This question has come up and now is a good time to deal with it. Laura P has a good post on theory and raises the issue of science and theory. One of the enduring questions in Education — if not human existance — is “What do we know and how do we know it?” Let’s start with a definition from Wikipedia:

Theory – Wikipedia
The word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion.

In common usage, people often use the word theory to signify a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts, in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. True descriptions of reality are more reflectively understood as statements that would be true independently of what people think about them.

In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists “theory” and “fact” do not necessarily stand in opposition.

From there, we can establish a baseline for differentiating predictive, explanatory theory — ‘scientific theory’ — from common usage of the term as speculative conjecture. This is important because Education theories are expected to fall in the former (scientific) category and not in the latter (conjecture) category. The way a theory works is that somebody gets an idea — the hypothesis — and proceeds to test it using various tools and techniques. Gravitational theory is based on several hundred years of examining the relationship between mass, distance, and velocity. The basic idea is that some force causes two objects to be attracted to each other at a predictable rate based on their masses and relative distances. We named that force “gravity” — probably because “love” was already taken.

In Education we have several theories of learning. The mechanisms of mind alone have dozens. The idea that we have a limitation on short term memory of 5 plus or minus 2 items is such a theory. It’s been tested — repeatedly — and seems to be predictive. If you give a person five things to think about, most people can cope. As soon as you go over seven, things start going awry. The idea that memory is divided into long term and short term is another such theory. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. It endures because the empirical evidence to date supports it. At some point in the future, we may discover that our approach is wrong and we’ll establish a new theory.

So we have all these theories in Education — Behaviorism, Operant Condtioning, Constructivism, Connectivism, Transactional Distance, Immediacy, Social Presence — and that sorta implies that we believe that the process of inculcating knowledge in another is a scientifically based process. Something akin to “canning tomatoes.” The Federal government has even imposed a regime of “research based practice” based on the medical model of clinical trial and statistical analysis. And that brings up another question about Education that may be more important.

Is Education a Science?

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