different from that of organisms, and studies the relationship between the objects, which is similar to physics and biology. However, chemistry is different from physics and biology, showing its own particularity. These characteristics of chemistry should be better reflected in the implementation of scientific literacy education. Second, the future research of chemistry education needs to grasp the direction. In order to grasp the direction of chemistry education, we should consciously obey the general provisions such as the purpose, task and law of science education. Since the 20th century, the changes in the guiding ideology of science education have the following characteristics: from paying attention to scientific knowledge and skills and individual cognitive development to paying attention to individuality or individuality and individual all-round development; Then it evolved into highlighting key points and paying attention to personal scientific literacy; Then it evolved into paying attention to the development of more people, and put forward that science is for all people and paying attention to the scientific literacy of citizens; Then it evolved to pay attention to the harmonious development of human beings, the background environment of human development in the field of science and technology, environmental education and sts education. Chemistry education should conform to the general trend of science education and make its own contribution to the progress of science education. We should really focus on promoting students' better development, attach importance to the construction of science and culture, and promote the formation of a good atmosphere of loving, speaking, learning and using science in the whole society. In today's world, energy, resources, food, health, environment and other major issues related to human survival are inseparable from chemistry, and more and better chemical talents are needed. At the same time, it is increasingly necessary to popularize some chemical knowledge to the citizens of the whole society, and more and better chemical science popularization talents are needed. Corresponding to this situation, the demand for chemistry education in the future will be "higher at the high end" and "lower at the low end". Future chemistry education should strive to meet the needs of both "high-end" and "low-end". In order to avoid and solve this dilemma, future chemistry education should include these two coordinated wings. Third, the future chemical education research needs to adopt appropriate methods. The chemistry education system involves people, and it is an open and complex giant system. Academician Qian Xuesen pointed out many times that the open complex giant system cannot be studied by simple methods, and the comprehensive integration method is an effective method to study complex systems. The characteristics of comprehensive integration method are: (1) based on practical experience, especially the experience of (practical) experts, local empirical knowledge is combined with system theory provided by modern science. (2) System research (overall research) is combined with analysis and reduction to obtain a description of the overall state, characteristics and behavior of the system. (3) Combining historical research with realistic research to discover, reveal and test the internal logic of the object. (4) Based on experience, a model is established for calculation, and qualitative knowledge is combined with various observation data and statistical data, from local qualitative knowledge to overall quantitative understanding. (5) Make full use of the advantages of modern information technology, and combine man-machine integration, introspection with observation experiments, and macro-research with micro-research. (6) The combination of research from different angles in various disciplines will eventually produce new knowledge, new ideas and new methods; Wait a minute. Chemistry education is a complicated system. To study the complex chemistry education system, we should adopt the method of comprehensive integration. Among the elements of comprehensive integration method, it is important to use computer modeling. Using the operation and evolution of computer simulation system, we can observe the emergence of the whole system and predict the trend of the system ... Therefore, computer-based modeling has become an important research method and has developed rapidly in many fields. In this regard, the current chemical education research is still in a blank state, which needs to be carried out and strengthened urgently. Model is a very important scientific method to solve problems. The process of human exploration of the world is actually the process of establishing various models. Model describes, imitates or abstracts the essential attributes of the system in the form of words, symbols, charts, objects and mathematical expressions. A suitable model can provide a framework for observing data, materials and other information, explain the behavior characteristics and evolution law of the prototype system, reveal its operating mechanism, predict the future behavior characteristics of the prototype system, prompt the ideas and ways to influence and change the behavior characteristics and control the prototype system according to a certain purpose, and inspire the creation of new things and new technologies. Through the establishment and research of the model, we can not only better understand and improve the prototype, but also further form related theoretical and practical models. Modeling can begin with determining the state parameters of the system. Fourthly, the future research of chemistry education needs to form discipline characteristics. The future research of chemistry education should pay attention to the difference between chemistry education and general education, and form distinctive subject characteristics. It is impossible to replace the research of chemistry education itself with general pedagogy research and psychological research. In order to form distinctive subject characteristics, we must pay attention to the in-depth and meticulous "personalized" research combined with specific problems. In addition to correctly positioning, grasping the direction, adopting appropriate methods and forming subject characteristics, the future research on chemistry education should also pay attention to the innovation of chemistry teacher education. In the future, the education of chemistry teachers should reduce the empty and ineffective theoretical content and carry out practical training in combination with specific content. More importantly, we should pay attention to changing the existing extensive and unreasonable teacher education system. Some countries adopt a two-stage system for the training of chemistry teachers, that is, university chemistry graduates who have obtained a bachelor's degree in science must receive training in a special teacher education college, and after passing the national teacher recruitment examination, they will receive another year of teacher vocational training and obtain a master's degree in education before they can be employed as teachers. In teachers' vocational training, in addition to the study and discussion of educational theory, a lot of time should be spent on intensive training combined with the teaching of specific contents of middle school textbooks. It is necessary and reasonable to do this, which can effectively ensure the specialization of chemistry teachers and ensure that new teachers can quickly adapt to the actual teaching and meet the actual teaching needs. We should base ourselves on the national conditions, be good at learning from others, and establish an effective and standardized chemistry teacher education system as soon as possible on the basis of summing up past experiences and lessons.