Learning to Theorize

A Four-Step Strategy

`The book is illuminatory; it operationalizes or provides keys to operationalizing a process that is shrouded in mystery and mythology. It extends existing models of dealing with complexity and making sense of that complexity. It contains useful heuristics for theorizing that are usable and useful. I believe that the book is useful and of interest to a wider audience that just students in education and social sciences' - British Journal of Educational Psychology

Through the use of compelling questions and examples, Dennis E Mithaug shows readers how to implement his four-step strategy to construct explanations for uncertainties about how things work, how they ought to work, and what should be done about them. He begins the book with an explanation of the practical features of constructive theorizing and shows how it mirrors general problem solving, practical reasoning, and self-regulated learning. He then demonstrates how to separate the facts, value and actions of a situation in order to clarify and understand their relationahip as well as how a thinking strategy assists in learning to theorize better. This book will enable readers to separate questions of fact, value and action - explain their differences and similarities - and summarize their explanations in a theory that reconstructs those facts, values and actions in a more credible and valuable way.