ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out some general, albeit highly tentative, signposts in the vast and rather bewildering domain. Education deals in dynamic relationships and change, in what influences what and how to plan for results, all of which require an understanding of causation. The chapter discusses the basic elements of causation, such as causal relata, causal relationships, and causal order. It then focuses on some theories of causation, such as regularity theories, counterfactual theories, probability theories, causal process theories and manipulationist theories. Probability theory is a hugely complex domain in itself, and causation theorists differ in their inroads into it and uses of it. The core idea of causal process theories is that causation should be understood in terms of causal processes and interactions. At the outset manipulationist theories seem to be the approach closest to EBP, both in their focus on change and in their admission of human actions as causes.
