The independence of any discipline depends first on its specific research object, or its research object is different from other disciplines. The research object of pedagogy is the phenomena and problems of human education and the general laws of education.
Education is a social phenomenon widely existing in human life and a purposeful activity to cultivate social people. In order to carry out educational activities effectively, we must study it and make it a specific research object of pedagogy after long-term accumulation. In particular, the development of modern society and modern educational practice puts forward newer and higher requirements for pedagogy research. There are many educational problems that people study deeply, such as the essence of education, the relationship between education and society and people, the purpose, content, mode, method, form and their relationship of education implementation, the educational process, the educational subject, the educational system and management, and various educational theories and practices that embody China's characteristics. Pedagogy reveals the general law of education through the study of various educational phenomena and problems.
The law of education is the internal and essential connection and relationship among education, society, people and various factors within education, which is objective, inevitable, stable and repetitive. Such as the relationship between education and society's politics, production, economy, culture and population, the relationship between educational activities and human development, the relationship between school education, social education and family education within education, the relationship between primary education, secondary education and university education, the relationship between educational objectives in secondary education and teaching and extracurricular education, and the relationship between intellectual education and moral, intellectual, physical and artistic work in educational and teaching activities. There is a regular relationship between the teaching of educators and the teaching of educatees in intellectual education, and between students' learning motivation, learning attitude, learning methods and academic performance in learning activities. The task of pedagogy is to explore and reveal various educational laws, clarify various educational problems and establish a theoretical system of pedagogy.