Theory
Education theory can refer to either a normative or a descriptive theory of education. In the first case, a theory means a postulation about what ought to be. It provides the "goals, norms, and standards for conducting the process of education." In the second case, it means "an hypothesis or set of hypotheses that have been verified by observation and experiment." A descriptive theory of education can be thought of as a conceptual scheme that ties together various "otherwise discrete particulars. . .For example, a cultural theory of education shows how the concept of culture can be used to organize and unify the variety of facts about how and what people learn." Likewise, for example, there is the behaviorist theory of education that comes from educational psychology and the functionalist theory of education that comes from sociology of education.
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Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“The theory [before the twentieth century] ... was that all the jobs in the world belonged by right to men, and that only men were by nature entitled to wages. If a woman earned money, outside domestic service, it was because some misfortune had deprived her of masculine protection.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“Freud was a hero. He descended to the “Underworld” and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa’s head which turned these terrors to stone.”
—R.D. (Ronald David)