通过对1996-2006年间南京师范大学、华东师范大学和北京师范大学三校学前教育硕士、博士学位论文的分析，研究者发现：学前教育领域总的研究数量在2000年以后呈快速增长趋势；该领域的研究选题可分为14类，研究主要集中在五大领域、儿童发展、教师、课程、教育与社会等核心选题上，对游戏、教育方法、教育哲学、教育评价、国外学前教育、教育政策与管理、学前教育史、0-3岁儿童教育和师幼互动等选题也有一些涉猎，但数量相对较少；另外，在研究的理论基础方面，除借鉴相近学科的理论外，2003年后生态学、语言学和社会学等其他学科理论被较多地应用。综合各方面的特征，我们认为我国的学前教育正走向一个视野宽广、多学科融合、研究更为规范的专业领域。

　After analyzing themes of dissertations from 1996 to 2006 by masters and doctors in Nanjing Normal University, East China Normal University and Beijing Normal University ,we found that amounts of dissertations of preschool education raise up rapidly after 2000.Secondly,all researches could be divided into fourteen themes and researchers paid much attention to the following subjects，such as “Five Domains” that include Health，Science，Art, Sociality and Literacy, “Children Development” ,“Teacher”, “Curriculum” and “Relationship between Education and Society”. Furthermore，there were some researches on “Children’s Play”, “Approaches of Education”, “Philosophy of Education”, “Evaluation of education”, “ Preschool Education at Abroad”, “Educational Policy and Administration”, “History of Preschool Education” ,“Education for Infants” and “Teacher-Children Interaction”, but the amount is less. Thirdly, besides closely related theories, ecology, linguistics, sociology and other theories had been applied gradually. All in all, the preschool education will become a vast, inter-principal, standardized field.